This essay first appeared
in CROSSCURRENTS Winter 2008
Volume 57. NO 4
Asceticism Today
CELIBACY TODAY:
Mystery, Myth, and Miasma
It was from sexual purity that the priesthood
was believed to derive its power.
Mayke de
Jong
Celibacy,
popularly understood, is the state of non-marriage and/or the abstinence
from sexual activity.
The voluntary sacrifice of all sexual pleasure is an extreme form of
religious asceticism when it is undertaken for a lifetime or even for
very extended periods.
Celibacy is unlike
other modes of asceticism—fasting, sleep deprivation, endurance of
extreme temperatures, or even poverty—in that sexual pleasure or
activity is not necessary for individual survival as are some measure of
sustenance, recuperation, and protection from the elements. These modes
of controlling natural desires have often been used as adjunctive,
supportive, and protective of the dedicated celibate’s pursuit of his or
her goal. Despite the fact that the ideal and the practice of celibacy
exist in many religious traditions, it is not well understood.
Celibacy is one mode of coming to terms with one’s sexuality.
While sexual desire is a natural drive it also raises natural
resistances. Self-control or self-mastery is one of the essential
developmental life tasks. Athletic, intellectual, or military conquests
as well as and religious idealism all depend for success on the drive to
conquer one’s self and modulate natural desires. Sigmund Freud insisted
that psychoanalysis could take place only in an atmosphere of
deprivation. Self-knowledge and insight are best gained not in acting
out one’s feelings, but restraining action in favor of understanding.
Religious contemplative life has incorporated this belief for centuries.
This conviction about the value of restraint is a cornerstone of
celibate motivation and achievement. The implications of this truth
about the worth and need to control human “passions” far exceed the goal
of personal growth and insight. Morality is not possible without the
ability to restrain impulses and modulate and redirect desires. Culture
and society in order to exist and flourish depend on an understanding
and practice of restraint.
It is difficult, however, to get the real life story of a person who
claims complete and perpetual celibacy. Autobiographical communications
about celibacy are rare and perhaps not completely possible. The
potential advantage of a first-hand view of celibacy is to have the
celibate person’s own vision of a relatively rare lifestyle. But whether
the personal witness to celibacy is spoken or written, it is likely to
be affected by the inclination to distance the image and ideal of
celibacy from the person him or her self. One explanation for the
scarcity of such accounts is the obvious necessity to deal with the
concomitant sexual history involved in the development of the celibate
decision and process beyond a terse admission similar to that of St.
Francis of Assisi who confessed he lived a “wild youth” prior to his
conversion at 17 years of age. Two prominent examples of celibate
autobiography are those of St. Augustine and Mahatma Gandhi. Augustine’s
Confessions is a world classic and the frank account of his
sexual life prior to his conversion. It led theologian Margaret Miles to
conclude that the book reflects the admission of a sexual addiction.
Gandhi devotes 2 chapters of his autobiography to explain his discovery
and dedication to the process of celibacy—Brahmacharya.
He does not shy away from recounting his sexual development and his
celibate failures.
Any authentic autobiography of celibacy must fulfill certain criteria
like these do. It must reflect basic elements of celibacy that include
the following: First, such a narrative should record one’s developmental
relationship patterns, many of which precede any celibate intention.
Nevertheless, early experiences vitally influence a person’s eventual
sexual/celibate pattern of adjustment. Family background, education,
ethnic and cultural fixes, character traits, sexual preferences, unique
talents, loves and hates all come into play. In addition, self-knowledge
is fundamental to any successful celibate pursuit.
Second, celibacy is dynamic; it is a process of internalization
and actualization of the celibate ideal from intention to achievement.
