May 2, 2010

• My Thoughts on Priestly Celibacy, pt. 1

  

  Thank you all for your patience; it is a crazy part of the semester! But it has passed for the most part, and I finally have the time I need to answer your questions with the consideration I feel they deserve. I would like to remind everyone that unless I am specifically quoting the Catechism or another source, these are my own personal thoughts (though definitely informed by and hopefully in conformity with the teaching and tradition of the Catholic Church, certainly!), and I hope that they are found to be helpful. Please also understand that while I have been living a vow of chastity for nearly two years (and have not so much as kissed a woman in nearly six), it cannot be reasonably expected of me to know everything about priestly celibacy/chastity, no more than one could expect a married couple by their second anniversary to know everything about marriage and children. I will do my very best to answer your questions and respond to your comments as thoroughly and honestly as I can.

  liferemainsbeautiful really asked the first question(s); FoliageDecay and squeakysoul just offered very appreciated support and, in the case of my dear sister, her own brief thoughts on the matter (though she could certainly message me her concerns/questions regarding women and the priesthood if she wishes).

  “Why does the Catholic Church require priests to be celibate at all?”

  The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

  “1579: All the ordained ministers of the Latin Church (the most well-known “rite” of the Church), with the exception of permanent deacons, are normally chosen from among men of faith who live a celibate life and who intend to remain celibate “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 19:12). Called to consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to “the affairs of the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:32), they give themselves entirely to God and to [his people]. Celibacy is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church’s minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God.

  1580: In the Eastern Churches a different discipline has been in force for many centuries: while bishops are chosen solely from among celibates, married men can be ordained as deacons and priests. This practice has long been considered legitimate; these priests exercise a fruitful ministry within their communities. Moreover, priestly celibacy is held in great honor in the Eastern Churches and many priests have freely chosen it for the sake of the Kingdom of God. In the East as in the West a man who has already received the sacrament of Holy Orders (ordination) can no longer marry.”

  This is the official, brief explanation of the Church, which I think does a good job of condensing the most important aspects. Priestly celibacy is biblical (despite many claims to the contrary) and while there were married apostles and priests in the early Church and even into the Middle Ages, priestly celibacy is a tradition and practice with roots as ancient as Christianity itself, and it seems there came a point when the Church realized it was the best way of proceeding regarding the exercise of priesthood and eventually made it a requirement. As BigToePeople and Umnenga pointed out, as well as St. Paul in 1 Corinthians, the unmarried priest is able to devote not merely his 9am-5pm to his flock, but his 24/7, just as Christ devotes himself. The unmarried priest is also ready to be missioned anywhere at anytime, without having to leave his wife and children for extended periods, miss out on important events in their lives, or move around from place to place and constantly uprooting them. Also there are some missions that are dangerous to a priest’s life; could you imagine being a married priest in a city where your parish was in a dangerous neighborhood? I have met some priests from Jamaica, for example, who are safe only because one of the powerful gangs in the area happen to be mostly Catholic, and they protect the parish and the rectory, as well as the priest, from other gangs.

  When I was in my own discernment, one thought that occurred to me is that because I believe both marriage and priesthood are full-time commitments, I could not do both. I could either be a really great priest and a terrible husband/father, or a really terrible priest and a great husband/father, or just be “ok” at both. None of these are acceptable to me, and because I love God first before myself, and because I felt so strongly that God was asking me to give my whole life to him as a priest, I decided that I would take up my cross and follow him.

  Ultimately, and at least this is the case with the religious vow of chastity, the priest seeks to model his own life after that of Christ, and for reasons perhaps Christ alone fully understands, he was not himself married. To expect a priest to divide his heart and time between serving the Church and serving his family is entirely unfair; could you imagine if your wife was in labor and at the same moment one of your parishioners was on their death bed needing Last Rites? How does a man like that choose?

  “I would think that having a family would make the priest a better spouse of the Church and of Christ, a better father for the whole congregation, essentially eliminate the roots leading to “child molester” issues…and level the priest’s minds down to earth to prevent them from becoming prideful in their given position.”

  I do not offer this as a bash against marriage (heavens, never!), but there is a great deal of well-researched data that reveals the vast majority (I’ve seen figures in the eighty-percentile range) of sexual abuse against minors is committed by married people, and often times by family members. So, actually, married clergy in the Latin Rite (because the diocesan priesthood within the Latin rite is very different in its execution than the execution of the priesthood in the Eastern rites that permit married clergy) may actually magnify the problem in the long run.

  Regarding pride, though, I don’t think marriage would combat that in the slightest; think of all the CEOs, national leaders, politicians, etc. who are married!

  Moving on to emilita213′s question: “When a priest/church official is found to be guilty of molestation/harassment/etc., why can’t they simply be de-frocked as a priest?”

