Posted on 12/14/2009 11:06:25 AM PST by the_conscience
The current battles over clerical celibacy are nothing new. When mandatory celibacy was first universally imposed on the clergy a millennium ago, clergy and laity alike broke into riotous rebellion for more than two generations, and a good number of bishops and priests flouted these laws for several generations more. When the Protestant Reformation broke out half a millennium ago, clerical celibacy and marriage were among the most bitter grievances over which the Western Church ultimately splintered. Today, the exposures of child abuse by some enterprising Catholic priests has rejoined these ancient battles within Catholicism and between Catholics and Protestants -- and triggered all manner of media exposes, private law suits, and criminal prosecutions.
In this Lecture, I would like to revisit the original Protestant case against clerical celibacy and for clerical marriage in its sixteenth century Lutheran Reformation context. I shall then draw out a few implications of the significance of these historical battles for the theology and law of clerical celibacy and marriage today.
The Case of Johann Apel
In good lawyerly fashion, let's begin with a concrete case. Our case comes from 1523. This is six years after Luther posted his 95 Theses, three years after Luther’s excommunication from the Church, and two years after the Diet of Worms. Luther is back in Wittenberg from the Wartburg Castle. The Lutheran Reformation is gaining real revolutionary momentum in Germany and beyond.
Our case involves a priest and lawyer named Johann Apel. Apel was born and raised in Nuernberg, an important German city, still faithful to Rome at the time of the case. In 1514, Apel enrolled for theological studies at the brand new University of Wittenberg, where he had passing acquaintance with a new professor of theology there, an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther. In 1516, Apel went to the University of Leipzig for legal studies. He was awarded the doctorate of canon law and civil law in 1519. After a brief apprenticeship, Apel took holy orders and swore the requisite oath of clerical celibacy.
One of the strong prince-bishops of the day, Conrad, the Bishop of Wuerzburg and Duke of Francken, appointed Apel as a cathedral canon in 1523. Conrad also licensed Apel as an advocate in all courts in his domain. Apel settled into his pastoral and legal duties.
Shortly after his clerical appointment, Apel began romancing a nun at the nearby St. Marr cloister. (Her name is not revealed in the records.) The couple saw each other secretly for several weeks. They carried on a brisk correspondence. They began a torrid romance.
She apparently became pregnant. Ultimately, the nun forsook the cloister and her vows and secretly moved in with Apel. A few weeks later, they were secretly married and cohabited openly as a married couple. This was an outrage. Clerical concubinage was one thing. The records show that at least three other priests in Conrad’s diocese kept concubines and paid Conrad the standard concubinage tax for that privilege. Earlier that very same year of 1523, another priest had fathered a child and paid the Bishop the standard cradle tax and oblated the infant in the very same St. Marr’s cloister that Mrs. Apel had just forsaken. Clerical concubinage and even fatherhood were known and were tolerated by some obliging bishops of the day. But clerical marriage? That was an outrage, particularly when it involved both a priest and a nun -- a prima facie case of double spiritual incest. Upon hearing of Apel's enterprising, Bishop Conrad annulled the marriage and admonished Apel to confess his sin, to return his putative wife to her cloister, and to resume his clerical duties. Apel refused, insisting that his marriage, though secretly contracted, was valid. Unconvinced, the Bishop indicted Apel for a canon law crime and temporarily suspended him from office. Apel offered a spirited defense of his conduct in a frank letter to the Bishop.
Bishop Conrad, in response, had Apel indicted in his own bishop’s court, for breach of holy orders and the oath of celibacy, and for defiance of his episcopal dispensation and injunction. In a written response, Apel adduced conscience and Scripture in his defense, much like Luther had done two years before at the Diet of Worms. "I have sought only to follow the dictates of conscience and the Gospel," Apel insisted, not to defy episcopal authority and canon law. Scripture and conscience condone marriage for fit adults as "a dispensation and remedy against lust and fornication." My wife and I have availed ourselves of these godly gifts and entered and consummated our marriage "in chasteness and love."