Celibacy does not ordinarily begin with practice, but with the formation
of an image of celibacy, often personified in one person believed to be
a practicing celibate. This process involves the achievement of a degree
of self-knowledge, measuring one’s own capacity to live with the sexual
discipline and deprivation necessary to be celibate. Having some degree
of self-awareness readies a person to proceed further in seeking
knowledge about the process of celibacy and what it involves in
realistic terms. Because celibacy is neither abstract nor extraneous to
the individual striving for it, these inevitable steps precede the
experimentation and practice of celibacy. If, in time, celibacy takes
personal root, it is often capped by a more or less formal vow. It is
from a stable internal base that celibacy can be said to reach
achievement once its integration is woven into the fiber of one’s being.
That is when celibacy becomes an integral part of one’s sexual self.
Self-revelation of such a process is never simple.
Finally, celibate achievement is accountable and, to a degree,
measurable. “By their fruits you shall know them.” Although celibacy is
capable of many faces, its moniker is also capable of wearing many
masks. Out of all of its manifest variations, permutations,
individualizations, frustrations, failures, or perversions, certain
qualities measure its authenticity: service, complete self-honesty,
awareness of the oneness of the human condition, and the capacity to
love.
There is a persistency
to the practice. For centuries celibacy has been a logical and practical
way for some men and women to live their lives and serve a family or
clan; also, a celibate way of life has served many people well in their
pursuit of and dedication to science, art, politics, or religious
goals. It will always remain so. In this sense celibacy has proved
itself to be a natural human phenomenon.
Because the sexual
drive is so basic a component of human nature and because sexual
pleasure is such an intense gratification, celibacy is rare as a life
choice. When persons declare that they have chosen celibacy as an
ascetic practice they often receive a measure of admiration because the
discipline required to practice and achieve it is generally acknowledged
as a monumental feat. When the sacrifice is coupled with religious
belief, celibacy is regarded as heroic.
There is no question in
my mind that healthy self-control and limitations on one’s desires,
including deprivations and self-sacrifice (especially in the pursuit of
service and love) can lead to interiority of superior quality, and in
religious terms, awareness of the Unseen. Beyond intellectual and
spiritual awareness celibate process and achievement has wider practical
implications related to appropriate restraint and proper use and
development of nature and created reality. Alfred North Whitehead in his
classic Science and the Modern World credits monasticism, so
vital in the development of the Christian tradition of celibacy, of
making fundamental contributions to the development of science. “We
owe it to St. Benedict that monasteries were the homes of practical
agriculturalists, as well as of saints and of artists and men of
learning. The alliance of science with technology, by which learning is
kept in contact with irreducible and stubborn facts, owes much to the
practical bent of the early” monks.
The fundamental respect for nature and the creativity released by
celibacy is part of the record of celibate tradition, West and East.
Mystery
Celibate asceticism
presents many puzzling facets—“mysteries,” if you will, beyond the sense
of the word “mystery” as used in religious and theological writings. The
history of religious celibacy is rich and diverse. It enjoys a
trajectory of luminaries and sublime reflections in many religious
traditions. Celibate ascetics constitute a firmament of shining stars
and black holes—successes and failures. Every major religion has
contributed to the panoply of the celibate universe. One is tempted to
use a telescopic approach to catch the essence of the infinite glow of a
reality that still offers many undiscovered dimensions.
I have chosen the
opposite approach to examining religious asceticism. I have restricted
myself to the sociological and psychological Petri dish and microscope
to examine religious celibacy. That is, here I present observations
about a limited population of publicly proclaimed celibates—all men,
each ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood in the United States over
a limited span of time (the final fifty years of the twentieth century).
After 40 years of observation of this group I was able to construct an
operational definition of religious celibacy lacking in the literature:
“Religious
celibacy is a freely chosen, dynamic state, usually vowed, that involves
an honest and sustained attempt to live without direct sexual
gratification in order to serve others productively for a spiritual
motive.”
This definition
eliminates the confusion in measuring religious celibacy that results
from use of the looser definition that does not account for an unmarried
person who is sexually active and a married person who sexually
abstinent.
