Posted on 06/15/2010 2:43:33 AM PDT by markomalley
It is the sign, he says, that God exists and that one allows himself to be seized by passion for him. This makes it a great scandal, and the desire is to eliminate it. The complete transcript of Benedict XVI's latest statement on this issue. And of a surprising preview of it, from 2006
by Sandro Magister
ROME, June 15, 2010 – Benedict XVI has reached out to those who were expecting a "rethinking" of the rule of celibacy for the Latin clergy. But in his own way.
On the evening of Thursday, June 10, in St. Peter's Square, the eve of the closing of the Year for Priests, answering five questions from as many priests from the five continents, pope Joseph Ratzinger dedicated one of his answers precisely to illustrating the meaning of the priestly celibacy. And he did so in an original way, departing from the current historical, theological, and spiritual literature.
The complete and authenticated transcript of the pope's answer, released by the Vatican two days later and reproduced further below, permits a deep understanding of his reasoning.
Celibacy – the pope said – is an anticipation "of the world of the resurrection." It is the sign "that God exists, that God is part of my life, that I can base my life on Christ, on the future life."
For this reason – he continued – celibacy "is a great scandal." Not only for today's world, "in which God has no place." But for Christianity itself, in which "God's future is no longer considered, and the now of this world alone seems sufficient."
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It is clear from this that one of the cornerstones of this pontificate is not a distancing from clerical celibacy, but its reinforcement. Closely connected with what Benedict XVI has repeatedly pointed to as the "priority" of his mission:
"In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize [...] in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen."
The pope said this in the memorable open letter that he wrote to the bishops of the whole world, dated March 10, 2009.
But even before this, there was another important speech in which Benedict XVI explicitly connected the celibacy of the clergy with the "priority" of leading men to God, and explained the reason for this connection.
It is the speech that he addressed to the Roman curia on December 22, 2006, commenting on his travels outside of Italy that year.
About his trip to Germany three months earlier, the one on which he gave the famous lecture in Regensburg, the pope began:
"The great theme of my journey to Germany was God. The Church must speak of many things: of all the issues connected with the human being, of her own structure and of the way she is ordered and so forth. But her true and – under various aspects – only theme is 'God'. Moreover, the great problem of the West is forgetfulness of God. This forgetfulness is spreading. In short, all the individual problems can be traced back to this question, I am sure of it. Therefore, on that Journey, my main purpose was to shed clear light on the theme 'God', also mindful of the fact that in several parts of Germany there are a majority of non –baptized persons for whom Christianity and the God of faith seem to belong to the past.
"Speaking of God, we are touching precisely on the subject which, in Jesus' earthly preaching, was his main focus. The fundamental subject of this preaching is God's realm, the 'Kingdom of God'. This does not mean something that will come to pass at one time or another in an indeterminate future. Nor does it mean that better world which we seek to create, step by step, with our own strength. In the term 'Kingdom of God', the word 'God' is a subjective genitive. This means: God is not something added to the 'Kingdom' which one might even perhaps drop. God is the subject. Kingdom of God actually means: God reigns. He himself is present and crucial to human beings in the world. He is the subject, and wherever this subject is absent, nothing remains of Jesus' message. Therefore, Jesus tells us: the Kingdom of God does not come in such a way that one may, so to speak, line the wayside to watch its arrival. 'The Kingdom of God is in the midst of you!' (cf. Lk 17: 20ff.). It develops wherever God's will is done. It is present wherever there are people who are open to his arrival and so let God enter the world. Thus, Jesus is the Kingdom of God in person: the man in whom God is among us and through whom we can touch God, draw close to God. Wherever this happens, the world is saved."
