The word "priesthood" is correct and usable in written English
You can use it when referring to the body of priests in a given religion. For example, "The priesthood of the church was responsible for passing judgement on members of the congregation."
Barry Ramshaw Bristol The application of discrimination law to settle these questions of conflicts of belief is taking us away from a free society and towards one where a secular priesthood of judges, bureaucrats and activists regulate every aspect of our lives.
He saw scientists in their white coats as having "all the attributes of religion – faith, dogma and priesthood".
It helps break the "priesthood of the pundits" – he means Fleet Street – and its stranglehold on the agenda.
In his parents' time, he recalls, a local farming family would be proud if a son joined the priesthood.
This is a new outfit set up by Pope Benedict XVI for Anglicans unable to accept their church's decision this year to let women be bishops.The move follows a crisis in the early 1990s over ordaining women priests, which Anglo-Catholics saw as dooming their hope for eventual unity with the (male-only) Roman Catholic priesthood.
Wider career options for women and declining religiosity squeezed vocations further.In this section Looming shadows Fewer are called Nowhere to call home ReprintsFalling recruitment to the priesthood in Europe and North America, recently helped along by child-abuse scandals, was balanced by a rise in Africa and Asia (see chart).
But Mormon scriptures say some harsh things about dark-skinned people and until 1978 blacks were barred from the priesthood, which, in Mormon parlance, includes more or less any devout male over the age of 12.
The Catholic church in Latin America is "an extension of the bureaucratic state", he charges, and offers only indirect access to God through the Virgin Mary and the priesthood.
Scandals over child-abuse are seen by some as an unpleasant side-effect of priestly celibacy; and they have certainly reduced the prestige of the priesthood as a calling even in relatively devout countries like Ireland.
He was born in 1920 in the town of Wadowice to a mother who died young and a father who first sowed the idea of priesthood in him, making him study in a cold room to improve his concentration.
As more and more victims emerge, the church faces possible legal settlements amounting to billions of dollars.The numbers of offenders may seem relatively small; but in a sacred priesthood a few lapses have a disproportionate effect, and the faith of many Catholics has been profoundly shaken.