Most religious
commentators, however, are loath to address the more practical realities
and difficulties of becoming celibate and maintaining its practice.
Spiritual writers most frequently characterize the idealistic and
positive aspects of celibate striving, emphasizing the elements of
religious mystery in their tradition. “Mystery” is possibly the most
frequently used word in literature about celibacy, at least in my
experience.
Often, in this context mystery refers to the relationship to
transcendent reality and to the “grace” without which celibate practice
and achievement is impossible according to these theologians. In many
ways the aura of mystery surrounding religious devotion, belief, and
practice is justly deserved. Yet talk of mystery separated from its
foundation in nature can effectively turn religious mystery into magical
thinking and expression—mystification. The separation or disregard of
the natural foundations of celibate asceticism is a serious flaw in its
achievement.
One puzzle encoded in
this assertion of the ascetic mystery in religious practice is that
according to Catholic theology every sexual thought, word, desire, and,
action outside of a valid marriage between a man and a woman is sinful
for anyone. The moral bar for every man or woman (or boy and
girl) is “celibacy”—complete sexual abstinence—before marriage. And even
in marriage the use of any contraceptive means renders the act sinful.
Theological writing
about sex (and one cannot consider celibacy and disregard sex) is
fraught with judgments of behavior that is labeled intrinsically
evil. According to Catholic teaching masturbation, contraception, and
homosexual acts are among the most “inherently evil” acts among the
multiple choices a person can make. Although in theory all sex outside
marriage is sinful, moral theologians pose that in pastoral practice
there is room for “understanding and forgiveness.” But this pastoral
understanding and forgiveness (as well as authoritative judgments on
human sexuality) are in the hands of priests bound by celibacy—“perfect
and perpetual continence.”
There is another
mystery, or puzzle. Priesthood and celibacy have been so wedded, over
the last five centuries especially, that even recent popes (John Paul II
and Benedict XVI) claim that it is not within their power to abandon the
requirement that clerics bind themselves with the vow of perfect and
perpetual celibacy before they are ordained. Part of the puzzle this
presents is that there is no scriptural evidence that Jesus practiced
celibacy. The evolution of the moral teaching about sex—that it is
rarely free from the taint of sin—retrojected from the fourth
century back to the time of Jesus the theological presumption that
Christ and most of the apostles of necessity “must have”
practiced celibacy.
Celibacy, even on a
natural level, does bespeak power, discipline, and control and can
inspire awe and confidence in the authority of one who claims it. The
reforming Council of Trent reasserted the celibate requirement for
ordination and reinforced the bond between celibacy and the power of the
priesthood. Bishops have been dedicated to preserve the image of the
celibate priesthood before the public and in the minds of the faithful
since celibacy is a fundamental source of power. That image of
priesthood is defined in the Catechism of the Council of Trent
(1545-1563); an image that can hardly be postulated without the
presumption of celibacy:
"Bishops and
priests being, as they are, God's interpreters and ambassadors,
empowered in His name to teach mankind the divine law and the rules of
conduct, and holding, as they do, His place on earth, it is evident that
no nobler function than theirs can be imagined. Justly, therefore, are
they called not only angels, but even gods, because of the fact that
they exercise in our midst the power and prerogatives of the immortal
God."
This image and the
power that derives from it
are so intimately bound to clerical celibacy that its demise would
threaten the collapse of the entire clerical edifice. Sociologist Anson
Shupe analyzes the essential social exchange in various religious
traditions.
He claims that celibacy is Le Don (The Gift), that is, the basic
contractual tie of the Catholic Church with its members. Clerical purity
is the vital, inseparable core of the social exchange between the
hierarchy/clergy and the members of the faith community. In theory and
practice the assurance of the celibacy of Catholic clergy is exchanged
for the trust, respect, belief, support, obedience, and allegiance of
the faithful. The faithful in return receive comfort, forgiveness, and
salvation. (In the Protestant ministry the gift is servantship.
