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In Defense of Celibacy
Should the Catholic priesthood be restricted to single, celibate men? Do clergy restrictions based on gender, marital status or sexual orientation make sense these days?
The case of Father Alberto Cutié should give us all pause. It should give us pause not only because it raises questions about the contemporary relevance of celibacy and the very possibility of living a celibate life. Instead, it should give us pause because Father Alberto is a human being who has confessed to some very human longings. Because of this, it is important to resist the temptation to spin polemical arguments about the case.
When speaking from a conventional Catholic perspective, it is all too easy to adopt an uncritically defensive posture about celibacy without admitting its complex and conflicted history in the Catholic tradition. But it is also deceptively simple to condemn celibacy as anti-human, without recognizing that such criticism implicitly limits the possibilities inherent in all kinds of human experience. Oddly enough, my defense of celibacy is also a defense of Father Cutié in his, and our own, painful human vulnerability.
Celibacy is not a universal requirement of priests within the Catholic Church. For example, priests in Eastern Rite Churches can marry and this has most certainly not affected their full communion with Rome. It is also well known that married Anglican and Lutheran priests have been ordained as Catholic priests after their conversion.
Such apparent tensions in part reflect the changing rationale behind celibacy as a clerical discipline in the Roman Catholic Church. After Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire, there was a renewed interest in aspects of Jewish law that understood priests to pass through a temporary period of impurity after consummating sexual relations. But the development of Christian attitudes toward sexuality owes the most to Augustine of Hippo. Augustine, who himself had a long-time mistress, posited that procreation before the Fall was devoid of sexual desire. Indeed, one of the primary results of original sin was the lack of human control over the genitalia. This vision, combined with a philosophical emphasis upon the spirit in opposition to the body, led to an intense preoccupation with sins of the flesh or "concupiscence," to cite a rather technical term for a something that is hardly difficult to understand.
After the Council of Elvira in the early fourth century, celibacy for clergy slowly became mandatory in the Western Church, although it only began to be rigorously enforced by Pope Gregory VII in the eleventh century. By that time, monasticism and related ascetic practices had become the primary models for the religious life. But there were also more worldly concerns that shaped the requirement of celibacy for Latin rite priests, such as the prevalence of clerical concubinage and the threat of damaging inheritance claims by children fathered by priests. Up until the early 20th century, celibacy was regarded as an indisputably higher vocation. In fact, according to the 1917 Code of Canon Law, a husband and wife could mutually dissolve their marriage bond to enter celibate religious life.
With the Second Vatican Council, justifications for celibacy began to change. The association between sexuality and impurity declined and there was a renewed emphasis upon marital sexuality as sacred. For example, John Paul II and Benedict XVI both penned encyclicals that are rapturous in their praise of nuptual love. Now, the emphasis is much more on the connection between celibacy and freedom. Because priests are celibate they are not tied to family relations and thus may be fully open to others. Closely associated is the point that celibacy provides the context for the freedom to obey--a rather paradoxical formulation that again affirms how the lack of immediate familial bonds enables a priest to fully serve the Church.
Some might say that since the rationale for celibacy has changed, there is no coherent reason to maintain it. To be sure, if Latin rite Catholicism continues to maintain celibacy as a discipline, it is likely that the number of priests will continue to decline. But in spite of this, I would still argue that celibacy has meaning and should be retained: not as a form of self-control, but as a form of self-surrender.
Sexuality is the primary way in which humans seek continuity. The conjugal embrace is not only humankind's most fundamentally creative act; it also offers a foretaste of divine union. But all human relationships, no matter how compelling or fulfilling, are finite--they involve pain, vulnerability, and inevitable loss. Celibacy is an admission of our own human limitations, of our own very human need for a continuity and completeness that only God can give.
Of course, God's voice is often so hard to hear, and His touch is often so gentle that it can easily escape notice. Perhaps that lies at the center of Father Alberto Cutié's struggle, for certainly all of us have experienced times when God's apparent absence brings us to the edge of despair. In those moments, there is an overwhelming need to cling on to anyone or anything in order to endure what seems to be a never ending darkness. Answering the call of celibacy is an act of self-surrender in and to this darkness. Celibacy is a cry that God alone can and should be enough.
By
Mathew N. Schmalz
|
May 14, 2009; 10:34 PM ET
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Posted by: justillthen | May 16, 2009 12:52 PM
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If by "Eastern Rite" you are referring to the Christian Orthodox, then my understanding is that they don't allow priests to marry, but they do allow married men to become priests. If you are not married when you become a priest, you are expected to remain celibate. If you are a married priest whose wife dies, you are expected not to remarry.
