A diocese in Ohio is under siege — receiving numerous threatening calls as well as heated online criticism — and a veteran teacher is out of a job because of publicly revealing a lesbian relationship in violation of the Catholic school’s morality code.

But the firing has raised a fervent debate over tolerance both online and in the Columbus, Ohio, community where the incident took place.

Physical education teacher Carla Hale, 57, was fired in March after her name appeared in her mother's obituary, which also noted Hale's longtime lesbian partner.

Hale was summoned to a meeting with school administrators after she returned from her mother’s funeral.

At the meeting, she received a copy of her mother’s obituary that she and her brother had written. In addition, administrators gave Hale an anonymous letter from a parent calling the presence of a lesbian teacher at the school disgrace.

Hale was subsequently dismissed from Bishop Watterson Catholic High School after 19 years of service, with the school citing a morality provision in the contract between teachers and the diocese.

In the days since, the dismissal has received widespread attention on social media. A petition calling for her reinstatement on the Change.org website had received more than 55,000 signatures as of Wednesday evening.

The school district even asked for a police investigation after it received threatening calls, the Columbus Post Dispatch reported. The school’s Facebook page was removed as were employee email addresses from the school’s website.

Hale also filed a grievance to seek reinstatement but that was denied this week, she said. In a news briefing on Wednesday she said she would file an appeal with the central Ohio board of Catholic educators, NBC station WCMH reported. She also said she would file a discrimination complaint with the Columbus community relations department.

“I've committed my 19-year professional career to one thing,” she said. “ensuring that our next generation achieves its full potential. I love my job, I don't want money, I don't want fame, I simply want to return to Bishop Watterson.”

In a statement released last week, the diocese said personnel matters are confidential, but said school employees when hired agree to a church moral code. 

 “Personnel who choose to publicly espouse relationships or principles that are contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church cannot, ultimately, remain in the employ of the Church,” the statement said.

Courtesy Catholic Diocese of Wichita

Father Emil Kapaun, a pipe-smoking Army chaplain who later saved men in battle and in captivity.

In a moment laced with modern irony and timeless glory, President Barack Obama awarded Thursday the Medal of Honor — the nation’s highest military decoration — to an Army chaplain and sainthood candidate who died 62 years ago in a North Korean prison camp.

Father Emil Kapaun, once a Kansas farm boy, has been hailed for decades by fellow POWs as a rousing, one-man resistance front, rallying starving inmates with clean water and stolen food while enraging his captors by openly mocking their pro-communist speeches. But days before the Catholic priest succumbed at age 35, ill with dysentery, pneumonia and a blood clot in his leg, he also raised his hand to bless and forgive the guards.

At the White House, Obama posthumously offered the medal, encased in glass, to Kapaun's tearful nephew, Ray, in front of several former American prisoners who suffered with the chaplain. Meanwhile, in the Asian country where the honoree once flashed his quiet bravado, North Korean forces are reportedly readying a missile for launch.

“Interesting timing, isn’t it?” said Amy Pavlacka, spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Wichita where the chaplain served before the Korean War. “Father Kapaun took care of every person he could. He even sat with his enemy. If, globally, we all could just take a piece of that, if all of us had learned anything from him, I don’t know that we’d be in this current situation.”

His brazen battlefield reputation — a swift departure from his gentle Kansas demeanor — was cemented in the months before Chinese forces overran U.S. soldiers and snatched survivors during the November 1950 Battle of Unsan. The chaplain had repeatedly dashed through machine gun fire to pull wounded soldiers to safety, according to witness accounts compiled by Roy Wenzl, co-author of a new book on Kapaun.

An Army captain in life, Kapaun is being touted for Catholic sainthood, an arduous process that typically takes years or even decades and ultimately requires the pope's approval. 

“This is an amazing story,” Obama said. “Father Kapaun has been called a shepherd in combat boots. His fellow prisoners, who felt his grace and his mercy, called him a saint, a blessing from God.” 

'The Good Thief'
After he and other Americans were imprisoned at a camp near the Chinese border with sub-zero temperatures looming, U.S. troops died at a rate of 20 to 40 per night due to lack of food and clean water, Wenzl said. The chaplain remolded strips of roofing tin into pots so that dirty snow could be scraped from the soil then boiled for drinking. He was dubbed “The Good Thief” after successfully pilfering provisions from the Chinese soldiers.

