Pope and Priest | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jul 10, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 28.

Pope and Priest.

IT is reported on good authority that 3,000 priests in France have petitioned the pope to have liberty to marry. And why not?

The scandals, during the past twenty years, in France, largely for want of the influences of family life, have been frequent, flagrant, and alarming. These things have largely contributed to the revolt from Rome amongst the French people.

Rome boasts that she never changes, and that she is founded upon St. Peter, the first pope of Rome. But Peter had a wife, and a "wife's mother" whom the Lord "healed of a fever." If Peter was the FOUNDER of "the holy Roman Catholic Church," and he had a wife, why may not his successors "lead about a sister, a wife?" Does not the FACT of the priests being unmarried show that they have DEPARTED from the paths of their founder? And further still, it is a well-known fact that for many centuries after the death of Peter, priests and bishops did marry and have homes; why should "the holy Mother Church" not return to the practise of her early history? Why has "the Church which is always the same," made such a radical change in her faith and practise? As Peter is the ONLY ONE of the apostles of whose marriage we can be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, is it not strange and comical that these "successors of St. Peter" should condemn HIS manner of life by THEIR OWN CONDUCT?

Has not God placed marriage at the very fountain of His three great agencies on earth—the home, the church, and the State? Why should that body which claims for itself to be "the only true Catholic Apostolic Church," seek to discredit and to dishonor that relation which shows Christ in His relation to the church, and God in His Fatherhood to His people? To use the language of Paul, "doth not even nature itself teach you," that the divine order of things is "that the bishop therefore must be without reproach, the husband of one wife?" Why not let God have His own way?

It has always been a mystery to us that this "holy Mother Church" should be so UNHOLY as to condone all sorts of flagrant breaches of the LAW OF GOD, and yet be so severe on the man who breaks the LAW OF THE CHURCH. It is no secret that priests may break the seventh commandment, and by confession, penance, temporary retirement, and a transfer to a distant diocese go on in the exercise of the functions of their office; but let him make a saintly woman an honorable wife, as did Peter, and he would be unfrocked and disgraced, for he has broken "the law of the Church."

It is the old story. God counts for little in the minds of proud and unregenerate men, while their own institutions and laws, even when made in the teeth of God and nature, must be sustained at all hazards. The priests of France are not alone in their rebellion against this "law of the Church." It is only a few months ago when a priest said to us: "O, brother, I envy you Protestant ministers; you have your own wives and homes to protect and help you, but we—" and then the conversation was punctured by a grip of the hand, a tear in the eye, and these words, "Say a little prayer sometimes, for me, brother." It is the truth that makes free, and all others are slaves.—Watchword and Truth.