Contrary to Scripture, Apel continued, the church's canon law commands celibacy for clerics and monastics. This introduces all manner of impurity among them. "Don’t you see the fornication and the concubinage” in your bishopric, Apel implored Conrad. “Don’t you see the defilement and the adultery ... with brothers spilling their seed upon the ground, upon each other, and upon many a maiden whether single or married." My alleged sin and crime of breaking "this little man-made rule of celibacy," Apel insisted, "is very slight when compared to these sins of fornication” which you, “excellent father,” “cover and condone if the payment is high enough.” "The Word of the Lord is what will judge between you and me," Apel declared to the Bishop, and such Word commands my acquittal.
Bishop Conrad took the case under advisement. Apel took his cause to the budding Lutheran community. He sought support for his claims from Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Martin Bucer, and other Evangelical leaders who had already spoken against celibacy and monasticism. He published his remarks at trial adorned with a robust preface by Martin Luther, and an instant best seller.
Shortly after publication of the tract, Bishop Conrad had Apel arrested and put in the tower, pending further proceedings. Apel's family pleaded in vain with the Bishop to release him. The local civil magistrate twice mandated that Apel be released. Jurists and councilmen wrote letters of support. Even Emperor Charles V sent a brief letter urging the Bishop not to protract Apel's harsh imprisonment in violation of imperial law, but to try him and release him if found innocent.
Apel was finally tried. He was found guilty of several violations of the canon law and of heretically participating in "Luther's damned teachings." He was defrocked and was excommunicated and evicted from the community. Thereafter Apel made his way to Wittenberg where, at the urging of Luther and others, he was appointed to the law faculty at the University. Two years later, Apel served as one of the four witnesses to the marriage of ex-monk Martin Luther to ex-nun Katherine von Bora.
This was a sensational, but not an atypical, case in Reformation Germany in the 1520s. Among the earliest Protestant leaders were ex-priests and ex-monastics who had forsaken their orders and vows, and often married shortly thereafter. Indeed, one of the acts of solidarity with the new Protestant cause was to marry or divorce in open violation of the Church's canon law and in open contempt of episcopal instruction. As the church courts began to prosecute these offenses of its canon law, Protestant theologians and jurists rose to the defense of their budding co-religionists. Classic Arguments for Clerical Celibacy Bishop Conrad's position in the Apel case was in full compliance with the prevailing Catholic theology and canon law of marriage and celibacy.
Prior to the sixteenth century, the Church regarded marriage as “a duty for the sound and a remedy for the sick,” in St. Augustine’s famous phrase. Marriage was a creation of God allowing man and woman to "be fruitful and multiply." Since the fall into sin, marriage had also become a remedy for lust, a channel to direct one's natural passion to the service of the community and the Church. When contracted between Christians, marriage was also a sacrament, a symbol of the indissoluble union between Christ and His Church. As a sacrament, marriage fell within the social hierarchy of the Church and was subject to its jurisdiction, its legal power.
The Church did not regard marriage as its most exalted estate, however. Though a sacrament and a sound way of Christian living, marriage was not considered to be so spiritually edifying. Marriage was a remedy for sin, not a recipe for righteousness. Marriage was considered subordinate to celibacy, propagation less virtuous than contemplation, marital love less wholesome than spiritual love. Clerics, monastics, and other servants of the church were to forgo marriage as a condition for service. Those who could not were not worthy of the Church's holy orders and offices.
This prohibition on marriage, first universally imposed on clerics and monastics by the First Lateran Council of 1123, was defended with a whole arsenal of complex arguments.
The most common arguments were based on St. Paul’s statements in I Corinthians 7. In this famous passage, Paul did allow that it was better to marry than to burn with lust. But Paul also said that it was better to remain single than to marry or remarry. “It is well for a man not to touch a woman,” he wrote. For those who are married “will have worldly troubles.” It is best for you to remain without marriage “to secure your undivided attention to the Lord.” These biblical passages, heavily glossed by the early Church Fathers, provided endless medieval commentaries and commendations of celibacy. They were buttressed by newly discovered classical Greek and Roman writings extolling celibacy for the contemplative as well as by the growing medieval celebration of the virginity of Mary as a model for pious Christian living.
