14/01/2025
Abel Damina, Forbidden Marriage and Catholic Priesthood.
While content creators are catching cruise with Damina's diatribes against the Catholic church, I see it as an opportunity to teach and correct his errors. Correcting errors is part of what 2Tim 3:16 says about scripture.
In the video I just watched, Damina used 1Tim 4:3ff where Paul talked about false teachers who forbid marriages and tell people to abstain from certain foods. Damina used that text to label the discipline of celibacy in the Catholic Church as a doctrine of demons. He also picketed on the good Friday abstinence from meat.
Firstly, Damina either doesn't know the difference between FORBIDDEN and PROMISE, or he's up to something else. A Catholic priest makes three vows at his ordination. They are celibacy, obedience to his bishop, and poverty. Long before he is ordained, he is taught about them. So he is aware that he will forgo marriage and has more than 13 years to make that choice. So, celibacy in the Catholic Church isn't same thing as forbidden marriage. It is marriage freely and voluntarily sacrificed by someone called to that vocation.
Even at this, there's still provision for married priests in the Catholic church, as there are married Catholic priests today. So, the Catholic Church has a special arrangement under which a priest can marry.
Now, there is historical, biblical, and spiritual basis for celibacy in the Catholic priesthood. Priests married until around the 4th century when the discipline of celibacy was introduced and embraced.
Jesus Christ affirmed celibacy for the sake of the kingdom in Mtt 19:12: "There are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
Emphasis is on those who chose to live like Eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom. They abstain from marriage. It is by free will and choice. Among the disciples of Jesus, John, the evangelist most likely didn't marry. Paul himself didn't marry.
In 1Cor 7, Paul encouraged both celibacy and marriage and asked people to choose whichever they can do. The primary theological and spiritual reasons Catholic priests do not marry are in imitation of Jesus Christ himself. The church is the bride of christ. A Catholic priest is symbolically married to his parish or pastoral unit, giving it undivided attention.
Think also about convenience. See the way Catholic priests are moved from one pariah or location to another, that's convenient to do because they don't have the encumberances of personal families.
You come to 1Tim 3:2ff where Paul told Timothy that a bishop or deacon must be the husband of one wife. Some persons interpret this scripture to mean that the bishop or deacon MUST marry. In other words, nobody was to be appointed or ordained deacon or bishop of a church if they didn't marry. That's a wrong textual interpretation.
When Paul said that the deacon or bishop MUST be the husband of one wife, he is not making marriage a requisite for the office, he is rather legislating against polygamy which was still in practice then. So, by saying that a bishop or deacon must marry only one wife, he is saying they can't have more than one wives, which men of those days had the right to do.
In all of these, the truth is that Abel Damina establishes a conclusion on his mind, looks for a text of scripture and passionately and eloquently hammers it down the mind of his listeners. Anyone with sufficient knowledge of scripture will see through his subtle deceptions and errors.
The Catholic church doesn't forbid marriage, she only trains her priests to give it up for the sake of the kingdom, just as Jesus did, just as Paul and host of others did. Just as Mtt 19:12 and other biblical texts support also.
© Fada Oluoma, 2025