In the rabbinate the gift is scholarship and interpretation.)
The core gift of
any religion is essential to maintain the commitment of faith within
communities between the clergy elite and the faithful. Clergy misconduct
in the form of celibate violations within the Catholic Church is a
betrayal of the kind most destructive to the structure of Catholicism.
Celibate violations, like no other, obliterate the core commitment and
threaten to invalidate the trust, respect, support, belief, obedience,
and allegiance that the faithful willing exchange for what they have
perceived as the ultimate sacrifice of their clergy—celibacy. Whether or
not related to the abuse crisis in the United States, the Pew forum on
Religions and Public Life reported that in 2008 ten (10) percent of the
US population is ex-Catholics. (March 8, 2008)
Sexual betrayal by
Catholic clergy destroys the social exchange. This is becoming apparent
currently. All betrayals of the celibate gift involve power
inequities, conflict, emotional-physical harm, and often crime. No
amount of religious forgiveness can heal the rift. Only renegotiating
the exchange can bridge the fracture. Only the most profound
religious reformations have been able to deal with any past crisis of
the magnitude that the Catholic Church now faces. At core, the crisis in
the Roman Catholic Church in the United States and worldwide is a
celibate/sexual crisis. Seen from the perspective of institutional
power and control the “mystery” of celibacy (in the sense that it is
super-human and intrinsically connected with the divine, to use a
clerical term) must be preserved at all costs.
In this way the myth of clerical celibacy is born.
Myth
In the study of
religious myth there is a legitimate and important function that leads
to the deeper truths of religion. Myth represents a way out of the
impasses of logic and point of view, but not as a superior logic
disclosed by the dialectic. Myth presents reality as an immediate
totality. Some scholars almost loose themselves in the mystagogical
dimensions of religion and celibacy.
(Cf. Robert Barron, 1999)*
The function of mythic
discourse is profound. Myth eschews objective language for a coherent
narrative that involves the speaker directly in a personal relationship
with the universe. Its intent is not mere entertainment. The ancient
mythmakers did not intend to provide intelligible explanations of
natural phenomena. They were recounting events in which they were
involved to the limits of their very existence. Their narratives
reflected what they experienced directly. The images of myth are
products of the imagination, but they are not merely fantasy. “True myth
presents its images and its imaginary actors, not with the playfulness
of fantasy, but with a compelling authority. It perpetuates the
revelation of a thou.”
Mythic assumptions even
underlie all scientific approaches. The biologist, E.O. Wilson
acknowledges that the philosophers of science call these assumptions
paradigms. In the physical sciences these paradigms tend to be very much
reduced, so that almost anybody can supply the suppositions: cause must
precede effect; an object is identical only with itself; no object can
be in two places at once; the speed of light sets limits to time, etc.
The myths underlying the physical sciences are abstract enough that
researchers seldom have to worry about them. In the case of the social
sciences, such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology, questions of
paradigm tend to be less obvious and more complex. Religion poses its
perennial challenge to reason. But Wilson, in his search for a synthesis
of ways of knowing reality points out that doctrine draws on the same
creative springs as science and the arts, and its aim being the
extraction of order from the mysteries of the material world. To explain
the meaning of life it spins mythic narratives.
I affirm the importance
of mythical exploration in understanding religions, religious practice,
and religious truth—but here, for the purpose of clarity I am also using
myth in another of its rich definitions: the sense of something
untrue, imaginary, or a figment. The myth, or paradigm, that
distorts reality and in fact undermines the effectiveness of celibate
power is the fallacy that priest equals celibacy. Media accounts
frequently use ‘priest’ and ‘celibate’ interchangeably. Much of
sociological literature and survey studies make this same equation. Vatican and local church documents repeatedly solidify
this mythical presumption that "priest equals celibacy" and foster the
idea that cultic purity is a seamless reality. History elegantly
demonstrates the consolidation of power via the perpetuation of the
myth: the assumption that clergy are celibate (that is, sexually
abstinent) ascetics.
