e renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven." And, significantly, He added, "The one who can accept this should accept it"It appears that here the Bible has contradicted itself. This, however, is not the case. The passage from 1 Timothy is refering to the Gnostic heresy which regarded matter as intrinsically evil. Gnostic's believe that marriage is evil because matter is evil, therefore sex is evil. So really Paul is denouncing heresies, not the idea of remaining celebate.Call no Man Father:Protestants make refrence to Matt 23:9 which clearly states "And do not call anyone on earth "father," for you have one Father, and he is in heaven"The very next verse Matt 23:10 says "Nor are you to be called 'teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Christ"Countless times the Apostles refer to themselves as spiritual fathers and the faithful as spiritual children...Abraham is refered to as the father of all who believe (Rom 4:11)...Paul writes "for in Jesus Christ I became your father through the gospel (1 Cor 4:15)The point Jesus was making is that no man is to take the place of God in our lives.The Protestant International Standard Bible Encyclopedia acknowledges that this is the true meaning of the text: "Christ's condemnation is clearly of the praise-seeking or obsequious spirit, rather than of a particular custom."Catholics are not being disobeditent to Jesus, rather following the apostolic example established be Paul and John.Bible in VernacularThe common misconception is that the Protestants were the ones who started to translate the Bible and before that the Catholic Church would not allow it to be written in any lanuage other than Latin.First, the Bible was written in Latin for so long because Latin was the lanuage of Eurpoe. If a person in Europe could read at all they could read Latin.Second, the Catholic Church promoted the translation of the Bible into many lanuages well before the Reformation including High and Low German...