Courtesy Catholic Diocese of Wichita

Father Kapaun, right, helps carry a wounded soldier to safety in Korea.

Courtesy Catholic Diocese of Wichita

Father Kapaun was known as a bike lover even in the Army.

Food remained so scarce, however, some American prisoners began to swipe scraps from their fellow inmates. The priest offered a community solution through a subtle suggestion.

“Father Kapaun put his own rations on the floor and said a prayer: ‘Lord, thank you for this food that we not only can eat but that we can share.’ In his own quiet way,” Wenzl said, “that was calculated for effect.”

As were the chaplain’s antics when captors tried to use hunger, the frigid weather and torrents of spoken propaganda in an effort coerce U.S. prisoners to abandon their country and adopt communism.

Assuming de facto leadership, Kapaun urged the men to “keep eating, don’t give up,” according to Wenzl. “He told them, ‘We’re going to get out of here. The Army won’t leave us.’” Publicy, he frequently embarrassed the Chinese speakers during their orchestrated talks on communism to the POWs, which the troops had dubbed “brainwashing.”

“It wasn’t just that he was patriotic. It wasn’t that simple. He thought if the men gave up on their flag, their loyalty, their country, and to their oath as soldiers,” Wenzl said, “they would give up on life.”

Slideshow: Medal of Honor recipients

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A look at heroes from a post-9/11 era of war

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More then two years after Kapaun died in an isolated shed that the guards called a “hospital,” the Korean War ended. Both sides exchanged prisoners of war. When some of the troops emerged from that camp near China, the first story they told other Americans was an account of their POW chaplain — and how he had kindled their spirits in the dead cold of a hopeless winter.

“A group of our POWs emerged carrying a large, wooden crucifix, nearly four feet tall," Obama said. "They had spent months on it, secretly collecting firewood, carving it — the cross and the body — using radio wire for a crown of thorns. It was a tribute to their friend, their chaplain, their fellow prisoner, who had touched their souls and saved their lives.”

Related: Obama awards Medal of Honor to Afghan battle hero Clinton Romesha

Los Angeles' retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, who was rebuked last month for his handling of the sex-abuse crisis, suggests he was "scapegoated" in a blog post ahead of two important dates: his Saturday deposition in a lawsuit alleging that the church hierarchy protected a priest accused of molesting children and his trip to Rome to help pick the next pope.

The high-profile "prince of the church" is at the center of an outcry over several scandal-tainted cardinals being allowed to help choose who will succeed Pope Benedict XVI at next month's conclave at the Vatican.

Ireland's Sean Brady, Belgium's Godfried Danneels and Philadelphia's Justin Rigali have all been pilloried in the Italian press over allegations they failed to protect children from pedophiles -- but it's Mahony who has drawn the most ire.

A group called Catholics United started a petition against his attendance at the conclave. And an Italian consumer group requested Rome prosecutors open a criminal investigation into Mahony if he travels to the Vatican, the news agency ANSA reported Friday.

Improbable as that is, it underscores the outrage in some quarters that cardinals whose reputations have been battered by cover-up allegations will have an equal say in who will next lead the world's 1.3 billion Catholics.

NBC News' Vatican expert, George Weigel, said he could not recall similar calls for abstention at other conclaves, but he noted that voting is an obligation under church law and that other "less-than-admirable" figures have attended for more than a millennium.

"If people are looking for a perfect, sinless electorate to choose religious leadership, they should look somewhere else," Weigel said.

Mahony, who retired as head of the L.A. Archdiocese last year, was stripped of his remaining diocesan duties last month over his handling of priest sex abuse cases. He has repeatedly apologized for past mistakes but isn't bowing to pressure to skip the historic moment. No criminal charges have been filed against him.

He's raising eyebrows and hackles, however, with a series of blog posts about the rebuke.

In one this week, Mahony said he had tried to live out "the acceptance of being scapegoated, pointing out the necessary connection between humiliation and redemption."

Vincenzo Pinto / AFP - Getty Images

After Pope Benedict XVI steps down next week, the cardinals will pick his successor. Some say not everyone deserves a vote.

"This scandal is putting us, the clergy and the church, where we belong -- with the excluded ones," he added. "Jesus was painted with the same brush as the two thieves crucified with him."

The Surviviors Network of those Abused by Priests slammed the language.

