In Männer Glauben Anders, Markus Hofer sketches the situation in the early church: the married men heading local churches and the wandering celibate missionary.
In Death Comes to the Archbishop, it is clear that the missionary priests must be celibate, because they have to be ready to go anywhere, into dangerous situations, on a moment’s notice. Celibacy can be lonely, especially for a missionary far from his native land and extended family, but it is necessary to spread the kingdom. The model of the celibate missionary won out in the Western Church, although it was not observed with great care. The constant legislation against clerical marriage and clerical concubinage indicates that priests were not following the discipline. For a priest who lived in a village his whole life it was hard to see the missionary purpose of celibacy.
After Ignatius of Loyola’s conversion, he established for his followers an intensely masculine environment in which they had to be ready to go anywhere at anytime to do the work of God. It was an adventurous masculine life, and obviously incommpatible with marriage. Ignatius would upset the local clergy in Spain when he arrived and tried to get the local bishop to enforce the discipline of celibacy.
The missionaries of the Church have an obvious connection with celibacy. While I respect married Protestant missionaries, I wonder how they can bring their wives and especially their children into dangerous environments. These do not have to be in the recesses of Africa or New Guinea. Many urban areas are dangerous, both in the United States and Europe. A priest in Naples who tried to keep young men out of organized crime was murdered by the Mafia.
Perhaps (and I emphasize perhaps) the missionary vitality of the Western Church as compared with the Eastern Churches is at least in part explained by the celibacy of it clergy.
As to celibacy being a sign in a sex-obsessed age – I don’t know. We do not know how often violations, even criminal violations, occur; but they get a lot of publicity and they discredit celibacy, and give evidence for the belief that celibates are hypocrites. However, I have been researching the anticlericalism of the Spanish Civil War, and the anticlericals had a special and intense hatred for truly celibate priests. Some priests were told their lives would be spared if they had sex; the priests refused to violate their vows and were shot – shot if they were lucky. Sexual torture was a favorite weapon of the Republican anticlericals. So perhaps celibacy is a sign of contradiction, and a necessary one.
Celibacy as a requirement for missionaries might be a sensible thing. Celibacy to prevent church power and property from getting caught up in families might be a sensible thing.
But requiring it in either case seems to go beyond the authority of the church and seems to be a violation of human rights.
Men and women have a natural right to marry. If they want to assume the risks (e.g., of raising a family in a dangerous place), that’s their business.
Adults should be treated as adults — capable of making their own decisions.
If someone feels a call to a celibate lifestyle, fine. The Gospel clearly encourages that. And prudence might indicate that only celibates do certain things. But Paul made it a suggestion, not a requirement, and the church errs in forcing its prudential judgments on people.
And, as you point out, it has little to do with the celibacy of a village priest.
Thanks Mr. Podles for a very good meditation! I think you’ve hit more than nail on the head. The big question seems to be whether this discipline should remain the norm for all priests in the Latin Rite.
I seem to recall reading that in the Spanish Civil War it was priests known to be good who became particular targets of the Republicans. Such priests made the Church and the faith credible. Thus, was it celibacy per se that was the witness or a more general integrity of life?
“But requiring it in either case seems to go beyond the authority of the church and seems to be a violation of human rights.”
What a lot of BALONE!!!
Celibacy is a discipline that was adopted since the beginning. Chrits was CELIBATE, he is the example to follow.
11 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and THERE ARE EUNUCHS WHO HAVE BEEN MADE EUNUCHS BY OTHERS—and THERE ARE THOSE WHO CHOOSE TO LIVE LIKE EUNUCHS FOR THE SAKE OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
Saint Mattew 19, 11-12.
“But requiring it in either case seems to go beyond the authority of the church and seems to be a violation of human rights”
I accept that celibacy is a discipline, not dogma, of the Roman Church and that there may be intellectual and practical reasons to make its practice voluntary. Still, I think it is grossly hyperbolic to call it a “violation of human rights”. By that criterion, our federal prison system which forbids conjugal visits should face a U.N. tribunal.
Crowhill: “…seems to be a violation of human rights.” The philosophical response to this claim would point out that a violation of human rights is measured by what belongs to human nature and what constitutes a free choice. Marriage belongs to human nature, and so it cannot be forcibly denied to a person so long as the person requests it, and fulfills the natural conditions (e.g., is not impotent, intends to have children, etc..) But the free choice of celibacy over marriage is not a forcible violation of a right, since a choice was made. The celibate priest freely foregoes marriage for a good that he thinks is a greater good, namely the priesthood. Similarly, the devout married man foregoes the priesthood deeming for himself the state of marriage a greater good than priesthood. In either case it is a choice related to what the person thinks is the greater good for himself.
Further, since grace does not belong to man by nature, one cannot make a claim on grace as a natural right. It is a gift given by God. Because the priesthood is a kind of grace, no one can make a claim to it as belonging to human nature. Moreover, since celibacy in the West is a condition of the grace of priesthood, no one can claim that a condition of grace is itself a violation of a human right.
This all comes back to the question of the call to ministry, and I think it is an area that Catholics haven’t developed very well.
Does the Catholic Church force anyone to forsake marriage? Well, you could answer that either way.
No, the church doesn’t force anyone. Every man is free to marry or not. It’s your choice.
Yes, the church does force you to refuse marriage if you a person who feels called by God to the ministry.
I think it’s playing with words to say that it’s a free choice.
This discussion frames celibacy in a context of violence and the redemptive action of one heroic celibate individual. It also assumes that the church protects and sustains goodness in the world. This worldview is idealistic and too Ayn Rand for me. My experience of reality is that the community is the source of goodness and has more immediate and lasting power than the individual. Celibacy creates and sustains the limited heroic individual model. Marriage creates and sustains the stability of community.