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Priestly Celibacy – Short-changing the Church?

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Father Joe

A question that is increasingly coming into vogue with the emergence of Catholic Eastern rites in the West and the accommodation for former Anglicans is this: why should our priests of the Roman rite be deprived of modeling Christian fatherhood and spousal love as do the clergy of Protestant denominations? While there is no denial that a celibate priest can teach and preach on matters of marriage and sexual morality; this perspective merely stresses that we may be depriving ourselves of a wonderful witness for family life from the men who stand at our pulpits and altars. There is no denying that a married minister brings a certain experiential knowledge that has value. Similarly, though, the celibate priest brings a certain distance that may help us to discern issues from a more dispassionate or panoramic view. We can alternately be too far from an issue to offer any applicable solutions or too close to problems to see any available remedies.

The question remains, have we shortchanged ourselves without the recourse of optional celibacy or optional marriage for candidates seeking priestly ordination? Many of us would contend that the way out of this apparent conundrum is to better train and employ our married permanent deacons. They cannot celebrate Mass, hear confessions or anoint the sick; however, they can still witness as married men in sacramental ministry. Eastern rites and former Anglicans aside, just because Protestants have something that we do not is an insufficient rationale for a change. Many non-Catholic faith communities also have women ministers and Pope Francis has reiterated the infallible prohibition of both Benedict XVI and John Paul II that priests must be male. However, we can again cite our current Pope who invites us to be more inviting and enterprising at finding authentic ways for women to serve the Lord and his Church.

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Priestly Celibacy – Qualified to Instruct Couples?

Posted on August 10, 2013 by Father Joe

Marriage preparation can be quite an ordeal for the celibate priest, not because he is ignorant or because he is envious of what these couples possess; but rather due to the lack of faith that is increasingly brought to these forums. Couples are often having sex and living together before marriage. They want a church wedding for aesthetic reasons or because of parental pressure; but they, themselves, neither practice their faith nor give much thought to Catholic truths. The priest comes across as an intrusive busybody who wants to know their business and then tries to tell them how to behave. The response is either anger or ridicule. “Who are you to tell us what to do? Just because you cannot ‘get laid’ is no reason to tell us that we should not have sex! We love each other. If only you loved someone or had someone to love you, then you would know. You’re not even fully a man! Just tell us what is the minimum we have to do to get married. That is all we want from you!” As an effort to avoid such confrontations, either the priest relinquishes his moral authority behind silence or humor, or the couple will purposely deceive the priest and conceal fornication and cohabitation. Such a situation might be similar for a married minister, with the exception that he would not be mocked as an ignoramus for being celibate. Nevertheless, it is into this setting that the celibate priest should still instruct upon the sacrament of marriage, the openness to human life, the value of coming to the marriage bed undefiled, and the theology of the body. Retaliating against criticism, some priests will argue that a celibate priest can speak about such themes just as a doctor can be informed as to how to treat cancer, without having cancer, himself. The problem with this analogy is that marriage is compared to a disease. A better analogy might be with the astronomer. He can tell you all about the moon even though he personally has never walked there. Similarly, before you drove a car, you studied and had to pass a test on the manual which gave you pointers and rules for the road. Sex and marriage are far more complicated than driving. The priest speaks not for himself but from the experience of the Church and her teachings, as in the universal catechism. Important guidance is given as to how couples can live out their marriages, sacramentally and naturally. Love and joy are enhanced by such positive direction, yes, even if it comes from a celibate priest. But he does not stand alone. There are many married Catholic lay men and women who stand with him and give witness to the truth and value of Catholic teachings.

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Priestly Celibacy – The Loss of Credibility

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Father Joe

Given the loss of esteem given celibacy and the higher levels of education available in the West to the laity, the teachings from a priest, monk or nun on the subject of sexuality and marriage have lost a great deal of credibility. This is a fact that we must acknowledge and seek to resolve. In days gone by, the priest was one of the few people in a community who could read and had gone to school. Many of the immigrant families tell me that their grandparents would seek the priest’s advice for about everything, not just on faith and morals. The celibate priest was given incredible moral authority. The enemies of the Church knew well that the only way to undermine Catholic teaching and values was to devalue the clergy. The criminal abuse cases had accomplished what our enemies long desired. The abuse scandals, the defections of priests from ministry, and publicizing their affairs in books, has also done much harm. They might argue that such was only to force a discussion; but the actual effect has been scandal and ridicule against the so-called institutional Church. The defectors, themselves, clamor that no institution can demand perpetual celibacy. Little or nothing is said about personal culpability, promises freely made and then broken, and entanglements with women that were sinful.