"It's hurtful and disingenuous for Mahony to claim he's been scapegoated," said director David Clohessy. "He's been a bishop for almost 40 years and the sole head of America's largest archdiocese for more than a quarter century. Few, if any, U.S. Catholic prelates have been more powerful than Mahony. So for him to somehow pretend to be a powerless pawn is pathetic."

Fueling the latest round of criticism of Mahony is last month's release of reams of confidential personnel files that, according to Reuters, showed Mahony and an aide, Thomas Curry, worked to send priests accused of abuse out of California to shield them from law enforcement scrutiny in the 1980s.

In a letter to the archdiocese about the documents and his dismissal, Mahony said that he had worked hard since 1989 to toughen guidelines for handling abuse and apologized for missteps before that.

"I have stated time and time again that I made mistakes, especially in the mid-1980s," he wrote. "I apologized for those mistakes, and committed myself to make certain that the Archdiocese was safe for everyone."

The document release -- part of a $660 million settlement with abuse victims struck in 2007-- has set the stage for this weekend's deposition by Mahony in a lawsuit by a 35-year-old man who says he was molested by a priest in the late 1980s.

The suit alleges that church officials effectively let the Rev. Nicholas Aguilar Rivera escape to Mexico after child sex-abuse complaints were made, the Associated Press reported. He remains a fugitive.

One 1988 memo made public last month revealed a top Mahony lieutenant confided that he told Rivera “it was likely the accusations would be reported to the police and that he was in a good deal of danger."

The plaintiff’s lawyer, Anthony De Marco, will have four hours to question Mahony about Rivera and 25 other priests, attempting to show a pattern of cover-up so he can try to collect punitive damages on behalf of his client.

Then, within days, Mahony will fly to Rome to join 116 other cardinals under the age of 80 who will meet twice a day in the Sistine Chapel to elect the next pontiff.

"Mahony’s bad luck is all of these documents were released right before the pope resigned and this is why people are going after him instead of other people," said Father Thomas Reese, author of "Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church."

He said there was virtually no chance Mahony would be pressured to stay away.

"The last one turned away from a conclave was in the time of the Napoleon," he said.

"If Mahony can't go, then there's a whole list of other cardinals who maybe can't go, and if you say these guys can't attend for this reason, then what about other reasons."

Even after sidelining him, the L.A. Archdiocese backed Mahony's voyage to Rome. In a statement, it portrayed Catholics United as a fringe group and its petition as pointless.

"Cardinal Mahony will travel to Rome to fulfill his sacred duty under church law to vote for the next pope,” it said.

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

Esther Millar, 54, talks about her abuser, while holding pictures of Vicki and Mary, who she says were victims of sexual abuse by a priest in the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Millar was part of a news conference urging others with information about alleged abuse to come forward, held at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles on Feb. 1.

Amid continuing anger over the poor handling of sexual abuse cases by Catholic Church officials over several decades — and still deeply in the red from settlements with victims — the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is considering the launch of a massive fundraising campaign, according to the website of a Catholic fundraising organization.

The non-profit Guidance in Giving lists the Los Angeles-area Catholic Church among its "diocesan accounts" and says it is exploring a campaign to raise $200 million for the diocese to meet "a variety of needs," including "priests' retirement, seminarian education, Catholic schools, Catholic Charities and parish needs."

The archdiocese did not respond to NBC queries in time for publication, but a church spokesman acknowledged the possible campaign to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported it.

In 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to a $660 million settlement with 562 victims of abuse by priests and other church personnel. According to the Times, financial reports show that the church remains $80 million in debt.

The effort to shore up church finances is the initiative of Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, who was installed in 2011, and now seems keen to move the church away from its tarnished past.

On Jan. 31, Gomez presided over the release of thousands of pages of priest personnel files that had been the subject of a legal tussle for six years. The 12,000 pages, made accessible through the archdiocese web site, reveal many communications among officials who appear to be concealing allegations of the priests' sexual abuses from police.

The court ordered the documents be released in 2007 as part of the settlement, but the church lawyers fought to redact many of the names in the documents until earlier this month, when a judge ruled against them.

In a letter written by Gomez  to congregants and read in many services on Sunday, the archbishop described the files as "brutal and painful reading," and went on to rebuke his predecessors for failing to protect the children from adult predators. He announced removal of his predecessor, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, from administrative and public duties and said a high-ranking bishop, Thomas J. Curry, had been dismissed from his role as regional bishop of Santa Barbara.

"I cannot undo the failings of the past that we find in these pages," Gomez said in his letter.

