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would you say most priests actually believe in god?

pgj2015

A bit of a mad thought but something that crossed my mind today. you would assume they all do but id say we would be surprised, I reckon some just see it as a handy number or have another reason for becoming a priest.

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John Hutton

Most people who become priests do so because they feel that they are called to be a priest.

They generally have to discern for a year or two before seminary, and then attend seminary for seven years. It's not something you just apply for! It's a massive commitment and process to go through and lie all the way.

As for the Catholic church going forward, it's gone through worse periods before. Will become smaller for sure but who knows what the future holds.

To return to the OP, the gay aspect is missing the point. People are gay and also catholic. They are not incompatible. Gay people can and do believe in God.

I can't see how people would become priests if they do not believe in God. I'm sure there are some who are priests and maybe stopped believing but again it must be a minority.

beveragelady

John Hutton wrote: »

Millions of people, over thousands of years, some of them the capital minds of their day, and today, deeply considered the subject and believe in a God.

I just don't buy it. How could an adult think about it critically and still believe for one second that there might be any truth in it? If I 'deeply consider' something from the standpoint of 'Of course there's a god, and here's why,' then I'm unlikely to arrive at any independent conclusion. I might tie myself in knots playing word games like poor, clever old St Anselm, but I'm thinking like a child, swallowing axioms without applying any real thought.

It's this simple...
Which of these statements is false?
God is good.
God is omnipotent.
Somewhere in the world, in the 21st century, babies are dying of malnutrition.

The third is definitely true, which means at least one of the others isn't.

At this stage people might resort to the 'mysterious ways' card. This is the theological equivalent of a five year old insisting that they should be allowed to go up the snakes in a game of snakes and ladders. Logic and mature discussion goes out the window.

[Deleted User]

beveragelady wrote: »

The third is definitely true, which means at least one of the others isn't.
.

No it doesn't. It just doesn't mean that God doesn't equate with the scenario you set up.

Look. Religion is one thing. God is another. This is what many on this thread are mixing up.

I know quite a few priests, who are either family members or friends. They would all be people who likely believe in God, however, their belief in the rules and organisation of the RCC are a different thing entirely. The various Popes, and 'Princes' have for centuries tried to make people believe that their word equals that of God, but we live in a more enlightened time. People are generally educated enough to be able to separate concepts and hold them apart to be judged separately.

God is God. Even within the RCC there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different perceptions as to what God represents and whether his power is of this world or a more spiritual manifestation. We know that Religion is a man made structure and so it is flawed. It's corrupt. It's political.

I get that people want to say that God doesn't exist. I went through a similar phase when I was younger, and I added my own convoluted arguments to suggest that God was a figment of peoples imagination.. and that's the point. God is a figment of the imagination... doesn't make him less real to those people though. Actually, by "proving" to myself through hundreds of arguments that God didn't exist, it simply made me believe that God did exist.

Just not within the boundaries that people want to imprison God within.

Most priests I know well, would say that God is a personal belief, and that everyone has their own version to believe in. How God manifests depends entirely on that person... And you can believe in God, believe in aspects of the RCC, while also disagreeing with other aspects, or honestly, not believing in other teachings such as the Saints, but... still... follow the overall path.

People are complex. They can have conflicting beliefs... I've noticed that threads like these tend to try make the world into a very simple place. It's not.

marklazarcovic

both Catholicism and Scientology are the same fundamental thing, and zero proof of any of their core beliefs having ever existed,one group are classed as cult members,the other good Christians.

"believe our teachings ,they are the word of god", "hang on ,ours are ,believe ours",nonsense the whole lot of it.

John Hutton

beveragelady wrote: »

I just don't buy it. How could an adult think about it critically and still believe for one second that there might be any truth in it? If I 'deeply consider' something from the standpoint of 'Of course there's a god, and here's why,' then I'm unlikely to arrive at any independent conclusion. I might tie myself in knots playing word games like poor, clever old St Anselm, but I'm thinking like a child, swallowing axioms without applying any real thought.