Various philosophical arguments underscored the superiority of the celibate clergy to the married laity. It was a commonplace of medieval philosophy to describe God's creation as hierarchical in structure -- a vast chain of being emanating from God and descending through various levels and layers of reality down to the smallest particulars. In this great chain of being, each creature found its place and its purpose. Each institution found its natural order and hierarchy. It was thus simply the nature of things that some persons and institutions were higher on this chain of being, some lower. It was the nature of things that some were closer and had more ready access to God, and some were further away and in need of mediation in their relationship with God. Readers of Dante’s Divine Comedy will recognize this chain of being theory at work in Dante’s vast hierarchies of hell, purgatory, and paradise. Students of medieval political theory will recognize this same theory at work in the many arguments of the superiority of the spiritual sword to the temporal sword, of the pope to the emperor, of the church to the state.
This chain of being theory was one basis for medieval arguments for the superiority of the clergy to the laity. Clergy were simply higher on this chain of being, laity lower. The clergy were called to higher spiritual activities in the realm of grace, the laity to lower temporal activities in the realm of nature. The clergy were thus distinct from the laity in their dress, in their language and in their livings. They were exempt from earthly obligations, such as paying civil taxes or serving in the military. They were immune from the jurisdiction of civil courts. And they were foreclosed from the natural activities of the laity, such as those of sex, marriage, and family life. These natural, corporal activities were literally beneath the clergy in ontological status and thus formally foreclosed. For a cleric or monastic to marry or to have sex was thus in a real sense to act against nature (contra naturam).
The Lutheran Position on Celibacy and Marriage Johann Apel’s arguments with Bishop Conrad anticipated a good deal of the Lutheran critique of this traditional teaching of marriage and celibacy. Like their Catholic brethren, the Lutheran reformers taught that marriage was created by God for the procreation of children and for the protection of couples from sexual sin. But, unlike their Catholic brethren, the reformers rejected the subordination of marriage to celibacy. We are all sinful creatures, Luther and his followers argued. Lust has pervaded the conscience of everyone. Marriage is not just an option, it is a necessity for sinful humanity. For without it, a person's distorted sexuality becomes a force capable of overthrowing the most devout conscience. A person is enticed by nature to concubinage, prostitution, masturbation, voyeurism, and sundry other sinful acts. “You cannot be without a [spouse] and remain without sin,” Luther thundered from his Wittenberg pulpit. You will “test your neighbor’s bed” unless your own bed is happily occupied and used.
“To spurn marriage is to act against God’s calling ... and against nature’s urging,” Luther continued. The calling of marriage should be declined only by those who have received God's special gift of continence. "Such persons are rare, not one in a thousand [later he said one hundred thousand] for they are a special miracle of God." The Apostle Paul has identified this group as the permanently impotent and the eunuchs; very few others can claim such a unique gift.
This understanding of marriage as a protection against sin undergirded the reformers' bitter attack on traditional rules of mandatory celibacy. To require celibacy of clerics, monks, and nuns, the reformers believed, was beyond the authority of the church and ultimately a source of great sin. Celibacy was a gift for God to give, not a duty for the church to impose.
It was for each individual, not for the church, to decide whether he or she had received this gift. By demanding monastic vows of chastity and clerical vows of celibacy, the church was seen to be intruding on Christian freedom and contradicting Scripture, nature, and common sense. By institutionalizing and encouraging celibacy the church was seen to prey on the immature and the uncertain. By holding out food, shelter, security, and economic opportunity, the monasteries enticed poor and needy parents to oblate their minor children to a life celibacy, regardless of whether it suited their natures. Mandatory celibacy, Luther taught, was hardly a prerequisite to true clerical service of God. Instead it led to "great whoredom and all manner of fleshly impurity and ... hearts filled with thoughts of women day and night."
Furthermore, to impute higher spirituality and holier virtue to the celibate contemplative life was, for the reformers, contradicted by the Bible. The Bible teaches that each person must perform his or her calling with the gifts that God provides. The gifts of continence and contemplation are but two among many, and are by no means superior to the gifts of marriage and child-rearing. Each calling plays an equally important, holy, and virtuous role in the drama of redemption, and its fulfillment is a service to God. Luther concurred with the Apostle Paul that the celibate person "may better be able to preach and care for God's word." But, he immediately added: "It is God's word and the preaching which makes celibacy--such as that of Christ and of Paul--better than the estate of marriage. In itself, however, the celibate life is far inferior."