"To every Catholic in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, I want you to know: We will continue, as we have for many years now, to immediately report every credible allegation of abuse to law enforcement authorities and to remove those credibly accused from ministry."

In the introduction to the files, the archdiocese website says that the release "concludes a sad and shameful chapter" in the history of the archdiocese.

But critics of the church may not let the matter rest.

Just a few days after the documents were made public, The New York Times reported on watchdog allegations that many names in the files that should have been made public were redacted, and that parts of the personnel files were missing.

According to the Times, lawyers for the abuse victims say they may file a motion next week to compel the church to release what they believe are missing or are erroneously redacted documents.

The Los Angeles Archdiocese is the largest in the United States, comprising Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, with an estimated 4.6 million members.

Related:

Los Angeles Catholic officials shielded pedophile priests, report
L.A. police pore over 12,000 pages of priest abuse records for leads
Pedophile victims urge renewed probe Los Angeles Catholic leaders

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Tony Gentle / Reuters

New Cardinal James Michael Harvey of U.S. (right) is congratulated by another cardinal during a consistory ceremony in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Saturday.

Update at 7.20 a.m. ET on Nov. 24: Milwaukee Archbishop James Harvey and five others were made cardinals by Pope Benedict Saturday, Reuters reports. He reminded them that they wear red vestments because they must be ready to defend the faith "even to the shedding of your blood" in a ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica.

Published on Nov. 23, 2012: ROME — The red, or rather scarlet, carpet will be rolled in St. Peter's Basilica on Saturday for the elevation of six cardinals. The new so-called "princes of the church" will receive their ring, scarlet skullcap and the traditional biretta, a four-cornered hat, in a solemn ceremony presided by Pope Benedict XVI.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, speaks with people waiting for free Thanksgiving groceries at the Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Memorial Community Center in Harlem on Tuesday.

"Cardinal Dolan is definitely a candidate and enjoys a lot of name recognition — which helps in a global church," Alessandro Speciale, Vatican correspondent at the Religious News Service, told NBC News.

"But two factors might weaken his chances: coming from the world's only superpower could still be seen as a negative factor in a global church, and he has never held a leadership position in the Roman Curia," he said, referring to the Holy See's administrative body.  

In any case, the choice of non-Europeans to high office in the Vatican is a way for the Holy See to shift the balance of power towards other continents and prove the “universality of the church.” 

"There was considerable criticism of the last group of cardinals being too European, too Italianate, and too Curial. I think it's fair to read this group as a response to that criticism," Weigel said.

Speciale agrees: "The previous Consistory in February had been criticized for being overly skewed towards Italy (and more in general Europe) and, again, the Curia. With this quite unusual second batch of red hats in a year, Benedict wanted to show his attention to the rest of the world."

Slideshow: The life of Pope Benedict XVI

Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Look back at his life from childhood through his papacy.

Launch slideshow

Whatever the reason for the choice of non-European Cardinals, the selection plays in favor of the American grouping, which will have one more elector in their ranks.

"The power of Americans in the Vatican has grown significantly in the last few years: not just because of the star power of Cardinal Dolan but also thanks to the organization, economic resources and boldness in the defense of Catholic values in front of a perceived hostile society is admired by many in the Vatican," Speciale said.

"But it remains to be seen whether this numerical weight will actually translate into influence at the Conclave: though national links are powerful, many other factors — the strongest being whether one is part on not of the Roman Curia — play into the secret voting in the Sistine Chapel."

When the time comes, all Cardinals-electors from all over the world will "lock" themselves in the Sistine Chapel in order to vote for a new Pope. While it is unclear who will emerge from it as the new leader of the world's Catholics, one thing is certain: that American influence in that choice went up a notch.

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The Roman Catholic bishop of San Jose, Calif., has apologized to parishioners for a diocesan decision allowing a convicted child molester to volunteer at a parish festival on school grounds last month, calling it a “mistake” and “an unfortunate circumstance.”

Bishop Patrick McGrath appeared at Sunday Mass in black clerical suit and collar and told the congregation before the service began that he takes full responsibility, though he didn't say who made the ultimate decision.

"I pledge to you I will do everything in my power to make sure this doesn't happen again," he said, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

In an open letter sent on Saturday to parishioners at Saint Frances Cabrini, McGrath said the chain of events that allowed Mark Gurries to volunteer at the parish festival on Oct. 6 “is still a matter of continuing investigation on the diocesan level.”