This is, of course, a
myth that believers, too, want to preserve. Any alternative is
frantically destabilizing to personal belief and to the power structure
of the entire institution. Believers find it hard even to imagine that
their bishops and priests who symbolize celibate purity are "fooling
around" sexually—much like children who find it hard to realize that
their parents are sexual beings.
In reality,
religious celibacy equals celibate practice. Genuine
religious celibacy is the actual practice of sexual abstinence, rather
than the image that constitutes the myth.
Currently, the nature
of celibacy constitutes a hotly contested debate in the Catholic Church.
I believe that the contest and the confusion result from the dearth of
open discussion about the reality of celibacy in practice and
achievement. Much of the debate is not on the nature and function of the
practice of celibacy, but of its requirement for priestly ordination.
One highly placed
religious superior stated in 1991, “two or three sexual acts in a year
do not constitute a violation of celibacy.” He may be correct according
to his idiosyncratic definition of celibacy. But this theologian must
take under consideration that, according to his logic, a man could
impregnate three women in a year and still maintain that he is a
“celibate,” or what is more to the point in public awareness, that
priests and bishops can sexually abuse minors several times a year and
still think of themselves and present themselves as celibate.
So persistent is this
myth that celibacy is simply defined by being a priest and not by
celibacy as an ascetic commitment, that ten years later, after the
public exposure of multiple celibate violations by clergy, the chief
spokesperson for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sr.
Mary Ann Walsh, asserted on national television that she was “convinced
that 99 and 44/100 percent” of priests in the United States were
practicing celibacy. When the interviewer expressed incredulity, she
repeated that she was “convinced.At
times the denial of sexual/celibate reality becomes preposterous. In a
November 24, 2004 deposition, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles said
that he had “never” known of a priest who had violated his celibacy.
At other times comments
about celibate practice become mysteriously contradictory to church
moral doctrine. A bishop, who is being accused by an adult man of
sexually abusing him when he was a fifteen-year-old boy, said in
deposition about another situation in his diocese, that masturbation
“does not constitute a violation against celibacy.”
This bifurcated and
deceptive way of understanding religious celibacy separating its
practice into non-marriage and (merely) sinful behavior led a priest to
protest to a New Jersey newsman, “I am a celibate. I have been ordained
for twelve years and I have had sex with only ten women and four men.”
Some Vatican spokesmen
appear to be more realistic about celibate practice than popes who speak
only in idealistic and regulatory terms about celibacy. In 1993,
Cardinal Jose Sanchez, Secretary of the Dicastery for the Clergy faced
an interviewer from BBC television who asked his opinion on studies,
recent at that time, that claimed that, at any one time, 45 to 50
percent of Catholic clergy were not practicing celibacy. The cardinal’s
response was, “I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of those figures.”
Even earlier—in the 1970 synod of Rome—the question about the
requirement for celibacy came up for discussion and a vote of the
bishops. Pope Paul VI announced that the assembly had voted 55 to 45
percent to preserve the requirement. When the subject of mandatory
celibacy came up for discussion again on a Vatican level in 1971,
Cardinal Franjo Seper, Archbishop of Zagreb said, “I am not at all
optimistic that celibacy is in fact being observed.”
A recent headline
announced, “Pope Benedict XVI re-affirmed the value of a priest choosing
to be celibate in accordance to the Catholic tradition.” The
requirement for priests to be celibate was proclaimed before the heads
of the nine congregations (Dicasteries) and eleven pontifical Councils
that make up the administration of the Vatican.
That marks a statement as official policy. The salient defect of the
pope’s re-affirmation is in “the value of a priest choosing to be
celibate.” Choices made under stress or duress (or subordinate to
corporate advantage) are inimical to the achievement of celibacy.
