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Celibacy: A Gift to God and the Church
It can be said the purpose of all creation is the worship of its Creator. God needs nothing beyond Himself. The exchange of knowledge and love in the Trinity is the only Eternal Necessity. That God willed to create more, as it were, might be seen somewhat as a playwright wishes an audience to share in the goodness of his drama. The play is complete in itself, but if deserving of applause, only an audience can provide that due. God saw it good the Divine Drama be shared, and worship is the owed applause of both theater and the audience it shelters - the theater being the inanimate universe, and the audience the living inhabitants. The theater - earth, and the vaulted ceiling of other stars and planets, along with such non-rational life as exists - worship God by their existence and compliance to the order the Creator commanded for them. This is their purpose. Nature cannot but fulfill its duty. Newman wrote wonderfully of the wisdom of, when we speak of Nature scientifically, doing so religiously. If we do not, we miss the real meaning of the natural, material universe - that is, the beauty of the theater, as it were. It can do nothing but reveal its Creator by its very existence and the marvels with which God endowed it. Rational creatures - angels and we humans - worship God, of course, rationally, that is using the faculties of intellect and will with which He endowed us. This, too, is a duty, but being created free, with the ability to fulfill that duty or not, we can give the applause owed the Divine Drama or withhold it. Worship is that applause and giving it we fulfill our purpose, for in knowing God we are called to love and serve Him. Worship spontaneously given is a response to that love. Just as a salute is a sign of the duty owed a superior officer, so worship is a sign of duty owed the Deity and Creator. Through the discipline of the Church, God holds out two gifts to His human creatures. These are two callings open to us, both sacraments related to the service of worship owed Him. One is the Sacrament of Matrimony and the other the Sacrament of Holy Orders, that is, the priesthood. These are inescapably related. Marriage with its intrinsic and essential element of fecundity that offers the potentiality of a future generation provides the priesthood with ongoing members. The family conceives, bears, fosters those who will be moved by grace to accept the other gift, the priesthood. As priests, those who accept it are dedicated to the cause of life, but on a different level - that of the soul. The fecundity of the priests is dedicated totally in its essential end, to the spiritual. It was a recognition of that reality that led the Church eventually to join the vow of celibacy to the priesthood. Though celibacy is of the essence of the priesthood, it is joined to that vocation's totality of commitment, the way somewhat a husband and wife's commitment is joined to an exclusiveness in the acts that bring about ongoing human life. Indeed, the celibacy of the priest and the fidelity of husband and wife instruct and complement each other. It is not insignificant that a decline in regard to marriage as a calling to fecundity, so that artificial contraception (anti-life practices) is more and more accepted, is complemented by a growing disappreciation of the commitment inherent in celibacy. Both phenomena are indicative of some degree of rejection of the two vocations, a slighting of the gift from God of the sacraments of matrimony and priesthood. A Divine Recommendation Though celibacy was formally joined to the priesthood by ecclesiastical law beginning in the fourth century, it was always highly prized. Christ Himself spoke of its high dignity and its value, so that celibacy has, we might say, a divine recommendation. He called the celibate John the Baptist the greatest man ever born of woman, and more than a prophet in his preaching preparedness for the Messiah's coming. The unmarried youth John was the beloved by Christ of all His Apostles. John remained celibate all his life, pursing the vocation as evangelist and companion of Christ's mother. And though at least Peter among the Apostles was married, Christ called him as He did the others away from family to follow Him. Even after his death, when the Apostles had returned to their nets (and perhaps their families) the Resurrected Christ once more commissioned them to leave all that they had and go far to the ends of the earth to convert nations. Peter died in Rome, far from what family of his might have remained, alone on Vatican Hill. Jesus once told a parable about a number of men who turned down a divine invitation for a variety of reasons. Among them, one invitee pleaded that he had taken a wife, and insisted he should therefore be excused. Such mistaken value was rejected by Jesus as a barrier to salvation. Further, Our Lord praised those who make themselves eunuchs for the sake of God's kingdom. Elsewhere, He told His disciples they must become "slaves of all." It is doubtful He would have spoken so if He did not envision celibates answering His call, for it is not in keeping with the vocation of marriage that a husband be a slave to his wife, anymore than she to him. In all of this it is clear Christ intended celibacy to be a great means of those called to His service to carry out His mandate of preaching and converting - a mighty means of carrying out His call, and not the burdensome imposition some consider it to be today. St. Paul (I Cor. 7 et seg.) advised his converts, "it is good for man not to touch woman," and that those not married and those widowed should remain so. This was in reply to some sort of inquiry from the Corinthian converts. Msgr. Ronald Knox thinks Corinthian Christians were being bothered by certain rigorists or puritans among them who considered marriage a pagan thing, not a Christian institution. Should those engaged to marry break off their promise? St. Paul goes on quickly to uphold not only the lawfulness of marriage, but identifying it as a gift from God to those He has called to its state. He goes on to assure the married and all called to it of the worthiness of marriage, and the seriousness of the marriage debt, submission of both husband and wife bodily to each other. Some scholarship, as Msgr. Knox notes (A New Testament Commentary, Sheed & Ward, 1954), thinks the Pauline advice against marriage was prompted by the idea, mistaken as we know, of an immediately imminent end of the world, with Christ coming a second time as judge of all. Indeed, some have insisted rashly, that is the historical fact. Let them explain, then, Paul's beautiful words on marriage to the Ephesians (5:2-21-33), including his comparison of married love to the unity of Christ and His saints:
But even if it were so that Paul thought Christ was about to return at any moment, perhaps by sunset of the day the Corinthians read his letter, or on the next dawn - if celibacy is the recommended state of receiving Him, it remains so always. We do not know the day or hour, so that it may be the eve on which you read these words, or by dawn of the morning after. The attempt of some scholarship about Paul's naïve understanding being the cause for his advice favoring celibacy falls apart when logic is applied. That is a practice seldom used by much of the antinomian type of post-Vatican II scholarship. Dismissed As Unnatural Msgr. Knox provides (ibid.) his speculation that the pleasure-loving Corinthians needed a stress on the high level of regard celibacy deserves. If that is so, how much more so today should we appreciate the apostle's praise for celibacy, when that heroism is virtually dismissed as unnatural, and perhaps impossible for but a few, when it is demeaned, even as chastity for all called to marriage is disregarded and even reprobated. For surely contraception in marriage and consecutive adultery made possible by divorce and remarriage do just that. Both the vocation of marriage and that of the priesthood joined to celibacy are insulted and diminished today more possibly than at any other time in history by the popular descent into sexual decadence and individual self-absolution for acts once properly recognized as depraved. This is far from holiness that is a mark of Christ's Church, once attested to by scores of saints. A French nun, whose name escapes this writer's dimming memory, spent her whole religious career as sacristan for the convent chapel. She followed this adage: "Be a saint, you who touch the vessels of the Lord." It helped make her a saint. And if celibacy is a help toward sainthood, her adage is one of deep wisdom that priests today should heed. Not that there have not been, and doubtless are now, many married saints - perhaps more than we can know until we ourselves might achieve that vision of God in which our capacity to know is filled. Isidore, a dirt-poor farmer of the 12th century, and his wife Maria are both honored as saints. Moreover, they are patrons of Spain's capital. He is honored by the Spaniards as one of the "the Five Saints" - the others being all celibates who were canonized with Isidore - Sts. Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Teresa, and St. Philip Neri. That might in fact reflect the actual proportion of canonized celibate saints to those who were married. The exclusiveness of commitment to nothing else but Christ that celibacy displays can most certainly fulfill Our Lord's invitation, "Take up your cross and follow me." One holy priest, claimed by some as patron of the "new theology," certainly had that appreciation of celibacy as linked to the purposes and means given us by Christ for our salvation through His Church. Fr. Stanley L. Jaki (Theology of Priestly Celibacy, Christendom Press, 1997) cites this passage from Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman's An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine:
Fr. Jaki comments on this understanding by the brilliant and saintly star of the Oxford Movement, who was so disappointed when the "angel" of that enterprise, John Keble, decided to marry. Here is Fr. Jaki's view of Cardinal Newman's thought:
Further along in this work, Fr. Jaki gives this profound insight:
Placing God Above All Today's world has virtually abandoned the truth that chastity is required of every one of us, required because we each and all are called to love and adore God, to love Him above and before we love any creature. The virtue of chastity is still honored almost solely in the Catholic Church, though certain Eastern believers in a reality of Nothingness still remain celibate as testimony to the error of matter's supposedly being a mirage. Alfons Maria Cardinal Stickler, in his The Case for Clerical Celibacy,2 identifies a major threat to appreciation for clerical celibacy in our times:
One help available for both priest and laity to resist that mentality, and appreciate the spiritual, is the examples of saints, a major portion of them celibates.3 Dietrich von Hildebrand pursues the relationship of celibacy to sainthood in his slim but insightful work, Celibacy and the Crisis of Faith:
Hildebrand calls it "perverse" to claim as some do that priests need to experience marriage to learn that sort of devotion that would "enable his relation to souls to become warmer, livelier, more understanding." He might have cited, to the contrary, some of the very saintly married saints who gave up the comforts of marriage to walk more surely with Christ to the place of the cross.5 The Absolute Giving of Self Fr. Jaki gives the example of several saints to refute the claim of some (Rolf Hochhuth, for example) that it was the Church's stress on eternity that deceived candidates for the priesthood into accepting "unheard-of sacrifices" as "victims" of celibacy. Priests such as Peter Claver, who made himself slave of slaves, and Blessed Damien of Molokai, who did likewise for lepers, and Don Bosco for homeless boys all carried out apostolates which outdid anyone whoever thought this world is all that there ever will be. Indeed, it was a life