It's this simple...
Which of these statements is false?
God is good.
God is omnipotent.
Somewhere in the world, in the 21st century, babies are dying of malnutrition.

The third is definitely true, which means at least one of the others isn't.

At this stage people might resort to the 'mysterious ways' card. This is the theological equivalent of a five year old insisting that they should be allowed to go up the snakes in a game of snakes and ladders. Logic and mature discussion goes out the window.

You have moved the goalposts here from talking about the existence of God to saying that because God doesn't fit your definition of good, God doesn't exist.

But then again, you don't believe that "adults" believe in God despite irrefutable evidence that they have done so for thousands of years and continue to do so, with some of the best minds the world has had believed in God.

But all of them, as per you, are irredeemably biased because you feel they all started from a position of already believing in God (this isn't true). But of course, you aren't biased are you? Or if you are, your bias is ok?

And you think that people haven't applied critical thought? That's just ignorance. Tomes and tomes of critical thought have been written about religion and religious belief. Just because their conclusions differ from yours doesn't mean they didn't think about it.

You are not half as clever as you think.

John Hutton

Btw the whole "evil exists, how can God exist, or how can he allow evil" has been a topic "critically thought" to death for centuries now, you're not the first to come up with it.... All old news.

ThewhiteJesus

John Hutton wrote: »

Do any of you know actually know any priests?

Or just ignorantly speculating?

I do, and I don't know how they could do it if they don't believe, or never believed.

It's a very tough life. It's ain't just saying Mass for a half hour on a Sunday.

Burials, weddings, confessions, counselling, school boards, visiting the sick and dying, administration of a parish(financial and just plain organisation, communions etc), spiritual direction, dealing with headcases moaning because the priest changed a mass time, multiple masses everyday sometimes over 2 parishes, loneliness (for some, more now because in the past priests didn't live alone), last rites to people splattered on a road at 3am, etc. etc. It goes on and on. Plus a significant proportion of society thinking you might be a pedo, and a vocal minority loathing you.

All for 24k a year.

They wouldn't do it if they didn't believe in God.

It’s not 24k a year, throw a house and car ect into the pot, they also choose to do this

John Hutton

ThewhiteJesus wrote: »

It’s not 24k a year, throw a house and car ect into the pot, they also choose to do this

You're right, they got their wages cut so it's less now.

Whatever way you spin it it's hardly a lucrative money spinner after spending 7 years studying.

Of course they chose it, I never said they didn't? My point is that you wouldn't choose it if you didn't believe in God

ThewhiteJesus

John Hutton wrote: »

You're right, they got their wages cut so it's less now.

Whatever way you spin it it's hardly a lucrative money spinner after spending 7 years studying.

Of course they chose it, I never said they didn't? My point is that you wouldn't choose it if you didn't believe in God

I’m not spinning, you are.

Loafing Oaf

Interesting and valid question OP. There's a conservative Catholic poster on politics.ie who claims about 90% of contemporary Catholic 'priests' are atheists/agnostics. Like this guy:

beveragelady

There's a very good book by Will Storr called "The Heretics." It doesn't just deal with religion, it covers alien encounters, holocaust denial, imaginary diseases, that sort of thing. It's very entertaining and informative. What it repeatedly highlights is the tendency 'believers' have to claim absolute knowledge in the absence of evidence and to refuse to contemplate the implications of evidence that weakens their position. In fact they double down as more evidence is presented, adopting a firmer position in defiance of all logic.

The common thread I see is that these are all people who have hitched their wagon to a cause and it has become so important that to question it would be to question their own identity. Rather than examine the reality they're living in they keep playing along. This is not belief or faith, whatever you want to call it. It's a childlike willingness to comply.

John Hutton wrote: »

You are not half as clever as you think.

You have descended to personal comments. What does that tell us about the strength and integrity of your arguments?