Celibacy is an individual, personal commitment. It involves the use and
disposition of one’s sexual instinct, drive, and desire.
Some men (and women)
who wish to dedicate themselves to celibacy as a way of life do tend to
band together with others who share the same goal. Group support can aid
the development of celibacy, but it always remains an individual
achievement. A personality deficiency can attract a person to a
discipline and a system that he hopes will control his sexual instinct.
This is the great danger of the obligatory vow connected with the
Catholic priesthood—confusing the power and prestige of an institutional
office with the intrinsic power of self-mastery.
Propagating the false
equation—priest equals celibacy—distorts reality and inhibits the
understanding of, and research into this important ascetic discipline.
In practical terms this misrepresentation fosters and tolerates sexual
violation by individuals and has led to the revelation of corruption of
epic proportions within the institution that is currently being exposed.
It is principally these
two factors—the mystification of celibacy (making it super
human-only priests can do it), and the mythification (absorbing
and suborning celibate identity into an institution)—that constitute the
toxic cultural core that contaminates celibacy in both theory and
practice in the Catholic Church today.
Miasma
For a classicist, like Marianne Mc Donald, professor at the University
of California at San Diego, miasma is a technical term. It means
pollution—particularly a religious stain for which one has to find a
spiritual remedy. I find this a precise and evocative description of the
state of celibate non-practice in the Catholic Church today.
The sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic bishops and priests has,
even in the estimation of the Catholic hierarchy, reached the status of
a “crisis."
Concern over the sexual misbehavior of clergy is not a new subject for
attention.
One of the classic attempts to deal with the sexual violations by
supposed celibate clergy was written a millennium ago.
The essence of this Eleventh Century treatise remains timely despite its
focus on “clerical homosexual practices” as understood at that time.
What is timeless and relevant is Peter Damian’s analysis of the
clerical culture that establishes a clear vision of celibacy as a
valuable form of asceticism as personal responsibility, but also
recognizes what constitutes institutional failure that calls for accountability.
Heated debates about the requirement of mandatory celibacy for men who
are ordained to the priesthood rage on every level of society. A common
sinecure is found in the statement, “let priests marry.” Marriage is not
a cure for the institutional denial, depravity, and deceit demonstrated
by a culture that has used the “celibacy” of its clergy as proof of its
spiritual authority.
The influence of the clerical culture has been seriously compromised by
the reports of clergy who violate their celibate commitment by abusing
minors—up to 11.5 percent in some areas.
The priest population in the United States that numbered 50,320 in 1994
was reduced to 43,406 in 2004.
As of 2003 the Vatican claimed to have 410,695 Catholic clergy
worldwide.
(But it also realizes that at least 125,000 priests worldwide have left
the ministry, most of them to marry, over the past fifty years.) The
Catholic Church assumes, at least for public purposes, that all of its
men are practicing celibacy as is required for ordination (al la
Cardinal Mahony). One can only speculate on the genuine spiritual force
that would be generated if celibacy were a reality among such a large
number of men. But the preservation of the myth of clerical celibacy is
crucial to the church’s claim to power and domination, and deemed
essential to maintain the bella figura of the institution and the
ability to deny any hint of scandal. But this myth is inimical to the
achievement of celibacy in spirit and truth. Hypocrisy is the
greatest religious sin. Perpetuation of the celibate myth is a
pollutant with destructive force
The Catholic Church has lost credibility even though the same degree of
exposure accorded to sexual abuse of minors in the United States has not
been recorded in other and varied kinds of celibate violation here or
globally. The clerical culture is under suspicion and scrutiny unmatched
since the time of the Protestant Reformation. One 1994 survey conducted
by a Catholic priest found that in a parish that has experienced an
abusive priest “only 44 percent of the lay respondents felt priests
could be trusted.”