Bur he called the decision “a mistake” and a clear violation of diocese policy.

“Our policy is clear: No one who has been found guilty of sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult can be hired as an employee or allowed to volunteer in any activity that involves children, young people, or vulnerable adults,” the bishop wrote.

“I am deeply troubled and I apologize to you that this policy was not followed. The actions of parents at the festival who enlisted the services of the sheriff’s deputy are to be commended.”

Gurries, 51, was convicted two years ago of lewd and lascivious conduct on a minor under 14 years old. He served nearly a year in county jail and remains on probation, according to the Mercury News.

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The newspaper said that under California law, registered sex offenders may be allowed on school grounds if they have written permission from the school's chief administrative official. The school principal has said that no one from the school administration had given permission. However, the parish priest, the Rev. Lieu Vu, told parents at the festival that Gurries had a letter giving him permission, according to the Mercury News.

Diocesan officials have not said who wrote the letter and whether it was authorized by the bishop.

A group of angry parents recognized Gurries at the festival and argued vehemently with the parish priest until Gurries was escorted off campus by a sheriff's deputy, according to the Mercury News. Gurries was not arrested and no one was harmed.

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The Catholic Church on Thursday installed Salvatore Cordileone, a leader in the fight against same-sex marriage, as archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

Archdiocese Of Oakland / Reuters

Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, bishop of Oakland since 2009, is shown in this publicity photo released to Reuters August 27, 2012. Cordileone, renowned for his conservative stance on same-sex marriage, has been arrested in his native San Diego for drunk driving, police said on August 27, 2012.

Following his installation as the religious leader of more than 500,000 Catholics in the largely gay-friendly Bay Area, Cordileone, 56, delivered a sermon and spoke about his recent arrest after failing a sobriety test at a police checkpoint.

"God has always had a way of putting me in my place," he said. "With the last episode in my life, God has outdone himself."

Cordileone spent about 11 hours in a San Diego jail cell in August after he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving. On Monday, he pleaded guilty to driving with alcohol in his system, said Gina Coburn, spokeswoman for the San Diego City Attorney.

Cordileone has been particularly outspoken in Church opposition to same-sex matrimony as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, a role that has put him at odds with many Bay Area Catholics.

He also led Church support for the 2008 voter-approved California state constitutional amendment, Proposition 8, that banned gay marriage.

Same-sex marriage, which the majority of Catholics support, according to a report from the Public Religion Research Institute,will likely be a key issue in the upcoming elections. President Barack Obama voiced his support of gay marriage earlier this year.

Other bishops, such as Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, N.J., have also expressed strong opposition to gay marriage. Myers urged Catholics who support same-sex marriage to refrain from communion, NPR reported. In Maryland, the Archbishop of Baltimore co-hosted a fundraiser to fight gay marriage in that state, according to NPR.

For his part, Cordileone wants to deny communion to Catholics who are in an active gay relationship.

While taking his place as the archbishop of San Francisco and two other area counties, Cordileone called the drunken driving incident a "regrettable mistake."

Pope Benedict appointed Cordileone to preside over the Archdiocese of San Francisco in July.

"The archbishop is an advocate for immigrants and an opponent of the death penalty, but he comes here perceived as a one-issue bishop," Brian Cahill, former San Francisco Catholic Charities executive director, wrote in an editorial published in the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday.

"He can continue to be the aggressive, outspoken leader of the American Catholic bishops in their effort to prevent civil gay marriage, or he can be the shepherd of his flock. He can't be both, and if he tries, he will fail."

Cordileone said his grandfather settled in San Francisco 100 years ago.

"If someone had told him that his grandson would become the archbishop of this place, I'm sure he would think they were out of their mind," he said. "I'm sure there are people who think that today."

About 2,000 people, including 40 bishops, attended the installation and mass in the Cathedral of St. Mary. Outside the church, dozens of supporters carrying welcoming banners mixed with protesters, including the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence -- a group of gay male activists who dress as nuns.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Karen L. King/Harvard University via Reuters

A previously unknown scrap of ancient papyrus written in ancient Egyptian Coptic is pictured in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters September 18, 2012. The papyrus has four words written in Coptic that provide the first unequivocal evidence that within 150 years of his death, some followers of Jesus, believed him to have been married.

If a fourth-century fragment of papyrus that purportedly quotes Jesus telling his disciples about "my wife" is authenticated, it could upend the modern church’s understanding of the “son of God.”