The infamous Father Cutie scandal in Florida is a case in point: he has an affair, gets caught, jumps to the Episcopal church without a word to his bishop, marries a divorced woman, writes a book, and is given a forum from the secular news to continue spreading his rebellious discontent. There is almost nothing about what he did that one could judge as commendable. He was a disgrace from beginning to end. Now he belongs to the church of priestesses, contraception, multiple marriages, and gay unions. If he has no ideological issues with that then good riddance…they can keep him. I do not see how any authentically Catholic-minded priest could suffer such nonsense, and bring excommunication upon himself and judgment down on someone he claims to love. But that is me. God will be his judge.

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Priestly Celibacy – Integration & Compulsory

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Father Joe

There are authorities who would not attack virginity and celibacy directly but focus on issues like proper psycho-sexual integration and the fact that the Church makes the discipline compulsory. This group would assert that many men are deformed in personality and not formed in any way that benefits either them or the faith community. They suggest that some, if not all clergy, are reluctant celibates who suffer a misaligned interior life where debase desires and filthy images are hidden. Frustration and anger resorts in all sorts of compulsive behaviors like excessive eating, drinking, smoking, etc. These critics suggest that mandatory celibacy might fuel a need for control and a lust for power. The Eastern rites are not exempt from their critique since only celibates among priests are permitted to become bishops. The man who is ambitious for such advancement, they argue, trades a wife and family for a higher prelate’s juridical authority. Gays repress and attack their own under the auspices of faith orthodoxy to demonstrate their dominion, even if it disconnects them from the sympathies of their own sexual identity. Women’s ordination is rejected, according to this scenario, not for historical, biblical or doctrinal reasons; but because women can have no role of intimate partnership with them, either in the family home or in the church sanctuary. Okay, I do not much buy this perspective; however, we need to be aware that this is how some think about the celibate priest and the structures that maintain the status-quo.

The revisionists who oppose mandatory celibacy would say that no institution, not even the Church, can demand such a renunciation when many men are twisted and personally corrupted by it. They would admit that there are successful celibates, but only a few. My answer is that the Church is perfectly within her rights and that celibacy is far more often a positive force in the lives of priests than something negative. There is the presumption that many men who discern a calling to the priesthood might not have the accompanying gift of celibacy. My rebuttal is that our Lord works intimately with his Church. If a man is truly called to the priesthood, God will make possible through grace the accompanying celibate life. Everyone truly called, without exception, receives this gift. A lot depends upon how we respond and integrate this gift into discipleship and ministry. At least this is my view.

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Priestly Celibacy – Purity is No Perversion

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Father Joe

Kids can be vulgar in their attitudes toward virginity. But adults and professionals can also be condescending regarding this great sacrificial gift of self. I mention it for several reasons. First, it is a personal witness that I later incorporated into my promise of celibacy made to the Archbishop. Second, while the critique becomes more sophisticated, there remains a prejudice or bigotry against the virgin as if he or she has forfeited a certain essential human experience. Employing the modern and heavily manipulated science of psychology, that will insist that there can be no satisfied maturity without experience of the full gamut of corporeal achievements and sensations. In opposition, I vigorously object to the idea that unless a man or woman has sexual intercourse, he or she is not a full adult or that development becomes precarious. It is precisely this devaluing of virginity that undermines consecrated celibacy in the popular mind. Especially with the acceptance of older candidates, it is probable that many of them have had various romantic relationships and sexual encounters. Sex outside of marriage is neither neutral nor spiritually advantageous. It is a sin and a serious one at that. Of course, the Church is all about forgiveness. Such a man might receive absolution, and once reforming his life, find acceptance as a candidate for holy orders. He will have particular struggles, notably with habit (vice) and with memory. Many men caught up in fornication are later haunted by the bodies and faces of their liaisons…something that plagues their thoughts in marriage and pursues, even tormenting, them into the priesthood. Many psychologists are quiet about this and instead attack the virgin who comes to priestly celibacy. They argue that he is prone to all sorts of neuroses and likely suffers from a distorted or even a mutilated personality. Instead of appreciating virginity as a gift given to God and assumed into priestly celibacy; they categorize it as a perversion. I find this all very dubious and outright dishonest, especially for those mental experts who are Christian. Given that the American Psychiatric Association no longer considers homosexuality as mental illness, these clinicians would judge homosexual acts as preferable to perpetual virginity. Such a claim undermines the professionalism and objective value of the psychological profession. When bishops use psychologists to evaluate candidates; they should first interview the researchers so that they can root out those who are not sympathetic toward celibacy or who do not have the mind of the Church.

