Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The church may hold whatever it holds with regard to clerical celibacy.
Canon law itself says for one case of guilt, a priest can be dismissed from the clerical state. One.
In the academic world, most of the work that is done is clerical. A lot of the work done by professors is routine.
I worked as a clerical assistant at the Department of Health and Social Security for about three months before I went to drama school.
So the first job that I got - my father got it for me - he had his clerical collar on, was a gay bar in D.C., it was Mr. Henry's of Georgetown.
Catholicism has the clerical equivalent to a nut allergy - even a small exposure to change, and the whole thing will go into anaphylactic shock.
Could today's construction worker married to a clerical worker guarantee four children a college education and buy a house? That's what we're fighting about.
I did a lot of blue collar work. I also worked as a temp. I did, you know, light construction and cleaning. I did clerical temping. I also fix cars and motorcycles and electronics.
The priesthood is not dying, but the clerical state is dead. It needs to be buried, preferably with a Viking funeral in Boston Harbor so nobody can miss the spectacle of its passing.
That clerical celibacy doesn't guarantee asceticism is obvious, any more than attending Mass guarantees prayerfulness (trust me on that one). But it preserves the call even when the system is corrupted.
You have a very poor neighborhood. You have students that are required to go to school. They have no money, no habit of work. What if you paid them in the afternoon to work in the clerical office or as the assistant librarian?
Part of the reason that women go to college is to get out of the food service, clerical, pink-collar ghetto and into a more white-collar job. That does not necessarily mean they are being paid more than the blue-collar jobs men have.
My father was a construction worker most of his life. My mother, when she came from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, to the United States, never had a chance to go to college either and became a clerical worker. But they did nothing but build this country.
I grew up with Scientology - my parents at one point were clerical. It's a pragmatic philosophy, not merely a belief system. Yeah, it's had media exposure because certain luminaries do Scientology, but millions of people do it who are not celebrities. It's not a threat or some cult.
Good priests never look for awards and, perversely enough in the clerical culture universe, do not receive many. Like the aged nuns who taught selflessly and nearly anonymously all their lives, these servants of the People of God only get into the papers when their obituaries are printed.