Having said this, Benedict XVI continued by connecting to the question of God that of the priesthood and of priestly celibacy:
"Paul calls Timothy – and in him, the Bishop and in general the priest – 'man of God' (I Tm 6: 11). This is the central task of the priest: to bring God to men and women. Of course, he can only do this if he himself comes from God, if he lives with and by God. This is marvellously expressed in a verse of a priestly Psalm that we – the older generation – spoke during our admittance to the clerical state: 'The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup, you hold my lot' (Ps 16 [15], 5). The priest praying in this Psalm interprets his life on the basis of the distribution of territory as established in Deuteronomy (cf. 10: 9). After taking possession of the Land, every tribe obtained by the drawing of lots his portion of the Holy Land and with this took part in the gift promised to the forefather Abraham. The tribe of Levi alone received no land: its land was God himself. This affirmation certainly had an entirely practical significance. Priests did not live like the other tribes by cultivating the earth, but on offerings. However, the affirmation goes deeper. The true foundation of the priest's life, the ground of his existence, the ground of his life, is God himself. The Church in this Old Testament interpretation of the priestly life – an interpretation that also emerges repeatedly in Psalm 119 [118] – has rightly seen in the following of the Apostles, in communion with Jesus himself, as the explanation of what the priestly mission means. The priest can and must also say today, with the Levite: 'Dominus pars hereditatis meae et calicis mei'. God himself is my portion of land, the external and internal foundation of my existence. This theocentricity of the priestly existence is truly necessary in our entirely function –oriented world in which everything is based on calculable and ascertainable performance. The priest must truly know God from within and thus bring him to men and women: this is the prime service that contemporary humanity needs. If this centrality of God in a priest's life is lost, little by little the zeal in his actions is lost. In an excess of external things the centre that gives meaning to all things and leads them back to unity is missing. There, the foundation of life, the "earth" upon which all this can stand and prosper, is missing.
"Celibacy, in force for Bishops throughout the Eastern and Western Church and, according to a tradition that dates back to an epoch close to that of the Apostles, for priests in general in the Latin Church, can only be understood and lived if is based on this basic structure. The solely pragmatic reasons, the reference to greater availability, is not enough: such a greater availability of time could easily become also a form of egoism that saves a person from the sacrifices and efforts demanded by the reciprocal acceptance and forbearance in matrimony; thus, it could lead to a spiritual impoverishment or to hardening of the heart. The true foundation of celibacy can be contained in the phrase: 'Dominus pars' – You are my land. It can only be theocentric. It cannot mean being deprived of love, but must mean letting oneself be consumed by passion for God and subsequently, thanks to a more intimate way of being with him, to serve men and women, too.
"Celibacy must be a witness to faith: faith in God materializes in that form of life which only has meaning if it is based on God. Basing one's life on him, renouncing marriage and the family, means that I accept and experience God as a reality and that I can therefore bring him to men and women. Our world, which has become totally positivistic, in which God appears at best as a hypothesis but not as a concrete reality, needs to rest on God in the most concrete and radical way possible. It needs a witness to God that lies in the decision to welcome God as a land where one finds one's own existence.
"For this reason, celibacy is so important today, in our contemporary world, even if its fulfilment in our age is constantly threatened and questioned. A careful preparation during the journey towards this goal and persevering guidance on the part of the Bishop, priest friends and lay people who sustain this priestly witness together, is essential. We need prayer that invokes God without respite as the Living God and relies on him in times of confusion as well as in times of joy. Consequently, as opposed to the cultural trend that seeks to convince us that we are not capable of making such decisions, this witness can be lived and in this way, in our world, can reinstate God as reality."
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After rereading this speech from December of 2006, it is no wonder that Benedict XVI still continues to dedicate so much energy to the clergy.
The proclamation of the Year for Priests, the proposal of exemplary figures like the holy Curé of Ars, the reinforcement of celibacy are part – in the pope's vision – of an extremely coherent picture, which is one and the same with "the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the successor of Peter at this time," which is "to lead men to God."
Confirmation of this came last June 10 with the pope's response to the priest who asked him about the meaning of celibacy, the complete transcript of which is provided below.
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FROM BENEDICT XVI'S CONVERSATION WITH PRIESTS
Rome, Saint Peter's Square, June 10, 2010
ON THE "SCANDAL" OF CELIBACY
Q: Holy Father, I am Fr. Karol Miklosko and I am from Europe, specifically from Slovakia, and I am a missionary in Russia. When I celebrate the holy Mass, I find myself and I understand that there I encounter my identity and the root and energy of my ministry. The sacrifice of the cross reveals to me the Good Shepherd who gives everything for his flock, for each sheep, and when I say: "This is my body, this is my blood" given and poured in sacrifice for you, then I understand the beauty of celibacy and of obedience, which I freely promised at the moment of ordination. In spite of the natural difficulties, celibacy seems obvious to me, looking at Christ, but I find myself disoriented in reading the many worldly criticisms of this gift. I humbly ask you, Holy Father, to enlighten us about the profundity and the authentic meaning of ecclesiastical celibacy.