Again referring to the Pew Forum—it reported that 31 percent of men and
women who had been raised Catholic had left the faith. That is the
largest shift of any faith group. The percentage of lay people who
mistrust clergy has doubled in the decade since Rossetti finished his
study. The trust with which the presumption of a celibate clergy endowed
clerical culture is essentially gone. More significantly trust in
matters about sexual morality and teachings are equally widely rejected.
This rejection and distrust of the clerical system has extended to its
financial dealings—now a crisis on the cusp because of the more than two
billion dollar cost to date of dealing with the sex crisis and the
questionable financial practices exposed by fighting civil law suites
and filings for bankruptcy protection.
Much is at stake in the rediscovery and rededication to celibacy—the
ascetic practice and discipline. Whether or not the Catholic priesthood
can be the site of this renewal is still a matter of serious doubt.
Presumed authentic clerical celibacy was the rope that secured the
stability, power, and prestige of the Catholic clerical culture. It is
also the thread that is unraveling, dismantling the cloak that has
covered corruption and hypocrisy, and holds in check toxic
contamination. The pollution of celibacy-violated is far more serious
than most observers are willing to admit. It is truly miasma—a poisonous
atmosphere caused by decomposing matter that in turn causes illness and
“a foul smell.”
Analysis
The epic consequences
of the sex abuse crisis by clergy in the United States have only begun
to play out in the structure and culture of the Catholic Church. The
impending restructuring will go to prove celibacy’s inherent value and
power. The real force of celibacy is going to be proven in the
monumental outcome of celibacy-betrayed.
Already mentioned is
the precipitous decline in clergy vocations that is predicted to
continue. The exposure of the widespread failure of celibacy (especially
in the criminal mode demonstrated in abuse of minors) by those who
staked their power, validity, and ministerial prestige on the perception
of perfect sexual abstinence has raised questions of gigantic
proportions. Is vowed celibacy an efficacious mode of ministry? Is the
Catholic Church’s teaching about human sexuality true? These questions
are of Copernican proportions partially because the conclusion is
apparent. The Church’s teaching about sex and marriage are wrongheaded
and lack the scientific and common sense justification to sustain them
any longer. Recently a Catholic bishop, Geoffrey Robinson stated what
many Catholics think, “Sexual abuse of minors by a significant number of
priests and religious, together with the attempts by many church
authorities to conceal the abuse, constituted one of the ugliest stories
ever to emerge from the Catholic Church. It is hard to imagine a more
total contradiction of everything Jesus Christ stood for, and it would
be difficult to overestimate the pervasive and lasting harm it has done
to the Church.”
Harm to the church of
the past, but hope for the church of the future. The secret and
subversive way the church manipulates its members and wields its power
even in the secular society is no longer under protective wraps.
Obedience—even blind obedience—to the power structure of the church is
difficult if not impossible for educated and devoted Christians.
Honesty, sex and love are too intimately bound up with the daily lives
of the average person to believe and conform to the celibate standard
imposed on everyone when the reality of sexual betrayal by those
presented as celibate is so tenuous and dishonest.
What Episcopal Bishop
John Shelby Spong says of Christianity, as a religious movement, is
clearly true of the practice of celibacy within the Catholic tradition
today—it must change, become real, or die.23
That means that clerical celibacy must find its true base in human
nature, profound self knowledge, and in relationship to all createdness.
As Antony of the Desert responded to the philosopher’s inquiry about his
deprivation of the solace of books, “My book, philosopher, is nature,
and thus I can read God’s language at will.”
24
Celibacy must be what
it claims to be—sacrifice of sexuality, restraint for a purpose. It is
not an instrument of institutional power and control; it never should
have been used for those ends. Saint Antony of the Desert (d. 355) is a
prime example when he refused to lend his celibate power and status to
the political conflicts even when emperors wrote. The interior reality
of celibacy has a power of its own and that does count immensely.
