Compulsory Celibacy
By John M Swomley
[Dr. John M. Swomley is professor emeritus of social ethics at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City. He is a frequent contributor to Christian Ethics Today.]
The Vatican, which has the last absolute monarch in the Western world and a ruling court elite known as the Curia, is now facing widespread resistance. A Catholic referendum movement began in Europe: "More than 2.3 million Austrian and German Catholics have signed referenda" and "similar initiatives have been undertaken in Italy, France, Belgium and Australia" according to a full page ad in the May 31, 1996 National Catholic Reporter.
In the United States a group of ten unofficial groups calling themselves the "National Task Force of We Are the Church Coalition" is also seeking major church reforms. These include "equal rights for women," and "a church which affirms the goodness of sexuality" and "the primacy of conscience in deciding issues of sexual morality" such as birth control.
A key aspect of this reform movement is a rejection of compulsory celibacy and the welcoming of married priests back into church service.
One need not be a Roman Catholic to recognize the value of such reforms in a church with such world-wide influence which stands in contrast to the Eastern Catholic and Protestant churches that have long valued marriage and married clergy. It is therefore fitting to examine the concepts of celibacy, subordination of women, and marriage in the light of biblical practice, and past and recent history.
The concept of celibacy was alien to Hebrew law and practice. From the beginning of the priestly Levites there was marriage and a hereditary character to the priesthood. In the New Testament marriage was freely acknowledged by the disciples and apostles. Paul, who for his own reasons rejected marriage, wrote in First Corinthians 9:5: "Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas (Peter)?"
Certainly Jesus advocated marriage. Referring to the creation of male and female, he said, "For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife and the two shall be one." Then he added, "What therefore, God has joined together let not man separate" (Matthew 19:5, 6).
C. J. Cadoux in his The Early Church and the World refers to the beginnings of celibacy as "due to the contagion of Oriental, Essene or neo-Pythagorean notions as to the impurity of matter." He also wrote that in the pre-Constantinian period "the several achievements of the Church were gradually perverted and corrupted in different ways. The opposition to wrong sexual habits overreached itself and developed into an unhealthy horror of all sex life and a morbid idealization of celibacy and virginity."
Historian Henry C. Lea also wrote that the practices of asceticism in early Christianity came from the East "and were chiefly represented by Buddhism such as monasticism.. . confession, penance, and absolution, the sign of the cross" among others.
However, it was only after Constantine (312) and his successors that asceticism triumphed because of the immorality of the Christian pastors, says Williston Walker. The first Christian monasteries were established in Egypt between 315 and 346. Celibacy was the rule in monastic life. It was not until 385, however, that Pope Siricius tried to impose celibacy on the clergy. In addition to the idea that sex was sinful there was another reason advanced for celibacy. Vast amounts of property were donated to the church by wealthy members, including emperors. There was danger of these possessions being lost to the church if the clergy who were in charge of these riches were married and wanted their children to inherit them.
However, as late as the third and fourth Councils of Carthage in 397 and 398 the canons prescribing celibacy had no enforcement mechanism and evidently left the decision to the individual conscience whether each should abandon his wife.
In spite of the efforts of some popes and of a monasticism that involved communities entirely of men or entirely of women, celibacy could not be enforced. There were married clergy, clergy with concubines, clergy with children, and other sexual expressions outside marriage.
????A llof this changed when Hildebrand, or ??egory VII (1073-1085) became pope. He viewed priestly celibacy as essential to theocratic rule by the papacy and to the church`s supremacy over the various kingdoms and empires. Lea said of Gregory`s view: The priest must be a man set apart from his fellows, consecrated to the one holy purpose, reverenced by the world as a being superior to human passions and frailties, devoted soul and body to the interests of the Church, and distracted by no temporal cares and anxieties foreign to the welfare of the great corporation of which he was a member."
In other words, the power of the church over secular society depended on the immense power and authority it could exercise everywhere through priests "holding the keys of heaven" in their hands, using "the machinery of confession, absolution and excommunication" over each member of his parish. The priest therefore could not have "any other loyalty to family or property.
However, Hildebrand`s iron discipline led eventually to widespread corruption of both the papacy and the clergy. Lea described the lust and sexual corruption of the clergy: "They were the natural product of a system which for four centuries had bent the unremitting energies of the Church to securing temporal power and wealth, with exemption from the duties and liabilities of the citizen. Such were the fruits of the successful theocracy of Hildebrand, which, entrusting irresponsible authority to fallible humanity, came to regard ecclesiastical aggrandizement as a full atonement for all and every crime.
One outcome of the "dissolute and un-Christian life of the priesthood" during the 1400s, was the "success of the Reformation" in the 1 500s. Even those who remained celibate were described as having an influence of almost "unmixed evil."
If we jump now to the 20th Century, we discover that the popes have continued to enforce celibacy. No one has been more rigorous than Pope John Paul II in defending celibacy and avoiding gender equality. Except in the Eastern churches, priests who marry are forced out of their churches or in some cases laicized. Yet there are numerous priests who secretly marry or have sexual relationships with women.