A: Thank you for the two parts of your question. The first, where you show the permanent and vital foundation of our celibacy; the second, which shows all of the difficulties in which we find ourselves in our time.
The first part is important, that is: the center of our life must really be the daily celebration of the holy Eucharist; and here the words of consecration are central: "This is my body, this is my blood"; that is: we are speaking "in persona Christi." Christ permits us to use his "I," we speak in the "I" of Christ, Christ "pulls us into himself" and permits us to unite ourselves, unites us with his "I." And so, through this action, this fact that he "pulls" us into himself, in such a way that our "I" becomes united with his own, he realizes the permanence, the uniqueness of his priesthood; in this way he really is always the one priest, and nonetheless very much present in the world, because he "pulls" us into himself, and so makes present his priestly mission. This means that we are "pulled" into the God of Christ: it is this union with his "I" that is realized in the words of consecration.
Also in the "I absolve you" – because none of us can absolve from sins – it is the "I" of Christ, of God, who alone can absolve. This unification of his "I" with our own implies that we are also "pulled" into his reality as the Risen One, we advance toward the full life of the resurrection, of which Jesus speaks to the Sadducees in Matthew, Chapter 22: it is a "new" life, in which we are already beyond marriage (cf. Mt. 22:23 –32). It is important that we always let ourselves be penetrated again by this identification of the "I" of Christ with us, by this being "pulled out" toward the world of the resurrection.
In this sense, celibacy is an anticipation. We transcend this time and go forward, and so we "pull" ourselves and our time toward the world of the resurrection, toward the newness of Christ, toward the new and true life. So celibacy is an anticipation made possible by the grace of the Lord who "pulls" us to himself, toward the world of the resurrection; he invites us always anew to transcend ourselves, this present, toward the true present of the future, which becomes present today.
And here we are at a very important point. One big problem of Christianity in today's world is that God's future is no longer considered, and the now of this world alone seems sufficient. We want to have only this world, to live only in this world. So we close the doors to the true greatness of our existence. The meaning of celibacy as an anticipation of the future is precisely to open these doors, to make the world bigger, to show the reality of the future that must be lived by us as already present. To live, therefore, in a testimony of faith: we really believe that God exists, that God is part of my life, that I can base my life on Christ, on the future life.
And we know now the worldly criticisms of which you spoke. It is true that for the agnostic world, the world in which God has no place, celibacy is a great scandal, because it shows precisely that God is considered and lived as a reality. With the eschatological life of celibacy, the future world of God enters into the realities of our time. And this is supposed to disappear!
In a certain sense, this permanent criticism of celibacy can be surprising, at a time in which not getting married is becoming increasingly fashionable. But this not getting married is something totally, fundamentally different from celibacy, because not getting married is based on the desire to live only for oneself, not to accept any definitive bond, to have life at every moment in full autonomy, to decide at every moment what to do, what to take from life; and therefore a "no" to commitment, a "no" to definitiveness, a having life only for oneself. While celibacy is precisely the opposite: it is a definitive "yes," it is allowing ourselves to be taken in hand by God, giving ourselves into the hands of the Lord, into his "I," and therefore it is an act of fidelity and trust, an act that the fidelity of marriage also supposes; it is the exact opposite of this "no," of this autonomy that does not want to be obligated, that does not want to enter into a bond; it is precisely the definitive "yes" that supposes, that confirms the definitive "yes" of marriage. And this marriage is the biblical form, the natural form of being man and woman, the foundation of the great Christian culture, of the great cultures of the world. And if this disappears, the root of our culture will be destroyed.
For this reason, celibacy confirms the "yes" of marriage with its "yes" to the future world, and so we want to move forward and make present this scandal of a faith that bases all of existence upon God. We know that next to this great scandal, which the world does not want to see, there are also the secondary scandals of our insufficiencies, of our sins, which obscure the true and great scandal, and make people think: "But they don't really live on the foundation of God." But there is so much faithfulness! Celibacy, as the criticisms themselves show, is a great sign of faith, of the presence of God in the world. Let us pray to the Lord that he help us to free ourselves from the secondary scandals, that he make present the great scandal of our faith: the trust, the power of our lives, founded on God and on Christ Jesus!
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On the evening of June 10, 2010, in Saint Peter's Square at this same closing vigil of the Year for Priests, Benedict XVI also responded to other questions on other topics.