For reasons I have
tried to explain, much of this power has been lost in large part because
religious authority does not take the practice or violation of celibacy
seriously and dismisses transgressions as “slips” or “understandable
human failures” to be buried in
secrecy wherever possible. But the world, as Gandhi said, is in great
need of authentic religious celibacy today. It is indispensable for the
reformation of the Catholic priesthood. If the power of mature and
authentic celibacy can be rediscovered and renewed, the creative
contributions it has to offer are immeasurable. Its demise in the
priesthood has already taken a heavy toll on faith and confidence
in American Catholics.
SOURCES
FOR
CELIBACY TODAY
ABC Television, 20/20, “Priests
and AIDS,” February 2001.
Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae,
Vatican Publication. Rome: 2003.
Attorney General Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, The Sexual Abuse of Children in the Roman Catholic
Archdiocese of Boston, Boston: July 23, 2003.
Attorney General, New Hampshire
Department of Justice, A Report of the Investigation of the Diocese
of Manchester, New Hampshire, 33 Capitol Street, Concord: 2002
(2003).
Catechism of the Council of Trent.
First published in 1566. English trans. Fr. C Callan, 1923.
“Celibacy,” Catholic Dictionary and
Cyclopedia, Extension Press, Chicago: 1906.
Code of Canon Law, The Canon
Law Society of America, Washington, D.C.: 1984.
Crosby,
Michael H.,
Celibacy: Means of Control or Mandate of the Heart?
1996.
Crosby,
Michael H., Rethinking
Celibacy, Reclaiming the Church, Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana:
2003.
Doyle, T.P., Sipe, A.W.R., Wall, P.J.
Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church’s 2000 Year Paper
Trail of Sexual Abuse, Volt Press. Los Angeles: 2006.
Frankfort,
H. and H.A., Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient
Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East,
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 1972.
Gandhi, Mohandas K., An
Autobiography: the Story of My Experiments With Truth, Beacon Press.
Boston: 1993.
Guccione, Jean in the LA Times
(12/5/04) (10/12/05) (3/14/06) (4/26/06) (11/29/06), etc.
Quasten, J., Patology Vol. III,
Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1960.
Spong, John Shelby, Why
Christianity Must Change Or Die, Harper Collins, San Francisco: 1998.
Richard Sipe
de Jong, Mayke, (1998). "Imitatio Morum. The Cloister and
Clerical Purity in the Carolingian World" in Medieval Purity
and Piety. Michael Frassetto, Ed. New York: Garland
Publishing. See
Note 3, below.
Mohandas K, Gandhi, An Autobiography: the Story of My
Experiments With Truth, Beacon Press. Boston: 1993. Chapters
VII and VIII
are devoted to his account of celibacy; they are immediately
preceded by a chapter “Spirit of Service.”
Brahmacharya
literally means that mode of life that leads to the realization
of God; a realization that is impossible without restraint.
Ordinarily it is understood to mean complete control over the
sexual instinct and the sexual organs.
*“Celibacy is
unreasonable, unnatural, and excessive, which is why it has been
chosen, across cultures and throughout history, as one of the
ways in which lovers of God have traditionally expressed their
love.”p.99 He
contends that it is pointless to try and understand or explain
this self-gift.
Anson Shupe,
The Spoils of the Kingdom: Clergy Misconduct and
Social Exchange in Religious Life. The University of
Illinois Press, Champlain: 2007.
H. & H.A.
Frankfort, Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of
Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near
East, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 1972, p.
15.
The 2003
Vatican publication Annuariun Statisticum Ecclesiae gives
the worldwide figures as of 2003: 405,058 priests; 4,695
bishops; 745 archbishops; 190 cardinals; and 7 patriarchs.
23. John Shelby
Spong, Why Christianity Must Change Or Die, Harper
Collins, San Francisco: 1998.
24. J Quasten,
Patology Vol III, p.149, Westminster, Maryland:
The Newman
Press, 1960.
Click & Learn
