Author: rey

John F. MacArthur, Jr.

this is a continuation of part 1

And then came the idea that this was in imitation of the virgin Mary, with utter disregard for the fact that after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph had a whole family full of children. But the lie of the system is that she was a perpetual virgin to her death. And they also elevated the celibacy because they said Christ was celibate, and this was the approximation and the imitation of Christ. And the idea began to develop that if people did this voluntarily, if lay people did this voluntarily and ascended to this high level of spiritual devotion, that wouldn’t it be imperative for their leaders to go to this high level? And again, this was the influence of some of these philosophical ideas. Shouldn’t bishops and priests be the models of asceticism? So by the third century, you started having celibate priests. And it was for the first time in the third century the Council of Elvira in Spain put down the first law that we can find in history enforcing celibacy. Bishops and priests and deacons also were to be deposed if they lived with their wives and begot children after their ordination. They would allow the ones that were married to stay married. But if you were ordained, that in itself said you will never marry. A similar decree was enacted by a Roman Council under Pope Serichias in 384 to 399.

John F. MacArthur, Jr.

Well, thank you for coming tonight. I am going to put on the hat of sort of a professor and historian tonight. I am so used to getting up and saying “take out your Bible,” but that wouldn’t help, since the Catholic priesthood isn’t found anywhere in scripture, so we can’t start there. I want to talk about the scandal of the priesthood, because obviously we are all made very much aware of the tremendous tragedy that is playing out before us in the immorality of the Catholic priesthood. And what I would like to do is to give some historical perspective to that, some sense of the bigger picture of what’s going on in the priesthood. And in order to do that, I have to talk a little bit about the scandal of the priesthood itself. So it’s a bit of a play on words. It’s a bit of a pun, if you will, when I talk about the scandal of the priesthood.

I’m not just talking about the current scandal. I’m talking about the whole scandal of the priesthood itself, as the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic church. Let me give you a little bit of background.

There’s a lot that could be said about Roman Catholic theology. We could expose its errors, which are numerous; we could talk about its sources of revelation or divine truth that are outside the pages of scripture, or we could talk about the corruption of the mass. We could talk about the idea that Mary is the co-redemptrix which, of course, is really a blasphemous concept. We could talk about the idea that God is a tough guy, and if anybody wants grace out of God, it’s only Jesus who could get it from Him; but you can’t expect to go to Jesus because He’s pretty tough himself, so you need to go to Mary, because nobody can resist his mother. And so she’ll talk to Him and he’ll talk to the father, and Mary
will get you what you need, or some saint. We could talk a lot about those things; concepts of purgatory, concepts of the sinlessness of Mary, the virgin birth of Mary, a lot of things about Catholic theology that we could speak about; most notably their erroneous doctrine of justification, which cuts people off from the kingdom of God. But what I want to talk about is the scandal of the priesthood, and give you some sense of what the priesthood really is all about.

Steve Hulshizer

There can be no doubt that one of the greatest needs among the
Lord?s people is shepherds raised up by the Holy Spirit (Acts 20:28). Some assemblies
have a few shepherds, others may have one, and many others have none. Too many have elders
who are elders in name only. Hopefully none of these fit the Lord?s description of
Israel?s shepherds. ” The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye
healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have
ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost;
but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.” (Ezek. 34:4.)