Source: kunc.org
Each week, Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin brings listeners an unexpected side of the news by talking with someone personally affected by the stories making headlines.
Thomas Groome is the author of “What Makes Us Catholic”
In 1968, Thomas Groome was ordained as a priest. Even then, he wondered about the requirement that priests remain celibate.
“I was in an old Irish seminary back in the late ’60s, early ’70s,” he tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “At that time, we thought everything was going to change,” because the church had recently made changes to the mass.
But in the years following, the rule didn’t change, and Groome became more and more conflicted about his own celibacy. He slowly started to realize it wasn’t nurturing him and giving him life.
“In fact, it probably was becoming destructive of me,” he says. “And I think that’s one of the dangers of obligatory celibacy, that it can lead to self-destructive and outer-destructive behavior. It’s a hazardous lifestyle.”
Groome had a moment of clarity during …continue reading at kunc.org
“Then We (Allah) caused Our Messengers to follow in their footsteps; and We caused Jesus, son of Mary, to follow them, and We gave him the Gospel. And We placed in the hearts of those who accepted him compassion and mercy. But monasticism which they invented for themselves — We did not prescribe it for them — for the seeking of Allah’s pleasure; but they did not observe it with due observance. Yet We gave those of them who believed their due reward, but many of them are rebellious.” (Al Quran 57:28)