of celibacy that enabled saints to pour out fully all that they were in behalf of those lacking any love or care from the worldly. It is sad so few appreciate, and especially so today, the absolute giving of themselves that is enabled by the fullest commitment to Christ, celibacy being a central fact in that dedication. In 1949, a Irish Jesuit, Fr. Robert Nash, wrote a most sensitive and perceptive little book, The Priest at His Prie-Dieu.6 If it was pertinent those 55 years ago, it is so many times over today. Much of his meditation from the prie-dieu centers around Christ's words, "Unless a man renounce everything that he possesses, he cannot be my disciple." At the very least, this means we - priests and laypersons alike - can put nothing before or in the way of complete love of Christ, rather putting Him above all other mere created things. Does that mean a man may not follow Christ yet also take and love deeply a wife? No - but it does mean that not even chaste love of a wife by a husband, or husband by a wife, may make love of Christ secondary, or to be more full and fervent and complete than the giving of self solely, were that one's calling, to Him alone. Fr. Jaki has some considerably more acerbic words along the same line of thought:
Returning to Fr. Nash and his prie-dieu, his contemplation turns to the saints, as was the case with other writers referred to above:
And that is why celibacy is always possible for those determined to be as completely conformed to Christ as possible, as priests are called to be and should be. No Gift Is Completely Free Which brings us to the questions that some of these times, including many reputed theologians, raise. "Then should not celibacy be optional, be voluntary?" The latter point is true. Celibacy not only should be, but must be voluntary - which is to say it must be the choice in the accepting of it of the candidate's own will. But that does not mean it should be optional or not obligatory. No gift is completely free, which means no gift is absolutely divorced from the donor's purpose in giving it or the love that prompts it. When I was still in my boyhood more than 70 years ago, a kind lady gave me a pocketknife. But she insisted before turning it over that I give her a penny. This was in the depths of the Great Depression, when a penny could buy a piece of candy or a gum ball; three pennies could buy a first-class postage stamp, as the lady, who worked at a post office window, well knew. Whether she told me, or I learned elsewhere, this custom of never giving any friend a knife without receiving a payment honored an ancient belief that it would keep the recipient from using the knife to cut the bonds of friendship. Now, perhaps in its origin this idea was rooted in superstition. But I suspect my kind friend knew there was something of deep reality involved in this idea - namely, that payment for a knife (or perhaps any gift) taught a lesson that respect is owed a gift because it speaks of love (agape). The abuse of a gift knife, for example, to destroy another's property, or far worse, perhaps to do someone harm and injury, even fatally, would dishonor the gift and break the bonds of love binding recipient to donor. The penny is token of the lesson contained in its demand by the donor and giving by the receiver. That I remember this incident long after it happened shows the lesson's effectiveness. Celibacy might be seen as the penny paid for the loving gift of the priesthood, which is given so that both the recipient of the gift and all benefited by it might attain the perfection needed for entry to God's kingdom. Sadly, throughout history and probably more today than ever, abuse of the gift of the priesthood has cut the bonds of love that should bind priests, if anyone to the Divine Gift-Giver. And more often that abuse is of celibacy and the vow pledging it. The penny was either counterfeit from the beginning, and known as such by the payers - that is those choosing to be priests - or it was given in claim of its being the priest's total wealth, somewhat as Ananias and Sapphira deceitfully claimed to give up to the Church the totality of their possessions. Priestly celibacy is the sacrifice of the second greatest good to that of total giving of self to Christ, namely the giving of self to a wife. Putting the use and enjoyment of sex ahead of love of Christ cuts the bonds of love between man and Christ. Only in marriage can the use of sex not do such damage, for a man and woman wed as God ordains, can sublimate the pleasure of sex fully to God's purpose. The pleasure remains, but completely in deference to God's purpose for sex. That is why contraceptive sex is so destructive of love, both the natural love of man and woman, but also the supernatural love of man and is Creator - the Creator of sexual ability itself. Surrendering Self To God A priest with his vow of celibacy not merely sublimates sex to love of God, he foregoes sex completely, though retaining his male sexuality. That sexuality in fact is honored in sacrificing its expression in the sexual act. That sacrifice is a high expression of the nature of the priest. A comparison might be made to the will of Abraham to put aside his natural love for Isaac, and to sacrifice him to the Supreme One, as that One, Yahweh, had asked. Fr. Nash quotes Cardinal Merry del Val:
Of course, such thought is impossible there, where the Beatific Vision is so bright as to exclude every shadow, so that joy in Its possession fills every saint of God's ineffable friendship. But if there is any meaning in Cardinal del Val's statement, it is that if regret is not to overwhelm and crush us here in this life, where loving Christ calls us to do all we can for Jesus, then we had best be about doing that which shows our love for Him, even to surrendering our self and our desires in order to be worthy of following Him to Calvary.
Endnotes
FRANK MORRISS has served as co-editor of Forum Focus and a contributing editor and columnist for The Wanderer newspaper. He is a member of the Wanderer Forum Foundation Board. |