Two years ago, a group of eleven distinguished veterans of the Catholic priesthood in the German wrote to the Vatican, imploring that the Church’s vow of celibacy is made a voluntary commitment. They proposed that the church should also allow priests the option of getting married.
In an open letter, the group said that celibacy causes ‘fruitless loneliness’ and ‘social isolation’ for many clergy members; particularly after retirement.
The group point to 1 Timothy 3:2 as a verse to “provide food for thought” which says “A church leader must be without fault; he must have only one wife.”
The letter, written in January 2017, marked the 50th anniversary of the group’s ordination. It reviews the lessons they’ve learned since entering the call of the priesthood. In the letter, the eleven conveyed the isolation they feel because of their vow.
Did they use the occasion to ponder aloud the mysteries of their creed, or the wisdom gained in decades of service to the faithful? No. They simply penned a heartfelt cry of pain over their own solitude. A condition they would not wish on future cohorts of clerics, one writer argued.
Part of the letter reads;
“What moves us is the experience of loneliness, As elderly people who are unmarried because our office required this from us, we feel it vividly on some days after 50 years in the job. We agreed to this [form of] clerical life because of our job, we did not choose it.”
The letter also suggests that the required vow prevents people from entering the priesthood.
One signatory Retired priest Fr Franz Decker told the media:
“We believe that requiring that every man who becomes a priest to remain celibate is not acceptable. We think every Catholic should be allowed to choose if they would rather be celibate or not, regardless of whether they want to work as priests or not – just like in the Protestant Church or the Orthodox church, really, every church but the Catholic Church.”
Married to the Church
The roots of celibacy requirements go back to Jesus Christ. According to the Bible, he was an unmarried virgin. In the Bible, Jesus is often likened to a bridegroom whose bride is the Church.
Many of the early martyrs and church fathers emulated his life of chastity.
In the Catholic Church, clerical celibacy became a requirement in the 4th century when the practice was introduced at The Council of Elvira.
Its canon 33 decreed:
“Bishops, presbyters, deacons, and others with a position in the ministry are to abstain completely from sexual intercourse with their wives and from the procreation of children. If anyone disobeys, he shall be removed from the clerical office.”
It goes like this; married life is morally and spiritually suspect; priests, as religious officers, should be spiritual athletes above reproach; therefore, priests shouldn’t be married.
It is harsh to refute that this kind of argumentation finds back in some of St Augustine’s more unfortunate reflections on sexuality (original sin as a sexually transmitted disease; sex even within marriage is venially sinful; the birth of a baby associated with excretion, etc.).
One formidable author once presented a version of this rationalisation, appealing to the purity regulations in the book of Leviticus. His implication was that any form of erotic contact, even within marriage, would make a minister at the altar impure.
Those who are happy with the age-old rules say priestly celibacy allows priests time and energy to focus completely on their flock. Moreso, to emulate Jesus, who was unmarried, more faithfully. But those who would like to see married priesthood argue celibacy is so difficult for many men. It dissuades people from the priesthood and can lead to sexually immature people pastoring their flocks.
Celibacy Downsides
With the standing (and finances) of the clergy damaged by child-abuse scandals and shabby attempts to cover them up. The twilight years are a harder prospect than ever for priests on their own, even those who have led exemplary lives. Small wonder that fewer and fewer young men want to walk the same stony path.
As measured by the number of faithful, global Catholicism is faring decently. The flock is still growing in the developing world and migration from poor countries is reinvigorating tired congregations in the West. But the priesthood, with its hard calling of celibacy, is in free-fall in many places.
According to research conducted by the Economist, the number of Catholics connected to a parish in America has risen over the past half-century from 46m to 67m. While the number of priests has fallen from 59,000 to 38,000.
In France, about 800 priests die every year while 100 are ordained. Priest numbers there have fallen from 29,000 in 1995 to about 15,000. On present trends, they may stabilize at less than 6,000.
The result is that many jobs once done by priests, like taking funerals or ministering to the sick, are now done by lay-people or by deacons who may be married. But priests and priests only get to perform certain functions, including the consecration of bread and wine which is Christianity’s most important rite.
In most countries, the paucity of clerics is one factor driving the devout to switch from Catholicism to Pentecostalism and other non-conformist creeds, where there are plenty of pastors to serve their needs.
Critics Say Mandatory Priestly Celibacy Should Go
“In the Catholic church, we have 2,000 years’ history of its impossibility for many people,” said A.W. Richard Sipe, a sociologist and former Benedictine monk who has been married for 43 years. “Lots of people just can’t do it.”
Leonardo Boff, the left-wing Brazilian theologian who left the priesthood in 1992 and then married, described as “catastrophic” a situation where 18,000 priests in his country serve 140m Catholics. He predicts that Pope Francis will soon be obliged to allow married priests, experimentally, in Brazil alone.
In a 2012 study in the Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, researchers found that a sizeable minority of priests had sexual relationships, some with men and some with women, during their tenure, and 30 percent admitted to masturbation.
Forbye, an inquiry into child sexual abuse in Australia recommended in 2017 that the Catholic Church consider introducing voluntary celibacy for clergy.
Close to home and across the denominational divide, Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe (ACCZ) President Johannes Ndanga last year called upon Catholic priests to get married saying God only consider married people as holy.
“A Catholic priest seeks to bless a marriage when he himself does not believe in marriage, the bible is very clear when it says when God created Adam, he looked at him and said it’s not good for a man to stay alone. That’s when you see a Catholic priest taking a vowel not to marry when God says it’s not good for men to stay alone. Therefore we want to revisit completely all those things and see where we are lost, the bible says God created men in his own image, he made them men and women, bless them and told them to multiply,” he said.
He added that some priests should also get married and stop adultery because marriage is sacred.
“We are saying they should get married and stop adultery with some sisters out there, they should know that marriage is sacred whereby for one to be considered holy, he or she should get married. If you are not holy you remain single and it’s abominable in the bible for a man not to marry,”said Ndanga.
It’s 2019 & The Papal Still Have No Intention To Change it
Meanwhile, the Vatican has responded to the campaigners of the Movement for Married Clergy and the pro-married clergy might not like what they would hear.
This week Pope Francis told Reuters and AFP reporters that he has no intention of removing a Roman Catholic rule which requires priests to abstain from marriage and sex.
Not coming to heavy on disappointing the campaigners, the pontiff albeit said he remained open to investigating the possibility of ordaining older, well-respected married men in remote locations where clergy are in short supply.
“Personally, I think that celibacy is a gift to the Church. I am not in agreement (with those who say) optional celibacy should be permitted,”
said the Catholic leader as he returned to the Vatican from Panama where he had been attending a gathering of young Catholics – World Youth Day.
Well, the back and forth discourse between the anti-and-pro-married clergy could go on and on with no solution. Celibacy is just incomprehensible, unnatural, and yet alluring, for it is a form of life embraced by people in affection with Jesus Christ. We, just like any other concerned parties, appeal that the Vatican makes clergy celibacy voluntary instead of indispensable.
And since nominal Christianity is in a very fluid state of change and there is no formal doctrinal barrier to married men becoming priests, theoretically, the rules could be changed overnight. The question is, is there a papal will to pursue it?
That is a story for another day dear reader.
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