One eyed Jack

o1s1n wrote: »

Nope, it's persisted as long as it has due to mankind's ignorance.

Thankfully with the advent of the internet and the light speed spread of knowledge throughout the world in the last few decades, it's in massive decline - long may it continue.

Reading that I’m sure you were referring to religion (which is actually spreading , as opposed to being in decline), but that’s not surprising given that contrary to your claims that the Internet has spread knowledge, it appears to have solidified people’s ignorance - it’s just a different sort of religion, if you will.

I’m not referring to non-religion as ignorance btw, of course it’s not, but fake news - that feeds mankind’s ignorance and perpetuates it. Now they’re not called priests any more, but life coaches.

El_Duderino 09

I doubt many become priests while not believing in a god. But I'd say plenty lose their belief while they are priests.

There's an organisation called The Clergy Project which helps religious professionals who stop believing. Priests usually have absolutely no marketable qualifications so they can't go and do any other job except unskilled labour. So they tend to stay priests even if they stop believing.

https://clergyproject.org/

tim3000

I'd say he percentage of them that do believe has declined greatly through the ages. I'd imagine this correlates with increased education, increased outside influence T.V. the internet etc.

These would expose a developing mind to arguments against a god with far more regularity than before. Given that 50 or 60 years ago our state broadcaster, our government and our society were firmly held in the grip of the C.C. this wasn't a time where critical thinking could flourish or open debate could take place for fear of social exclusion. Even if a young man contemplating the priesthood had doubts with whom could he talk with?

I'd say a large percentage of priests now don't have the same level of belief as older generations.

beveragelady

tim3000 wrote: »

Even if a young man contemplating the priesthood had doubts with whom could he talk with?

Not just men contemplating the priesthood. I was talking recently to a woman in her 70s who attended a school reunion a few years ago. She said that she had always gone along with the praying, the confessing and all the other outward displays of faith. She never believed a word of it though and in her youth she thought there was something different about her. She went to great lengths to disguise the fact that she didn't have this all-important faith in order to fit in. Nobody ever spoke about any of the obvious problems with Catholicism in particular and religion in general, so there was no opportunity to voice her opinion. Unsurprisingly she even had her children baptised and it wasn't until their confirmations loomed on the horizon that she began to say to them that if they didn't believe in it they didn't have to do it. She felt she left it too late, they all went ahead with it despite having no real belief themselves.
At her recent school reunion the became reacquainted with her group of school friends. They discovered that of the five of them who had been close friends in school, not one retained any religious inclination. They had all being playing along and they had all started their children along the same path.
That's how religion survives.

John Hutton

beveragelady wrote: »

There's a very good book by Will Storr called "The Heretics." It doesn't just deal with religion, it covers alien encounters, holocaust denial, imaginary diseases, that sort of thing. It's very entertaining and informative. What it repeatedly highlights is the tendency 'believers' have to claim absolute knowledge in the absence of evidence and to refuse to contemplate the implications of evidence that weakens their position. In fact they double down as more evidence is presented, adopting a firmer position in defiance of all logic.

The common thread I see is that these are all people who have hitched their wagon to a cause and it has become so important that to question it would be to question their own identity. Rather than examine the reality they're living in they keep playing along. This is not belief or faith, whatever you want to call it. It's a childlike willingness to comply.

You have descended to personal comments. What does that tell us about the strength and integrity of your arguments?

You're the one who hasn't engaged in any meaningful discussion, and instead denigrated those who believe in a God to "childlike" unthinkers, despite ample evidence in world history that people have critically engaged with the concept of God for thousands of years, many of whom emerge with a believe in a creator/God. You just can't accept that people can come to different conclusions that you, so you just repeatedly say, in different ways, that you are so smart, and anyone with a different conclusions or belief than you is "childlike".

When your argument boils down to you making the case that you are smarter than others then it is perfectly valid to engage with this underlying claim and say that you are not as smart as you think you are.