“If Jesus is a normal human being and he’s sexual, that’s the real fear,” James Tabor, a biblical scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the co-author of books about Jesus and his family, told NBC News. “You can’t think of Jesus like that because he’s too holy.”

The Bible contains no explicit mentions of Jesus being either married or not married, but few churches have room for the idea of a sexual Jesus. The Catholic Church’s celibate priesthood is built on the belief that Jesus was not married. Eastern Orthodox priests are often married, but the church teachings don’t mention a married Jesus. Protestant ministers are allowed to marry, but there again, it is not common to teach that Jesus himself was married.

Reality check on Jesus and his 'wife'

"I would say that the more conservative groups might be more inclined to be bothered by the idea of a married Jesus, and especially that he might have had a child, god forbid, since that would really raise questions about his 'divinity,' since they see him as fully human and fully God," Tabor subsequently explained in an email.

"Can God sleep with a woman and have a child? It just doesn't fit the concept they want for Jesus," he said.

The Unification Church, however, does believe that Jesus was supposed to get married, and some of the early teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stated Jesus was married and even fathered children, although that belief is not widespread today.

The Mormon and the Unification Church’s beliefs, however, have more to do with their own theology of marriage rather than with scripture, Ben Witherington III, a New Testament professor at the Asbury Theological Seminary, told NBC News.

Unlike their modern counterparts, there is evidence that some early Christians -- the Valentinian Gnostics -- believed Jesus was married, according to April DeConick, a biblical scholar at Rice University. The recently discovered papyrus, she told NBC News, would be the second piece of evidence from an ancient Christian gospel that early Christians were not bothered by the idea of a married Jesus. The first piece of evidence -- which DeConick said comes from the Gospel of Philip -- identifies Mary Magdalene as Jesus' wife.

NYT: Historian says piece of papyrus refers to Jesus' wife

Karen L. King, the Harvard Divinity School professor who unveiled the papyrus, cautioned that the discovery does not serve as evidence that the historical Jesus was married.

Harvard University/Rose Lincoln/EPA

Karen L. King, the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University holds a previously unknown ancient papyrus fragment from Egypt that has four words written in Coptic that provide the first unequivocal evidence that within 150 years of his death, some followers of Jesus, believed him to have been married.

"This new gospel doesn't prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage,” King said in a press release. “From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus' death before they began appealing to Jesus' marital status to support their positions."

The Christians who eventually became dominant, DeConick said, believed celibacy was the route to heaven.

“Catholicism was deeply shaped by monasticism in its formative period,” Witherington said, adding that he thinks this belief brought about “a very deficient view of the goodness of human sexuality as a gift from god.”

“There’s just nothing biblical about that,” he argued. But Catholics couldn’t imagine Jesus as married, because that would have “tainted” his holy image, he said.

DeConick, who explored sex and gender in early Christianity in her book, “Holy Misogyny,” said that in the ancient world, the female body was considered weak, pitiful and wretched.

Sun Myung Moon, founder of Unification Church, dies at 92

“We have so many hundreds of years of an understanding of sexuality that in some way sex is not divine, it’s not sacred,” she said. “It’s going to be a long hard road for people to see a figure that they think is god as being engaged in a sexual activity – even with a wife.”

Witherington believes most churches will likely be ambivalent about a married Jesus because the implications are unclear. But he said some liberal Protestants might even accept the idea that Jesus could have had children in the same way as some Protestant churches no longer teach the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary.

“It doesn’t mean [the children]'d be as perfect as dad,” he said. “That would be a hard act to follow whether you’re a wife or a kid.”

The public, however, appears more open to the idea of a married Jesus. Ongoing for centuries, the debate about the possibility that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene was also the subject of author Dan Brown’s bestseller, “The Da Vinci Code.” Both the book and the recent discovery of the papyrus fragment that reignited the debate have garnered a positive reaction from the public.

“Maybe it makes him more human for us,” Tabor said.

Witherington, who wrote a book debunking some of the statements made in “The Da Vinci Code,” said he encountered the same “enormous positive reaction” on his book tour at the time.

“There was such a willingness to believe that what Dan Brown was saying was the gospel about Jesus,” he said.

“Jesus was an early Jew. I don’t think Jesus had any qualms about marriage,” Witherington added. “But [Jesus] also thinks it was perfectly viable for an able-bodied man to become single for the sake of [god’s] kingdom.”

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