Not only is the celibacy no better than marriage, Luther insisted. Clergy are no better than laity. To make this argument cogent, Luther had to counter the medieval chain of being theory that naturally placed celibate clergy above married laity. Luther’s answer was his famous theory of the separation of the earthly kingdom and the heavenly kingdom. For Luther, the fall into sin destroyed the original continuity and communion between the Creator and the creation, the natural tie between the heavenly kingdom and the earthly kingdom. There was no series of emanations of being from God to humanity. There was no stairway of merit from humanity to God. There was no purgatory. There was no heavenly hierarchy. God is present in the heavenly kingdom, and is revealed in the earthly kingdom primarily through "masks." Persons are born into the earthly kingdom, and have access to the heavenly kingdom only through faith.
Luther did not deny the traditional view that the earthly kingdom retains its natural order, despite the fall into sin. There remained, in effect, a chain of being, an order of creation that gave each creature, especially each human creature and each social institution, its proper place and purpose in this life. But, for Luther, this chain of being was horizontal, not hierarchical. Before God, all persons and all institutions in the earthly kingdom were by nature equal. Luther's earthly kingdom was a flat regime, a horizontal realm of being, with no person and no institution obstructed or mediated by any other in access to and accountability before God.
Luther thus rejected traditional teachings that the clergy were higher beings with readier access to God and God’s mysteries. He rejected the notion that clergy mediated the channel of grace between the laity and God—-dispensing God’s grace through the sacraments and preaching, and interceding for God’s grace by hearing confessions, receiving charity, and offering prayers on behalf of the laity.
Clergy and laity were fundamentally equal before God and before all others, Luther argued, sounding his famous doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. All persons were called to be priests their peers. Luther at once “laicized” the clergy and “clericized” the laity. He treated the traditional “clerical” office of preaching and teaching as just one other vocation alongside many others that a conscientious Christian could properly and freely pursue. He treated all traditional “lay” offices as forms of divine calling and priestly vocation, each providing unique opportunities for service to one’s peers. Preachers and teachers in the church must carry their share of civic duties and pay their share of civil taxes just like everyone else. And they should participate in earthly activities such as marriage and family life just like everyone else.
This same two kingdoms theory also provided Luther with a new understanding of the place of marriage within this earthly life. For Luther, marriage was one of the three natural estates of the earthly kingdom, alongside the church and the state, and was essential to the governance of the earthly kingdom. The marital household was to teach all persons, particularly children, Christian values, morals, and mores. It was to exemplify for a sinful society a community of love and cooperation, meditation and discussion, song and prayer. It was to hold out for the church and the state an example of firm but benign parental discipline, rule, and authority. It was to take in and care for wayfarers, widows, and destitute persons--a responsibility previously assumed largely by monasteries and cloisters.
The marital estate was thus as indispensable an agent in God's redemption plan as the church. It no longer stood within the orders of the church but alongside it. Moreover, the marital estate of marriage was as indispensable an agent of social order and communal cohesion as the state. It was not simply a creation of the civil law, but a Godly creation designed to aid the state in discharging its divine mandate.
The best example of such an idealized marital household was the local parsonage, the home of the married Lutheran minister. The reformers had already argued that pastors, like everyone else, should be married--lest they be tempted by sexual sin, deprived of the joys of marital love, and precluded from the great act of divine and human creativity in having children. Here was an even stronger argument for clerical marriage.