And to catagorise ontological reasoning as childlike is bizarre.

John Hutton

tim3000 wrote: »

I'd say he percentage of them that do believe has declined greatly through the ages. I'd imagine this correlates with increased education, increased outside influence T.V. the internet etc.

These would expose a developing mind to arguments against a god with far more regularity than before. Given that 50 or 60 years ago our state broadcaster, our government and our society were firmly held in the grip of the C.C. this wasn't a time where critical thinking could flourish or open debate could take place for fear of social exclusion. Even if a young man contemplating the priesthood had doubts with whom could he talk with?

I'd say a large percentage of priests now don't have the same level of belief as older generations.

Much of priestly formation involves the study of philosophy and extensive engagement with the arguments discussed on this thread. Plenty of people went to seminary and didn't finish, it's the same today.

John Hutton

ThewhiteJesus wrote: »

I’m not spinning, you are.

It is a verifiable fact that priests in Ireland receive pay of an average of 24k. In Dublin, and elsewhere, this has been cut by a quarter.

How is this spinning?

Sure they get to live in a house and sometimes a car but it's a 24/7 job, and they can be moved on the whim of the Bishop.

No one is doing it for the cash! In fact today the average age of someone entering seminary is rising, with many leaving far more lucrative careers to study for the priesthood.

I have to say I find the two main arguments in this thread very unconvincing. People become priests because they are gay, or for the cash. Not buying it.

An argument that they are ordinary people who get super "brainwashed" into fervently believing the religion and hence become priests would be more persuasive.

Gretas Gonna Get Ya!

The strange thing about the priesthood, is not only that they need to take a vow of celibacy... but also no masturbation either. That's also a sin, right?

So basically, we are supposed to believe that anyone who joins the priesthood is basically asexual? Or is just so committed to god, that they deny their natural urges and desires? (Both scenarios are unlikely imo)

I mean, what sort of demented BS is that anyway? :P

I find all priests to be creepy in some way or another. I'm not saying every one of them is a pedo... but every priest I've encountered, seemed odd or weird in some way. And not the cool interesting kind of weird... the unsettling/unnerving sort of weird.

tea and coffee

beveragelady wrote: »

It's this simple...
Which of these statements is false?
God is good.
God is omnipotent.
Somewhere in the world, in the 21st century, babies are dying of malnutrition.

The third is definitely true, which means at least one of the others isn't.
.

Hope I'm not getting into the weeds on this one....
Yes the 3rd is true but is it not humans fault for allowing this? If we treated one another fairly, shared the wealth, were not corrupt (I mean the corrupt governments that allow their people to suffer), helped one another etc then this would not be the case.
For me God is love - whether that su scribes to any particular religion is immaterial. However if we all treated one another with "love" then these issues would not exist.

Gretas Gonna Get Ya!

John Hutton wrote: »

No one is doing it for the cash! In fact today the average age of someone entering seminary is rising, with many leaving far more lucrative careers to study for the priesthood.

Isn't it very interesting, that the word "seminary" sounds remarkably similar to the word "semen".... :P

I'll just leave that thought hanging there in the breeze!

Galwayguy35

I sometimes wonder do they watch porn.

John Hutton

Gretas Gonna Get Ya! wrote: »

The strange thing about the priesthood, is not only that they need to take a vow of celibacy... but also no masturbation either. That's also a sin, right?

So basically, we are supposed to believe that anyone who joins the priesthood is basically asexual? Or is just so committed to god, that they deny their natural urges and desires? (Both scenarios are unlikely imo)

I mean, what sort of demented BS is that anyway? :P

I find all priests to be creepy in some way or another. I'm not saying every one of them is a pedo... but every priest I've encountered, seemed odd or weird in some way. And not the cool interesting kind of weird... the unsettling/unnerving sort of weird.

For those interested, the vow of celibacy is a vow to never get married.

