Brandmüller: Celibacy Is Of "Apostolic Tradition", "God’s Revelation"

The Amazon Synod is not about the Amazonian rainforests, what is only a label for a “radical reconstruction of the Church according to the known program,” Cardinal Walter Brandmüller wrote on Faz.de (July 23).

He explains that one "key issue" of the Synod is celibacy. A Church historian, Brandmüller reminds that the Church's enemies used to say in the 19th century, that the Church will "be on the rocks," if celibacy will be abolished.

Celibacy is not a mere discipline but a “genuine content of the apostolic tradition,” Brandmüller explains, and thus "God's revelation and as binding as Holy Scripture."

Already in apostolic times married priests and bishops were living in abstinence, he stresses: St Paul rules that only men who were married once, could become priests (1 Tim 3,2), because he did not trust widowers who had decide to marry again, to live in sexual abstinence.

Picture: Walter Brandmüller, #newsJduimfedkj