  Because when it comes to the sacrament of Holy Orders, it isn’t so simple! Like baptism, a deacon/priest/bishop’s ordination can’t be undone since he is “a priest forever, like Melchizedech of old”; rather, because of a priest’s promise of obedience and the authority of the Church, someone is laicized (made a lay-person, sort of) and ordered not to exercise their priesthood any more. They are no longer permitted to minster the sacraments or engage in public ministry, things like that. Depending also upon the magnitude of the crime, the man might be sent to live in a secure community/house (not a jail or anything) where he is closely monitored and limited in his ability to travel and leave the premises, lest he commit a similar crime again. Some men, again depending upon the severity of the crime, are indeed sent to prison. But to remove a priest from his ministry is a very serious matter and is not something done at the drop of a hat or for every mistake a priest makes. Should priests found guilty of serious abuse be laicized? I think the most serious cases should certainly.

  As phantomFive pointed out, the current issue isn’t so much that children were being abused, but that the Church appeared to be hiding it. To this I can only offer three thoughts:
  1) Be very, very wary of the mainstream media when it reports on the Catholic Church; they have a historical anti-Catholic bias that can be very subtle. For some very good breakdown and reflection upon a lot of the big stories regarding the recent media coverage of the scandals, see the relevant entries at http://arnobius-of-sicca.xanga.com/archives/2010/3

  2) I have noticed that most of the abuse allegations are from the late-50s to mid-80s, and while I am no psychology expert, I imagine that things like pedophilia and such were not really understood by anyone and, in many popular modes of thinking during the 60s and 70s, it may even have been seen as OK (goodness, the crazy things that were deemed so then…and today, really…). Without a good understanding of the mental illness-aspects of pedophilia and similar behaviors, I imagine that the Church rather saw it in the classic light of temptation and sin. For example, it is only in fairly recent times that alcoholism has been recognized as a disease. In the past, people thought it was merely a matter of temptation, that some people were especially tempted by alcohol and often fell to that temptation and drank themselves silly. The thinking was that if you just keep that person away from alcohol (the source of their temptation), they wouldn’t have a problem. Time and time again, however, you’d see the former drinker doing whatever they could to sneak some alcohol into their life, going to ridiculous and sometimes dangerous lengths to satisfy the craving they could not help.
  Again I am not an expert, but I imagine that many officials in the Church at the time saw the abuse problem in a similar light. They receive a report that Fr. So-and-So abused a child, so they believe that the priest experienced some kind of temptation regarding the child (never, ever to blame the child of course) and, being a sinner, fell into sin. The solution is to remove the priest from the occasion of sin, from the source of temptation, and everything will be fine. The connection was not made that Fr. So-and-So isn’t just tempted by that particular child, but by a certain kind of child in general. I also imagine that as more research was done into the nature of these kinds of disorders, officials began to realize that moving the troubled priest away from the perceived source was not enough and began to isolate them more by placing them in secure locations where they could be closely monitored. By this time, likely unknown by officials, the man may have harmed more than just the two or three the diocese was made known about.

  That is one of the great tragedies of abuse like this, is that it invokes so much shame in the victim, especially when the perpetrator is a man whose role in society commands so much respect, that the crime is buried in silence for decades before it is brought to light. Were it not so and a crime were brought to light immediately after it happened, I am sure that officials, realizing that the problem wasn’t going away, would have canned such dangerous men far more quickly. Again, I do not blame the victims for their silence, but I also do not have the sense that the Church as a whole or church officials and bishops in as many numbers as the press would have us believe were engaged in some sort of massive cover-up, and to accuse the Pope of such a thing is beyond preposterous without hard evidence.

  Could some bishops and church officials have been engaged in such a thing? I suppose it is possible, and I can imagine a few bishops being so afraid of the possible legal and Church repercussions regarding his priest’s actions that he would try and sweep it under the carpet. But I think these cases were few and far between and that the whole issue is far more complicated than any media source would take the time and energy to report.

  Again these are my thoughts; they are not official Church answers for these questions. Since there were many questions that take a long time (and text!) to offer thoughts on, I will try and offer more in several days. Otherwise you would have to dedicate a great deal of time to reading it all!

  Please feel free to ask more questions if you wish, and don’t be shy of asking questions that might be personal. While I wouldn’t necessarily answer every question you asked about myself (a question like you might find asked on Mancouch or Datingish, for example…), I am willing to answer most of those “if I could ask a celibate person any question, I’d ask…” kinds of questions. God bless, and keep praying for Christ’s Church! It is wonderful that the Romans aren’t killing us any more, but the Church is always under siege in some way or another, from within or without or both. But as Fr. Corapi said yesterday, “We’ve read the last chapter of the Book, and we win. Be not afraid!”

  • 12:31 pm
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