The thinking is that Priests are spiritual "father's" to the faithful and to engage sexually with people is a form of spiritual incest and abuse of position and authority. I think this is a fair enough teaching and we'd all have been better off if all priests had kept this over the years.

As for masterbation the church teaches that it is sinful, but no one expects a priest not to sin so I suppose they are the same as the rest of us and presumably do these things and go to confession?

In an age of sexual liberation I think a choice to not engage in sexual activity is as legitimate a choice as any other ( although probably far more difficult!)

My experience with priests, I know a few and a Bishop is a long-standing family friend, is that some are sound, some are pricks.

John Hutton

Of course, many eastern orthodox priests are married, and a significant number of priests who were formerly Anglican are married...

Galwayguy35

o1s1n wrote: »

Because if it doesn't it's more than likely going to fade into obscurity and vanish.

Society is becoming more and more atheistic with every subsequent generation. Something I do enjoy seeing, so am happy for them to continue being a celebate males only club.

There is about a billion catholics in the world so don't think its going away anytime soon.

beveragelady

tea and coffee wrote: »

Hope I'm not getting into the weeds on this one....
Yes the 3rd is true but is it not humans fault for allowing this? If we treated one another fairly, shared the wealth, were not corrupt (I mean the corrupt governments that allow their people to suffer), helped one another etc then this would not be the case.
For me God is love - whether that su scribes to any particular religion is immaterial. However if we all treated one another with "love" then these issues would not exist.

Love can exist without any god.

If you're going to give a god credit for rainbows and the wonders of nature and the perfection of a snowdrop then you have to give him credit for famine. Locusts, drought and desertification have the same origins as snowdrops.
Over the centuries politics and religion have been inextricable. War, another cause of famine, is so often fought over religion that it's not considered at all strange. Political regimes sought support and legitimacy from religious organisations and vice versa. This is the history of religion. Even now a coronation is a religious service, not a secular ceremony, implying that the monarch has been endorsed, if not chosen, by a god.

Remember it suits organised religion nicely to if the masses are hungry and desperate. It's no coincidence that when Ireland emerged from the grim eighties into the relative comfort of the nineties and the fluctuating wealth of the 21st C that we have simultaneously forced the church to loosen its hold on society. The church's stance on contraception in Africa despite the Aids epidemic tells you everything you need to know about its respect for the congregation. Keep 'em procreating, keep 'em hungry.

Loafing Oaf

Gretas Gonna Get Ya! wrote: »

The strange thing about the priesthood, is not only that they need to take a vow of celibacy... but also no masturbation either. That's also a sin, right?

So basically, we are supposed to believe that anyone who joins the priesthood is basically asexual? Or is just so committed to god, that they deny their natural urges and desires? (Both scenarios are unlikely imo)

I mean, what sort of demented BS is that anyway? :P

I find all priests to be creepy in some way or another. I'm not saying every one of them is a pedo... but every priest I've encountered, seemed odd or weird in some way. And not the cool interesting kind of weird... the unsettling/unnerving sort of weird.

'Rebel bishop' Pat Buckley often quotes a priest friend of his on this whole issue: "Pat, they wouldn’t let us get rid our semen and it went our head and made us mad”.:P

YellowBucket

One thing I’ve always noticed is you’ll run into people who were in college in the 1970s and were originally on the priesthood or nun path. It seems one or two were using it as a way to pay for university. Three people I’m thinking of became either very agnostic or are diehard atheist and are married, have kids, all great craic (two men one woman). The fourth moved to SF and is gay and similarly very non-religious.

It was just very expensive to get a degree if you had no money and it was a way to do it and opened doors. I think it was a bit like the way you see a lot of Americans who join the army to get educated and have little or no intention of being career military. Ireland’s education systems were equally inaccessible in the old days and the religious orders played the same role as the military might in the USA in terms of being able to access degrees and opportunity if you had no money.