The clergy were to be exemplars of marriage. The minister’s household was to be a source and model for the right order and government of the local church, state, and broader community. As Adolf von Harnack put it a century ago: “The Evangelical parsonage, founded by Luther, became the model and blessing of the entire German nation, a nursery of piety and education, a place of social welfare and social equality. Without the German parsonage, the history of Germany since the sixteenth century is inconceivable.” [SNIP]
That said, it must also be said that there seems to be something gravely amiss with the American Catholic Church’s insistence on maintaining mandatory clerical celibacy -- despite the mounting evidence of homosexual and heterosexual abuses among its clergy, and despite the rapid dwindling of eligible novates within its seminaries. There is something strangely anomalous with a hierarchy that will ordain married Anglican and Orthodox priests to fill its vacant parishes, yet deny Catholic priests and novates any such marital option.
To be sure, the First Amendment free exercise clause mandates that the Catholic hierarchy be free to conduct its internal affairs without interference by the state. And to be sure, this constitutional protection frees the Church to find its own internal resources to repeat, repair, or replace its rules of clerical celibacy as it sees fit. The First Amendment is one of our most cherished freedoms, which protects popular and unpopular religious practices alike.
But the First Amendment does not license violations of the life and limb of another, and does not protect corporate complicity and conspiracy. Child abuse is a very serious felony which the modern criminal law now punishes severely. And even mutually consensual sexual contact with a minor is a strict liability offense called statutory rape. Priests who engage in such sexual acts with minors must be aggressively prosecuted and severely punished if found guilty after receiving full due process. Bishops who harbor and hide such sex felons are accomplices after the fact and are just as guilty under modern criminal law as the sexual perpetrator himself. Church corporations who conspire in such subterfuge invite serious charges of corporate criminality and corruption.
The American church hierarchy today needs to stop hiding behind constitutional walls and sacramental veils and take firm public responsibility for its actions and omissions -- ministering first and foremost to the abused victims and their families, exposing and evicting the clerical sex felons and accomplices within their midst, and getting on with their cardinal callings of preaching the word, administering the sacraments, catechizing the young, and caring for the needy.
In medieval centuries past, the church and its clergy may have been above the law of the state, and thus privileged to deal with such clerical abuses by their own means, in their own courts, at their own times. No longer. Privilege of forum and benefit of clergy have been dead letters in this country for more than a century. Clergy are not above the law. They should exemplify its letter and its spirit. The church is not above the state. It should set a model of justice and equity.
Few issues are as sublime and serious today as those involving sex and sexuality. Few crimes are as scarring as rape and child abuse. To rape a child is to destroy a child. To abuse a child is to forfeit one’s office. No cleric found guilty of child abuse can continue in office. No Christian church found complicit in child abuse is worthy of its name. Bureaucratic wrangling and political lobbying are no way for the church to respond to recent events. Repentance, restitution, and reformation are the better course.
This text is drawn in large part from his From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (Westminster John Knox Press, 1997) and Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
THere was a noticable dearth of facts around the conclusions of the article.
Was this before or after Pope St. Siricius reiterated the law of celibacy to his clerics in the 4th century AD? I'm a little confused about the timeline you are trying to portray. I think the 4th century AD is before the 12th century AD, but your very absolute statement that it was first universally imposed in the 12th century means that the 4th century must have come after the 12th century. Right?
Luther, at least as presented in this article, seems a man possessed by his own passions, and looking to discount them by projecting them to all humankind.
I have no doubt that every human has one or more vices, but I don’t believe every human has every vice.
But Paul wasn’t really a clergy, he was an itinerant prophet. That type of life would have been very hard with a wife, and a wife would certainly have distracted him greatly from his particular mission.
Are you going to give an argument or just make an assertion
The article states: “That said, it must also be said that there seems to be something gravely amiss with the American Catholic Church’s insistence on maintaining mandatory clerical celibacy — despite the mounting evidence of homosexual and heterosexual abuses among its clergy, and despite the rapid dwindling of eligible novates within its seminaries.”
Exactly HOW does having married priests prevent abuses of children (mainly homosexual)?? Are we to assume married priests are too busy servicing their wives to find time and energy for little boys? This is ridiculous on the face of it.
The article also states Priestly celebacy is connected to “the rapid dwindling of eligible novates within its seminaries.” Religious orders and attendance are on decline among all Christian denominations. In fact, this decline is fastest among the “Mainline” Protestant denominations, which do not require celibacy. Why bash the Catholic requirement for celibacy, when we are swimming in a vast ocean of a decadent and sinful society?