I was a member of an Orthodox church for a number of years and we never referred to ourselves as "Eastern Rite". It is perhaps the way Roman Catholics refer to the various Christian Orthodox churches (Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Orthodox Church of America, etc.). And it's news to me that the Orthodox churches were allowed communion with the Roman Church. But, I could be wrong....
Posted by: LaurelYves | May 15, 2009 11:51 PM
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matthew said,
"Of course, God's voice is often so hard to hear, and His touch is often so gentle that it can easily escape notice."
________________________________________
no kidding! i wish he'd be a lot less subtle so we could all agree which (if any) of the 1000s of gods humans have worshipped over the millenia is the right one.
Posted by: walter-in-fallschurch | May 15, 2009 3:50 PM
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This "witness to the coming kingdom" is not a new argument, it is a very old one and not terribly convincing. In order to believe it, one must also believe that the call to sacramental ministry is inextricably paired with the call to live the celibate life. We know this not to be true, and even the Catholic Church admits it not to be true by their incardination of Lutheran and Anglican priests who convert and by their recognition of the Eastern Rite (among others) who permit clergy to marry.
I more compelling litmus is, I think, the far simpler one: "Is it working?"
It is clearly not working.
We have more inactive, married, priests in this country (25,000 or so) than we have Catholic Parishes (around 18,000).
Could it be that for every parish who doesn't have, or is in danger of not having, a full-time priest, there is an ordained, married priest who could be there?
That doesn't even take into consideration the men who would be ordained if it weren't for mandatory celibacy.
What is a better witness to the Kingdom?
A married priest in ministry or a married priest out selling real-estate or insurance? That really is the choice.
This doesn't even take into consideration the number of priests in the active ranks who are less effective simply because they are unhappy and frustrated with the additional burden of mandatory celibacy. They are, no doubt, less effective. And, as we've seen over and over again, they tend to "act out" in very damaging ways.
And, as a previous commentator pointed out, the worst case is that the priesthood has become attractive to men who seek to escape their personal psycho-sexual issues. All sorts of issues, from run-of-the-mill homosexuality to actual deviance such as pedophilia.
I'm not convinced that there is anything wrong with gay men being ordained; I am convinced that when a hugely disproportionate number of the priesthood has a homosexual orientation, it's going to have a negative effect.
Bottom line: "it's not working." In refusing to accept married priests (and women priests) the Church of Rome is creating its own personnel problems and shortages.
Posted by: gbullough | May 15, 2009 1:17 PM
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God this, God that. Reference to a non-existant, imagined fairy tale being makes Mathew's conclusion absurd.
Posted by: harveyh5 | May 15, 2009 1:00 PM
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The Roman Catholic priesthood has become a predomantly gay profession. The majority of priests and bishops use celibacy to maintain this safe haven where they do not have to publicly marry a woman, they can live with a lot of other men, and they have access to plenty of money. They do not want to threaten this supportive and protective system by introducing a married priesthood and women priests. This would force them to come out to themselves in integrity and to the world. When we truly have gay rights and acceptance in society, there will be plenty of married men and women priests to staff Roman Catholic parishes along with the gay priests who are now in power. Until that day, celibacy will continue to be indispensable to priests, bishops, cardinals, and to the pope himself.
Posted by: JohnShuster | May 15, 2009 10:48 AM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
Hello gbullough,
It seems to me that you are making some understandable but sweeping assumptions in your post. One is that the priesthood is predominantly gay. Another is that celibacy is not working as opposed to, like much of society over the last century, going through some fundamental and profound changes that have not played themselves out fully. And another is the inference that the priesthood has become a haven for deviance along with rampant homosexuality.
You could be right in these assumptions, at least to degrees. I do not know the percentage of priests that are actively gay. Not to draw into question the definition of celibacy here, which bears scrutiny as applied to homosexual activity. I do not know the percentage of pedophiles that are factual as opposed to manufactured in the public eye though fear of them and the ignorant void brought on by the silence from the Church on this matter. I would not doubt that the whole priesthood and their society is in trouble by solely looking at the shielding of pedophiles that has been the modus operandi of the Catholic Church.
What I am convinced of is that the priesthood is going through another translation, as is much of society, and that there will be a different set of requirements of priests, from inside the Church and from the public they serve, after this evolution. I would be fine to see priestly celibacy to be dropped as a blanket prerequisite. But it is a mixed bag. I am in agreement with Mr. Schmalz in his defense of celibacy as a powerful tool for focusing the self upon relation with God and disassociation with the 'needs' of the body. Body is temporal as well as temporary. Spirit and consciousness continues. Focus on our family gives great rewards, but eventually we are physically separated by death of the body. Focus on the 'spirit' supports continuity of life.