Also I think you have to remember that we still have the vast majority of our schools in religious ownership, and in the old days they were extremely religious and were recruiting grounds for their sponsors.

Plenty of people were guided and pushed towards religious vocations by that system. I’ve talked to a few priests and nuns who just seemed to regret their choices.

I also know a few women of that era and older who were away to be nuns and typically left before it went too far. Again I think in a lot of cases it was seen as a sensible career option and pathway for some women who wanted to be teachers in particular and in aspects of nursing.

The one thing that struck me is that for women in the era before any notion of a women’s liberation movement in the 1960s (and really the 1970s in Ireland) being a nun was one of the few areas that you could wield real managerial power within organisations or political structures.

Nuns ran seriously big organisations like hospitals, schools, colleges and entire healthcare systems and were taken absolutely seriously, while “ordinary women” had few opportunities to ever be taken seriously in senior roles due to a culture of baked in, often very extreme sexism. I suspect that was a big draw for some as a way of achieving something.

Also in Ireland being a nun or a priest was a route into social service work and even, rather bizarrely particularly in Dublin (less so in Cork, as UCC is secular) areas like academic psychology before the 1980s were full of nuns and priests as they ran the institutions and the universities. I would suspect a lot of people who feel they want to work in socially beneficial services in modern times might become social workers, psychologists, follow career paths into medicine or nursing etc whereas in those days an element of that was linked to religious vocation. You still see traces of it through nursing in particular.

The most depressing story I heard was when I got talking to a Christian Brother. The guy would be dead a long time at this stage but it was when I was at the end of secondary school in about 2000 and he was maybe 80 back then.

I happened to ask him how he ended up as a Christian Brother and he was telling me how he wanted to play football. He was 13 and was basically on a path toward being a Brother from that point on. He wasn’t allowed meet girls. He was saying he had never had a girlfriend (or a boyfriend he actually half jokingly said that too) and he’d never kissed or hugged anyone his whole life - he seemed extremely bitter about it.

He also started saying how he had been beaten up a lot and treated like a skivvy spending years basically doing endless housework. I didn’t delve much into it but he certainly spent much of his life being under constant threat of serious physical abuse at the very least.

He went to school though and became a teacher but he had had no freedom whatsoever by the sounds of it. He was also telling me how he had only really begun to enjoy life in his 70s and 80s and was able to do more and the whole organisation was less oppressive since the scandals and power structures broke down. So he was off just being himself much more in his elderly years.

It was just a very sad story of a life regretted.

tim3000

beveragelady wrote: »

Not just men contemplating the priesthood. I was talking recently to a woman in her 70s who attended a school reunion a few years ago. She said that she had always gone along with the praying, the confessing and all the other outward displays of faith. She never believed a word of it though and in her youth she thought there was something different about her. She went to great lengths to disguise the fact that she didn't have this all-important faith in order to fit in. Nobody ever spoke about any of the obvious problems with Catholicism in particular and religion in general, so there was no opportunity to voice her opinion. Unsurprisingly she even had her children baptised and it wasn't until their confirmations loomed on the horizon that she began to say to them that if they didn't believe in it they didn't have to do it. She felt she left it too late, they all went ahead with it despite having no real belief themselves.
At her recent school reunion the became reacquainted with her group of school friends. They discovered that of the five of them who had been close friends in school, not one retained any religious inclination. They had all being playing along and they had all started their children along the same path.
That's how religion survives.

It's a shame they couldn't talk freely about it isn't it? There was too much control over day to day life by the church it has stunted the growth of our country.

Like that lady in your post my little one is baptised even though I don't practice, it was just done for peace sake. It is still a pervasive influence in society despite the several catastrophic knocks the C.C. has taken in recent decades.

tim3000

John Hutton wrote: »

Much of priestly formation involves the study of philosophy and extensive engagement with the arguments discussed on this thread. Plenty of people went to seminary and didn't finish, it's the same today.

Why do you think rates of ordination are falling?