Celibacy is not the same as chastity. Therefore it is quite possible to conform to the unmarried or celibate rule and be involved sexually in secret, to be in technical adherence to the church rule. But this presents a serious question of ethics not only of personal dishonesty but of the involvement of another person or persons who are also pressed into secrecy.
David Rice, a former priest, in his book, Shattered Vows, has a chapter, "The Shadow Side of Celibacy" which details the worldwide violations of celibacy. In Pennsylvania, for example, there is "a nonprofit organization called `Good Tidings` which helps women who have become involved with priests." The leader of the organization says "She has over seven hundred women on her books."
An active priest wrote in the Franciscan magazine St.. Anthony`s Messenger in 1986 that "mandatory celibacy has become the millstone around the neck of the priesthood and is threatening to destroy it." David Rice summarized his article as follows: "The law of celibacy is routinely flouted by many priests, some of whom have secretly married and pass off their wives as live-in housekeepers in the rectory. Others . . . have taken lovers. The law has also led to `rampant psychosexual problems` including a huge increase in reported cases of child molesting and a `noticeable increase in the number of gay seminarians` at Catholic divinity schools."
The Catholic theologian Richard McBrien in an article in the June 19, 1987 Commonweal suggests that the priesthood may be "attractive to certain people precisely because it excludes marriage. To put it plainly: as long as the Church requires celibacy for the ordained priesthood, the priesthood will always pose a particular attraction for gay men who are otherwise not drawn to ministry." In effect it provides them "occupational respectability and freedom from social suspicion."
Rice says "compulsory celibacy does not work." The result?????is "thousands of men leading double lives, thousands of woman leading destroyed lives, thousands of children spurned by their ordained fathers, to say nothing of… the psychiatric cases, the alcoholics and the workaholics…"
The Catholic theologian Richard McBrien. . . suggests that the priesthood may be "attractive to certain people precisely because it excludes marriage. To put it plainly: as long as the Church requires celibacy for the ordained priesthood, the priesthood will always pose a particular attraction for gay men who are otherwise not drawn to ministry. "In effect it provides them occupational respectability and freedom from social suspicion.
Rice adds, "Yes, our men in the Vatican know."
The Vatican`s tough response is that if priests resign or are married and exposed, they lose their pension, insurance, and may be excommunicated.
Why does the Vatican continue to insist on celibacy? According to Rice, celibacy is a "control factor par excellence. Bachelors are quite simply easier to manage. There is no family to care for; there is no wife to counsel disobedience or to stiffen resolve; there is no danger of nepotism or of children inheriting church property.
Actually, there is in some places nearly open disregard for the celibacy rule. In some parts of the world more than half of all priests live with women: 80 percent in Peru, between 60 and 70 percent in Brazil, over 50 percent in the Philippines, and in parts of Africa it may approach even higher rates.
Also, there is serious inconsistency in the compulsory celibate rule. In the Eastern Catholic church priests have always been free to marry. And in the United States and England, a number of married Protestant clergy who oppose women ministers and bishops convert to Catholicism and are accepted as ordained priests in the Roman church, which is opposed to the ordination of women.
These issues are not unrelated. One plausible and perhaps the dominant reason for male celibacy and for the acceptance of married Protestant clergy who don`t want to serve with women ministers is patriarchy. The Roman Catholic church will not risk even the slightest opening of the door to equality of women, lest men eventually lose control at all levels of the church. What does the church lose in continuing the celibacy rule? One thing is the inevitable disconnect in the fact of a celibate priest extolling the sanctity of marriage and the family. Speaking of the celibacy required by Hildebrand, writer Henry Lea said, "The parish priest, if honestly ascetic, was thereby deprived of the wholesome common bond of human affections and sympathies and was rendered less efficient for good in consoling the sorrows and aiding the struggles of his flock."
Modern priests are keenly aware of this deficiency, and in the light of new respect for women, see the need for partnership in both ministry and in life. There is recognition and celebration of sexuality, and a renewal of the role of individual conscience against the strictures of compelled behavior. What does this mean in terms of numbers? There are more than one hundred thousand priests who have left their ministry, which is close to "a quarter of all the active priests in the world." David Rice describes this as follows:
Most of them marched resolutely out, vowing to take no more; others stormed out in fury and disgust; many simply got up from their knees, made the sign of the cross, and walked quietly away. The rate could be calculated at more than one every two hours, for more than twenty years, they left – and left, and left. And still they leave. Right now, according to sociologist Richard Schoenherr, 42 percent of all American priests leave within twenty-five years of ordination. That means that by now half of all American priests under sixty have left."
Does this mean that non-Catholics should rejoice at this massive exodus? Not at all. It has been a personal and institutional tragedy. If the Roman Catholic Church is nudged by its reformers who still love the church into treating marriage of both clergy and laity as a great institution, women as equal to men, sexuality as good, and conscience as superior to patriarchal dogma, the world will be a better place. There will be greater respect for family planning and birth control as well as concern for overpopulation and the environment. In short, non-Catholics should welcome the Catholic reform movement and unofficial agencies within the Catholic church, such as Catholics for a Free Choice. Likewise, Protestant church leaders engaged in ecumenical dialogue with their Catholic counterparts should make it clear that ecumenism must include major reforms and not be dependent on minor theological concessions.