The following are two of these questions and answers: the first on the study of theology, the second on the decline of vocations.
ON "SCIENTIFIC" THEOLOGY
Q: Your Holiness, I am Mathias Agnero and I come from Africa, specifically from Côte d'Ivoire. You are a pope theologian, while we, when we are able, read only a few books of theology for formation. It seems to us, nonetheless, that a fracture has been created between theology and doctrine, and, even more, between theology and spirituality. The need is felt for study not to be entirely academic, but to nourish our spirituality. We feel the need for this in pastoral ministry itself. Sometimes theology does not seem to have God at the center and Jesus Christ as the first "theological locus," but instead has scattered tastes and tendencies; and the result is the proliferation of subjective opinions that permit the introduction, even in the Church, of non –Catholic thought. How can we keep from becoming disoriented in our lives and our ministry, when it is the world that judges faith and not the other way around? We feel "off center!"
A: You touch upon a very difficult and painful problem. There really is a theology that wants above all to be academic, to appear scientific and forgets the vital reality, the presence of God, his presence among us, his speaking today, not only in the past. Saint Bonaventure distinguished two forms of theology in his time; he said: "There is a theology that comes from the arrogance of reason, that wants to dominate everything, to turn God from a subject into an object that we study, while he should be the subject who speaks to us and guides us."
There really is this abuse of theology, which is arrogance on the part of reason and does not nourish faith, but obscures the presence of God in the world. Then there is a theology that wants to know more out of love for the beloved, is stimulated by love and guided by love, and wants to know more about the beloved. This is true theology, which comes from love of God, of Christ, and wants to enter more deeply into communion with Christ.
In reality, the temptations today are great; above all, the so-called "modern vision of the world" (Bultmann: "modernes Weltbild") is imposed, which becomes the criterion of what is claimed to be possible or impossible. And so, precisely with this criterion that everything is as it always has been, that all historical events are of the same kind, the very novelty of the Gospel is excluded, the intervention of God is excluded, the true novelty that is the joy of our faith.
What should be done? I would say first of all to the theologians: have courage. And I would also like to express great thanks to the many theologians who are doing good work. There are abuses, we know that, but in all parts of the world there are many theologians who truly live by the Word of God, nourish themselves on meditation, live the faith of the Church and want to help make faith present in our day.
And I would say to theologians in general: "Do not be afraid of this phantasm of the scientific!" I have been following theology since 1946; I began to study theology in January of 1946, and so I have seen almost three generations of theologians, and I can say: the hypotheses that at that time and then in the 1960's and '80's were the most new, absolutely scientific, absolutely almost dogmatic, in the meantime have become outdated and no longer apply! Many of them appear almost ridiculous. So have the courage to resist what is apparently scientific, not to submit to all the hypotheses of the moment, but really to think on the basis of the great faith of the Church, which is present in all times and gives us access to the truth. Above all, also, do not think that positivistic reason, which excludes the transcendent – which cannot be accessible – is true reason! This weak form of reason, which presents only things that can be experienced, is really an insufficient reason. We theologians must use the greater form of reason, which is open to the greatness of God. We must have the courage to go beyond positivism to the question of the roots of being.
This seems of great importance to me. So, it is necessary to have the courage for grand, broad reason, to have the humility not to submit to all the hypotheses of the moment, to live by the great faith of the Church of all times. There is no majority versus the majority of the saints: the true majority is the saints in the Church, and we must orient ourselves by the saints!
Then, to the seminarians and the priests I say the same thing: consider that the Sacred Scripture is not an isolated book: it is living in the living community of the Church, which is the same subject in all centuries and guarantees the presence of the Word of God. The Lord has given us the Church as a living subject, with the structure of the bishops in communion with the pope, and this great reality of the bishops of the world in communion with the pope guarantees for us the testimony of permanent truth. Let us trust in this permanent magisterium of the communion of the bishops with the pope, who represent to us the presence of the Word; let us trust in the life of the Church.