Filed under: Anti-Catholicism, Apologetics, Catholic, Celibacy, Discipleship, Homosexuality, Marriage, Modesty, Morality, Priests, Religion, Sacraments, Sexuality, Sin, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Priestly Celibacy – Mortal Sin Prerequisite for Ordination?

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Father Joe

Priests are not all the same. While there are constants in religious formation and later in ministry; there are incidents that set us apart and which remain in memory. I was a first-year philosophy student, away from home for the first time. I was surprise by the range of ages and various life-experiences of men around me. There were good days and bad days. Maybe it was my anxious nature, but I especially recall the matters which upset me. An upper classmate wanted the staff to send me home. I shared with him a confidence and he used it against me. It was my presumption that all of us were chaste and pure. He could not believe it and made a scene. He verbally assaulted me for all to hear, “You’re a virgin! If I had my way no one would be allowed into the seminary unless he had first [expletive deleted] a few girls! What do you know about real life?” This guy was getting ready for theology. How dare he argue that mortal sin is a prerequisite for priesthood! I had thought this prejudice was something I had left behind me in a public high school. If a boy was a “virgin” then he was judged as abnormal or accused of being “queer.” [Forgive the slur, it is a label that should not be used against any human being.] There were opportunities for moral trespass but I refused to take them. There were plenty of pretty female teens around my age. One flaunted the fact that she would make a man out of me and that she was “hot” for me. I was normal, I kept telling myself. Part of me wanted what many regarded as an act of becoming, but it was wrong. As far back as I can remember I had a strong moral sense. Lust was a poor substitute for love. I told one girl to have some respect for herself. She was more than a piece of meat. One girl got mad at what she interpreted as my rejection and threw herself at another boy. She would have an abortion before leaving high school. Another girl regularly confided in me. Her boyfriend abused her. She said I was the only boy with whom she could talk; the others she could not trust. She was happy to have a friend, not just another boy trying to land her in bed. Don’t get me wrong, I had the same feelings and drives of the other boys. But when it came to the girls, I refused to be mastered by my passion. I felt protective of the girls. Many of them were smart and attractive. Their dignity was important to me. I was pained by the prospect of leading any of them into sin or hurting them. My father’s values were my values and he was a strict Catholic. I wanted to be a vehicle for forgiveness and healing, not for sin and pain. My peers and I were young with little education and no money. Acting out sexually was foolish. I can still hear my father’s voice. “Sex outside of marriage is wrong. Marriage is for life! Marriage or priesthood, that’s your choice. Better to die than to ever betray your Catholic religion.” Already I had a sense of a calling, not just to priesthood but more primarily to live out my baptism as a Christian gentleman.

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Priestly Celibacy – The Church’s Man

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Father Joe

I watched a television program several years go where a reporter interviewed a sampling of priests who left ministry for marriage. They were aging men and one in particular told a very touching story about how he came face to face with his need for a wife and family when he was baptizing the first child of his brother. He said that he knew then what he wanted. Nevertheless, he admitted that if the Church asked him to return to ministry tomorrow (as married man), he would leave his lucrative business in an instant. He still felt that he was called to the priesthood. Indeed, he rightly said, he would always be a priest. However, the images that followed stripped away the sympathy I felt for him. He was involved with other ousted married priests in conducting religious services and Mass, even though they had been stripped of faculties to do so. As is so often the case with such priests, his problem was not merely a failure to keep his promise of celibacy, but also of ecclesial obedience. If the Church authorities should deem fit to grant the priesthood to married men, then that is the Church’s business, no matter whether I like it or not. However, a man who marries without laicization and dispensation from celibacy, not only incurs censure but involves the person he is said to love in mortal sin. Yes, it is mortal because the priest knows better. If such a man tries to continue in ministry, then he draws still more people away from the true Church into his circle of rebellion. Personal weakness I can understand. But harming the souls of others is a gross betrayal of Christ. He places himself into the role of Judas, not for a sack of coins but for the temptation clothed in a skirt and stockings.