This whole article takes the attitude of - the fat kids in gym can’t pass the Phys Ed test by doing 10 push-ups, so its best to remove the requirement for push-ups altogether to have compliance.
Celibacy and the struggle with all urges and desires (sex being the foremost) is indeed a great hindrance to spiritual advancement and absolute devotion to Christ, but lack of fidelity to vows is not God nor the Church’s problem - it is the Priest’s problem and his challenge.
Apparently the wisdom of the ages and the final answer are contained within the one item you posted today at FR.
For centuries, even through today, the most well-educated men with the best intellects have been Catholic churchmen. In fact, the university itself is a conception and product of the Catholic Church.
To think your protestant author finally came up with all the answers in 1997.
A heirarchy of being? Like this?
God >> Angels >> Man >> Animals >> Plants >> Inanimate Objects.
So instead, you believe all things created and uncreated are equal, with no heirarchy?
My grandfather was the only maritally chaste minister his Southern Baptist Church had during the 20 years from 1980 to 2000. All the rest of them had to be run out of town for participating in horizontal counseling of the forlorn ladies of the parish on the Pastor's office couch. From reading the newspapers down south of these sorts of goings on, and also noting the enormous number of divorces, remarriages and affairs reported among southern evangelicals, his parish was not atypical at all.
No, I merely used an inartful shorthand. As I said in my explanation, I do NOT believe that unhappiness within a specific marriage would lead a man who otherwise freely and happily chooses the married life to suddenly decide to practice homosexual pedophilic acts.
In other words, I am arguing that by choosing men who by their nature desire heterosexual sexual relationships, and also express that desire in a controlled manner by freely confining that desire in a marriage relationship, you can minimize the chance that your leaders are in fact homosexual, or desirous of extramarital relationships with children.
And yes, I am saying that “being married” isn’t enough to protect the leadership — the general biblical admonition suggests the quality of marriage and family life of those considered need to be judged.
But for my argument, I took it no further than to suggest that explicitly excluding from leadership those men who seek out marriage relationships would cut out men who were less likely to want homosexual pedophilic relationships, because men who are most likely to want heterosexual married relationships would be most likely to reject the vow of celibacy.
So it must be really terrible that the enitre episcopal heirarchy and all of the monastics of the Eastern Church are life long celibates.
How To Argue For Priestly Celibacy
By Jason Evert
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2001/0104sbs.asp
When any passage such as this is brought up, step number one is to read it in context. In 1 Timothy 4, Paul is speaking about those who have veered away from the Christian understanding of the goodness of marriage, opting for a false asceticism that denounces it. This heresy would later raise its head against the Church in the form of the Cathari, who condemned marriage and procreation as great evils. The fortunate element of the heresy is that it soon disappeared-it wasn’t very hereditary!
Such an unbalanced idea of marriage is the opposite of the celibacy chosen by Catholic priests. Those who “renounce marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:12 NAB) do so not because marriage is bad, but precisely because its goodness makes its renunciation a valuable and generous gift to offer to God. After all, the goodness of a gift determines the value of the sacrifice. This is why the Israelites offered God their first-fruits, not their leftovers.
The decision to remain celibate is freely chosen by seminarians, and it is not the Church that is forbidding them to marry. They may choose married or celibate life according to where the Lord is calling them. Making such a pledge of celibacy is not foreign to the New Testament. In fact, one chapter after Paul denounces those who forbid marriage, he mentions Christian widows who make a pledge of celibacy-and how they will incur condemnation if their sensuality estranges them from Christ by enticing them to marry. By reading Paul’s words on marriage and celibacy in context, it becomes clear that forbidding marriage is one thing and freely making a vow of virginity is another.
Unfortunately, celibacy is often defined by what it gives up instead of what it embraces. Contrary to popular belief, celibacy does not mean that priests and nuns are unmarried. Mother Teresa said that someone once asked her if she was married. She replied in the affirmative-and added that her Spouse can be very demanding at times! What Christians often overlook is that earthly marriages are not eternal (Luke 20:35). They are a foreshadowing and a sign of that eternal wedding that will take place in heaven between the Church and Christ. Those who have consecrated their virginity to God are simply skipping the earthly sign and participating in the eternal marriage now. This is a beautiful witness to the world that there is more to life than the passing joys we know on earth.