And then we must be critical. Certainly theological formation – I would like to say this to the seminarians – is very important. In our time, we must know the Sacred Scripture well, partly because of the attacks of the sects; we really must be friends of the Word. We must also know the currents of our time in order to respond reasonably, in order to be able to give – as Saint Peter says – "reasons for our faith." Formation is very important. But we must also be critical: the criterion of faith is the criterion that we must also use to view theologians and theologies. Pope John Paul II gave us an absolutely sure criterion in the catechism of the Catholic Church: here we see the synthesis of our faith, and this catechism is truly the criterion for seeing where there is an acceptable or unacceptable theology. Therefore, I recommend the reading, the study of this text, and so we can move forward with a critical theology in the positive sense, meaning critical of the fashionable tendencies and open to the true novelties, to the inexhaustible depth of the Word of God, which reveals itself as new in all times, including in our time.
ON THE DECLINE OF VOCATIONS
Q: Most Blessed Father, I am Fr. Anthony Denton and I am from Oceania, from Australia. So many of us here this evening are priests. But we know that our seminaries are not full, and that, in the future, in various parts of the world, a drop is in store for us, even a sharp one. What should we do for vocations that is truly effective? How should we propose our way of life, in terms of what is great and beautiful in it, to a young man of our time?
A: You are really touching on a great and painful problem of our time: the lack of vocations, because of which local Churches are in danger of drying up, because the Word of life is missing, the presence of the sacrament of the Eucharist and of the other sacraments is missing. What should we do? The temptation is great: to take the matter in hand ourselves, to transform the priesthood – the sacrament of Christ, being chosen by him – into an ordinary profession, into a "job" that has its hours, and for the remainder one belongs only to himself; thus making it like any other vocation: making it accessible and easy.
But this is a temptation that does not resolve the problem. It makes me think of the story of Saul, the king of Israel, who before the battle against the Philistines was waiting for Samuel to make the necessary sacrifice to God. And when Samuel did not come at the expected time, he performed the sacrifice himself, although he was not a priest (cf. 1 Sam. 13); he thought he could resolve the problem this way, but naturally he did not resolve it, because he himself took in hand something he could not do, he made himself out to be God, or nearly so, and could not wait for things really to go God's way.
So also we, if we were only carrying out a profession like the others, leaving behind the sacredness, the novelty, the difference of the sacrament that only God gives, that can only come from his vocation and not from our "doing," we would resolve nothing. All the more we must – as the Lord invites us to do – pray to God, knock at the door, at the heart of God, that he give us a vocations; pray with great insistence, with great determination, with great conviction also, because God does not close himself to insistent, permanent, trusting prayer, even if he makes us wait, like Saul, beyond the time that we had expected. This seems to me the first point: to encourage the faithful to have this humility, this trust, this courage to pray with insistence for vocations, to knock at God's heart that he give us priests.
Beyond this I might say three points. The first: each of us must do everything possible to live his own priesthood in such a manner that it is convincing, in such a manner that young people can say: this is a true vocation, one can live this way, in this way one does something essential for the world: I think that none of us would have become priests if we had not known convincing priests burning with the fire of Christ's love. So this is the first point: let us try ourselves to be convincing priests.
The second point is that we must invite, as I have already said, to the initiative of prayer, to have this humility, this trust of speaking with God forcefully, with decision.
The third point: to have the courage to ask young people if they can consider that God might be calling them, because often a human word is necessary in order to open the ears to the divine calling; to speak with young people and above all help them to find a vital context in which they can live. Today's world is such that the maturation of the priestly vocation almost appears out of the question; young people need environments in which the faith is lived, in which the beauty of the faith appears, in which it appears that this is a model of life, "the" model of life, and therefore to help them to find movements, or the parish – the parish community – or other contexts in which they are really surrounded by faith, by the love of God, and can therefore be open to have God's calling arrive and help them. In addition to this, let us thank the Lord for all the seminarians of our time, for the young priests, and let us pray. The Lord will help us!
bump
And when it is all well “re-thunk” ... watch it slide left. They’ll probably ban marriage but allow girlfriends.
I guess you read all of the headline but none of the article, huh?
Crazy headline to go with a wonderful article, no?
Yes I read the article, and I’m an EX-Episcopalian and DEEPLY HURT by watching my church slide left and into oblivion, one BABY STEP at a time. I’m seeing the same thing with the RCs. Just a little tweak here and there, but NOTHING moves RIGHT, ever. If there is movement it is always left. So if there is going to be a “rethinking” and if there is any “movement” ... it will be toward the left, that’s just history. Yes I read the article, I can see what is being “said” ... but I’ve also seen what is actually happening, and you have too, haven’t you?
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