Our understanding of celibacy, as I have already mentioned, cannot be disconnected from our understanding of marriage. As topics they can be distinguished but they can only really be defined accurately in relationship to each other. It is in light of these two mysteries that we can branch out in our critique of open-ended single life and the moral ills of fornication, cohabitation, homosexual acts, polygamy and pornographic voyeurism. Of course, some might misjudge celibacy because they wrongly define marriage. This not only applies in reverse but can tamper with how we see the other areas of human sexual experience. The degradation of celibacy may expand the understanding of marriage as merely an opportunity for contractual sexual pleasure. But marriage is not licensed prostitution. Such a view would collapse moral judgment against moral ills outside of marriage. Divinizing celibacy too highly might impair marriage by reducing it to merely a necessary evil for the sake of propagation of the species. This mentality might properly exclude the listed moral evils but at the terrible price of defaming a sacrament of the Church. Although in the past marriage was defined primarily in reference to the need for human generation; Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body would seek to bring this into balance with the fidelity of the spouses. This is fine and good, but it has had necessary ramifications with our appreciation of celibacy. As marriage is made more appealing and even spiritualized as a means to holiness; we need to show the overriding value and benefit of celibacy. If we fail to make the case, then young men are going to view it simply in terms of an imposed hardship they must suffer to save souls and to forgive sins. This value must both be defined and made relevant in the daily life of the celibate priest; otherwise, he will become increasingly angry and resentful against the very institution he represents. The priest is the Church’s man. If he turns against the Church or gives in to cynicism, then this negativity will spread to the pews and damage efforts at evangelization.

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Priestly Celibacy – The Return to Innocence

Posted on August 3, 2013 by Father Joe

St. Paul gave practical advice about human nature when he warned that it was better to marry than to burn; in turn some have viewed his words as an assault against marriage. Given the analogy of marriage as a reflection of Christ’s relationship to the Church, this is ridiculous. Marriage is a sacrament by which Christ grants grace. It is holy. The Manichee taint hates matter and despises marriage because it binds men and women in the flesh and creates still more corporeal beings. Christian celibacy cannot rightly raise up itself as an institution on the bones of marriage. If marriage falls, so does celibacy. Evidence of this fact is apparent in modern society. People are largely sexually active, but increasingly without benefit of marriage; simultaneously, celibacy is ridiculed and vocations to the priesthood cannot keep up with the need for shepherds. Christian marriage and the family constitute the cradle and birthplace to celibate vocations. This is one of God’s sweet absurdities or ironies. Our Lord delights in contradictions and makes them signposts to his kingdom: we must die to live, we must surrender to find treasure, we must forgive those who hurt us, we must love our enemies who hate us, and we must first have married vocations before we can have celibate priests. Social theorists might speak of marriage as a human construct imposed to protect civilization from the brute animal that would pillage, rape and murder. It restrains man’s lust and inhibits him from taking the wife or daughter of his neighbor. It gives man a structure of support and also ties him down with responsibility within an intimate communion of interdependence. The Christian would argue that marriage is a natural bond of divine institution. It is marriage and not the lascivious beast that defines him. Men and women are made for each other but not in a way analogous to the apes or animals. Husbands and wives find something of God’s watchful gaze in each other’s eyes. They discover a facet of divine love in their intimate embrace and know they are not alone. They participate in the Almighty’s awesome power in the creation of new human life. The promotion of celibacy and the quality of it as a sacrifice is necessarily enhanced when marriage is enthroned upon it’s rightly high throne.

The Church and society have long been at loggerheads about marriage and virginity. A female who embraced virginity and spiritual marriage with Christ was praised in pious circles. However, an unmarried woman might ordinarily be derided as a spinster and pitied by married women. A handsome man who became a priest is sometimes lamented by women as “what a waste!” A single man might still be regarded as a catch but a confirmed bachelor is viewed with suspicion. Is he gay? Is he eccentric and too much to handle? Maintaining a healthy tension has often proven difficult or impossible.