2- Where is clerical celibacy in the Bible?
Biblical evidence for the discipline of celibacy can be found in both the Old and the New Testaments. In the Old, Jeremiah was forbidden by God to take a wife in order to enable him to fulfill his ministry better. “The word of the Lord came to me: ‘You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place’” (Jer. 16:1-2).
Also in the Old Testament, God asked even married couples to practice celibacy on certain occasions. For example, Moses asked the Israelites to abstain from marital intimacy while he ascended Mount Sinai (Ex. 20:15), and Jewish tradition attests that he remained celibate for life following the command of Exodus 9:15 and Deuteronomy 5:28. The Lord also asked that the priests refrain from sexual relations with their wives during their time of service in the temple. In yet another example, the priests ordered King David and his people to abstain from marital relations on the occasion of eating the holy bread (1 Sam. 21:4).
In all these instances, there is a theme of abstaining from marital relations due to the presence of something very holy. It is not that the marital act is sinful, but that when one is in such proximity to God, it is right to offer him an undivided mind, heart, and body. If it was fitting under the Old Covenant to serve the temple, to approach God, and receive the holy bread with a consecrated body, it is no surprise that permanent celibacy is fitting for a Roman Catholic priest, since his priestly service is continual.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus states, “Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it” (19:12 NAB). This is an invitation from Christ to live as he did, and there can be nothing unacceptable in that.
Paul recognized the wisdom in this, and encouraged celibacy in order to free a man to be anxious about the things of the Lord and to serve him undividedly (1 Cor 7:8,32-35). In his words, “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. . . . I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. . . . he who marries his betrothed does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better” (1 Cor. 7:8, 32-35, 38).
3- If Peter had a wife, why can’t married men become Catholic priests?
While this appears to be a simple question, there are a few misconceptions that need to be addressed. Many Protestants-and even Catholics for that matter-do not know that there are many rites within the Catholic Church that allow married men to become priests. Though the Latin (Western) Rite practices the discipline of priestly celibacy, most of the Eastern Rites allow married men to be ordained.
Even within the Latin Rite, the Church has made exceptions for a number of converted married ministers to become ordained. This is known as the “pastoral provision,” and it demonstrates that clerical celibacy is a discipline, not a doctrine. The doctrines of the Church are teachings that can never be reversed. On the other hand, disciplines refer to those practices (such as eating meat on Fridays) that may change over time as the Church sees fit.
4- Didn’t Paul say that a bishop had to be “the husband of one wife?” (1 Tim. 3:2, 4-5).
The point of Paul’s teaching is not that a man must be married in order to be a bishop, but that a bishop may not be married more than once. If this passage meant that a bishop had to be married, Paul would have been in violation of his own rule (1 Cor. 7:7-8, 9:5). A rule forbidding a man to have more than one wife does not order him to have at least one. A man who never marries does not violate the rule. Also, Paul, being a bishop who ordained other men to be bishops (cf. 1 Tim. 1:6), would have been a hypocrite if he enjoined such a rule (”to be a bishop you must be married”) and then, by his own admission (1 Cor. 7:8-9) ignored his own rule.
5- You always hear about priests being charged with pedophilia. If priests were allowed to get married, wouldn’t this alleviate the problem?
If a priest-or any person for that matter-has a disordered sexual desire, marriage is not the cure. Experiencing the redemptive power of Christ in one’s fallen sexuality is the cure. Getting married will only involve the transferal of a man’s unhealthy lust to his wife or children. Conversely, if a man abuses his wife, the solution to the problem is not the renunciation of his call to marriage. The solution lies precisely in his call to marriage-to love his bride as Christ loved the Church.
The fact that marriage is not the solution to pedophilia can be demonstrated by looking at the statistics. Per capita, Catholic priests do not have a higher incidence of pedophilia than do married clergymen. The reason why you don’t hear as much about the other cases is because of the anti-Catholic bias that permeates the media.
