The Celtic Church as we know it, till gradually brought under Roman discipline, was purely monastic. The monasteries were the centres whence the ministry of souls was exercised.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Priesthood is not a convenient, historically conditioned form of Church organisation, but is rooted in the Incarnation, in the priesthood and mission of Christ himself.
Priesthood is the means whereby the Lord acts through men to save souls. One of the defining features of the Church of Jesus Christ, both anciently and today, is His authority. There can be no true Church without divine authority.
Love of learning led to monasteries, which became the cradle of academic guilds.
At the end of the Middle Ages, nobody would ever have expected the monasteries to vanish from the scene within a generation - yet they did. Change does happen.
Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.
A Catholic understanding of priesthood is so strongly rooted in the historic actions of Jesus and in all their antecedents in the place of sacrifice in life. And those things... they are rooted to the role of the man.
Some of the priests from the Seminary were in the nunnery every day and night, and often several at a time.
When I look back at the church I grew up in, I realise that nothing about its behaviour was very Christian. It was just a social club on Sundays where people would meet up with their mates.
Meanwhile the Church more and more provided for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, by practically chaining His influence to the hierarchy and the sacraments.
The Roman Catholic Church and its rituals were so much part of life that, although my parents would often question a small matter of dogma and none of us seemed more religious than anyone else, no one ever questioned the rituals or the basic tenets of belief.