Our traditional regard for sexual innocence readily touches something spiritual, but what? It may be our Lord’s admonition that we must become like innocent little children. It may also reflect a dim memory of our own childhood and the innocence we once knew prior to the full emergence of reason, on one hand, and the breakthrough of puberty, on the other. We had yet to be possessed by the movement of passion, trusted our parents with a faith that was only second to God and saw the world with both wonder and a sense of simplicity. Religious virginity and vowed celibacy hint to what we shall become in the kingdom by opening windows to our first days in this world where we knew the trust and unblemished saintliness of children. At the moment of our baptism, we became perfect saints. We desperately want to return to that innocence and holiness.

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Priestly Celibacy – A Preservation in Holiness

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Father Joe

Some critics of celibacy felt bolstered by the scant references to married clergy in the New Testament, and yet such evidence was hardly conclusive. Were the children of priests conceived before or after the men were ordained? There is growing historical evidence that married men, in agreement with their wives, set aside a sexual life for the sake of the faith community and in respect to the Eucharist. This might seem nonsensical to us today but the Church, early on, placed a significant meritorious value in celibate discipleship. It is the witness of the apostles who abandoned their families and earthly work to follow Christ. It is the realization of the calling given the rich man to sell all he has, to give it to the poor and then to follow Jesus. It is a level of sacrifice that the world does not want to understand. We must be honest. Many of our own people, baptized Catholics, are more formed by the world than by the Gospel. That is why they fail to understand and thus undermine the great gift of single-hearted virginal love.

Celibacy was not inflicted upon the Church simply to make life difficult. It was composed to substantiate the best form of ministerial discipleship and to bring errant men back to a holiness of life. Celibacy was not a medicine against marriage, because matrimony was no disease. Rather, it was an antidote to divided hearts, mistresses, illegitimate children, and other forms of wrongdoing and/or sin. The resources of the faith community were being exploited by unscrupulous men and wrongly passed on to their offspring. Celibacy was the Church’s way of shouting, enough! Similarly today, the problem is not celibacy but rather the failure to remain faithful to this chaste way of loving. It is no wonder that the ire of Christ was most raised by the evil of hypocrisy.

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Priestly Celibacy – A Higher Form of Love

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Father Joe

The Church has often deemed celibate love as of a higher order than that of marital love. This mentality is especially evident in the writings of monks, even the Augustinian and Protestant reformer Martin Luther who defected and had six children of his own. While promoting married clergy, Luther thought that sexual congress between a husband and wife was at least a venial sin. The antagonism was due to the lack of control and almost bestial passion. The marital act was heavily imbedded, no pun intended, in the perception that man was just another animal, more connected to earthly affairs than spiritual ones. Celibacy reflected something of the eschaton where Jesus said there would be no marriage or giving in marriage. We would be like the angels. The testimony of St. Paul in favor of perfect continence and the model of Christ’s life insured that the celibate model would be given preference as the exemplar for holiness of life. Married people could become saints but their carnality was remarked upon as a handicap. Obviously, the negative view could be taken to extremes. The marital act, as the consummation and renewal for the sacrament, was a holy union. The two became one flesh and we saw something of Christ’s love for the Church in their covenant. Celibacy would still be deemed as of a higher order but it would be wrong to disparage the graces that come to a husband and wife.

Today it seems that many Catholics cater to the same negativity toward celibacy and virginity as most Protestant reformers. We should not imagine that the reformers attacked virginity or urged marriage simply from principle. Celibacy created a grouping of men and women who belonged entirely to the Church. It was sometimes difficult to intimidate such faithful sons and daughters. However, earthly princes, both German and English, learned quickly that if you give a man a wife and family then his first concern, more so than not, was their welfare. They would become more dependent upon the temporal ruler and accommodate his brand of religion. This coarse and opportunistic attack upon celibacy was disguised behind allegations of hypocrisy and unnatural lifestyles, just as critics today carelessly banter charges of child molestation. The notion of a meritorious virginity was reduced to the butt of jokes.

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