6- The Church has been having a vocations crisis, and if they would just allow the clergy to marry, the problem would take care of itself.
The Vatican recently released a statement that said that the vocations crisis is ending. In a statement released on March 30, 2000, Catholic World News service reported from the Vatican: “The worldwide crisis of clerical vocations has ended, according to the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy.” Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos reported that there are now 109,828 seminarians preparing for the priesthood around the world, which is an enormous increase from the 60,142 in 1975. The news release continued, “There were 404,626 priests serving the Catholic Church in 1999. Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos noted that some priests have returned to their ministry after having abandoned the priesthood. And the number of defections from priestly life is falling; the cardinal pointed out that in 1975 there were 3,314 men who left the priesthood; in 1997 there were 1,006.”
The celibacy of the priesthood should not be seen as a burden that impedes vocations, but as a living witness to the world that serving Christ is worth sacrificing even the greatest joys of human life-a wife and family. “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
Yeah, that's an impossible rule for God to have. Just like that terrible Romanist interpolation in the Book of Revelations, Chapter 14, verse 4. (/sarcasm)
These are they who were not defiled with women: for they are virgins.
Is a man a beast if he enjoys having sex with his wife? Is it a sin if he finds satisfaction in doing so? If he finds he can work in close proximity to women without experiencing significant sexual tension because his needs are being taken care of at home does this make him a "beast who can't control" himself?
If so then I guess I am guilty, guilty, guilty.
Celibacy originated in Apostlic times and is part of practical instructions in the way the Lord Jesus willed His Church to be organized that he left with the Apostles. Feudalism has nothing to do with it.
Your response misses the point (perhaps intentionally).
If you are not the master of your sexual and other urges, and are unable to abstain from them as virtue and prudence may require, then you are acting like a beast.
Saying this is not the same as saying that having sex makes you a beast. Not sure why you equated the two.
Jesus, whom we are called to imitate in all things, abstained from all sex. Imitating his total celibacy is certainly laudable. Insisting that a priest be willing to imitate that same total celibacy is not a bad thing.
Ahhh ... I see. A different law requiring the clergy not to have sex. As opposed to that medieval law requiring the clergy not to have sex. The difference is quite clear to me now. So in the time of Pope St. Siricius, the clergy were required not to have sex. Then in the Middle Ages, the Church CHANGED the law, and required from then on, that the clergy could not have sex, and that was when all the problems started. Because before, during the first millenium AD, when the clergy were merely required not to have sex, everything went smoothly. But later, once the clergy were now required not to have sex, big problems!
Got it. How could I have gotten so confused?
Campion reduced down to its absurdity the silly premise of the original post to demonstrate its weakness.
Perhaps you agree with his critique of the original post’s silly premise, as do I.
Also, Paul, being a bishop who ordained other men to be bishops (cf. 1 Tim. 1:6), would have been a hypocrite if he enjoined such a rule (”to be a bishop you must be married”) and then, by his own admission (1 Cor. 7:8-9) ignored his own rule.1 Tim. 1:6 certainly is a bad reference, it has nothing to do with ordaining other men to be bishops ("From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling").
Paul calls himself an Apostle of Jesus Christ, not a Bishop of the Church.
And whether or not you accept the interpretation that "Husband of one wife" really meant "Husband of no more than one wife", it is clear that Paul was saying leaders could be married. He certainly knew how to say "Celibate".
But why would Paul have prohibited a widower who remarried from being a leader in the Church? I can understand rejecting those who have been divorced (although it seems odd that the same Church which claims this passage means "no divorcee can be a Priest") also started with the practice of enforcing a "practical divorce" for men in order to be priests, if they had been married previously.
Oh come on silly. Jesus married Mary Magdalene at the wedding feast at Cana, moved to France with her, and sired the Merovingian Dynasty and the Knights Templar. They spent their summers in Glastonbury with their uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, checking up on the 10 lost tribes of Israel on the British Isles and Scandanavia and Germany, and practicing goddess worship through ritual sex in the middle of the druidic Henges.
Don't tell me you didn't you read the Da Vinci Code so you could finally get your history straight and missed all of this?
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