Thoughts on clerical celibacy

https://arturovasquez.wordpress.com/2020/01/22/thoughts-on-clerical-celibacy/

His position, as a lapsed Catholic, is ambivalent but interesting.

Going crazy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwl0IL00pQ0

Just in general, his video suffers from a self-congratulatory tone. 

I'm a 30-year-old, able-bodied man, well-educated man who's decided that I want nothing to do with dating, marriage, or sex. That I'd rather spend my time with the sick, poor, emotionally-burdened, and elderly, than I would with a wife and children of my own. 

i) Assuming he's straight (and he's mentioned a girlfriend in his past), this statement, as it stands, is just not credible. No normal, young, able-bodied man wants nothing to do with sex. The most charitable interpretation is that he's waxing hyperbolic. 

A powerful, innate, irrepressible desire for sex and female companionship is always in play. The potential is always in reserve. It's a live option. Some men leave the priesthood for women. Take the recent case of Fr. Jonathan Morris. Or Alberto Cutié. 

For different reasons, some men despair of that. They've given up hope. But the instinct is not a switch you can flip on and off. 

2. A more honest statement would be for Casey to say, not that he wants nothing to do with sex, but that he's made a sacrifice. His hardwired desire is overridden by a sense of duty. 

3. Since he's not a husband and father, he has no basis of comparison. Suppose he was happily married with kids. Would he regret his choice?

4. Wanting to have a normal family life isn't "worldly" but godly. God made us social creatures and sexual creatures. That's built-in. That's part of our telos. 

5. Casey erects a false dichotomy between having a normal family life and ministering to the sick, poor, emotionally-burdened, and elderly–as if those are mutually exclusive activities. In fact, ministry is emotionally draining, and a happy family life helps to recharge a pastor so that he can do ministry without undergoing emotional burnout. Compare that to the cliche of the "whisky priest" who can't cope with the yawning, interminable, inconsolable isolation and loneliness. 

6. Casey is well-educated in the sense that he has degrees in religion, but those aren't widely marketable. It's not like he has an MBA from Harvard, but went into the Franciscan order instead of Wall Street. And while he took a vow of poverty, it's not like he's living on the street. He enjoys free room and board. The Franciscan order provides for all the necessities. That frees him up to focus on other things. 

7. When you're young you have a sense of boundless opportunities. The future is wide open. You have opportunities to burn. You can blow opportunities but have to time make up for lost opportunities. As you age, opportunities dwindle. 

Many men can get to a point in life where they panic because they realize they just passed the last exit on the freewill. It's too late to turn around. This is for the duration. They must now continue on this course until they die. It will be this way all the way to the end. 

Casey is still too young to have that sense of life closing in on him, but that's the problem with his boastful statements. He's not at the point of life where he knows what he's talking about when he makes these back-patting, overly self-confident statements. He lacks the necessary experience. The youthful idealism may be sincere, but life can look very different at 50 than 30. There are seasoned priests who'd wince at his lack of foresight and self-understanding. It becomes costlier as time goes on. 

8. He talks about his jam-packed itinerary, but busyness can be a distraction from emptiness and loneliness. A better test is how you feel when you're not preoccupied with filler to pad out what's missing in your life. 

Defending celibacy

It's striking to see Catholic religious leaders continue to defiantly back and rationalize mandatory clerical celibacy. Bishop Barron is a case in point. One thing I've noticed, although it's just a cursory impression, is that the folks defending clerical celibacy seem to be, for the most part, clerics rather than layman. There's not the same grassroots enthusiasm for the policy. Unless I missed it, most Catholic apologists don't seem to be going to bat on the issue. And it wouldn't be surprising of Catholic fathers and mothers are wary of the policy. They've seen the damage at ground level. 

The paradox of the policy is that the more it fails, the more Catholic leaders defend it. As a rule, policymakers don't feel the need to defend a successful policy. Its success is the selling point. 

The more that Catholic leaders double down and circle the wagons to defend the policy, they more they draw attention to its abject failure. When you pigheadedly hang on to a counterproductive policy, that constantly puts you on the defensive. 

Is there a gift of celibacy?

1. There's an entrenched tradition that I assume originates in Roman Catholicism and carries over into Protestant theology, according to which some Christian men and women have a "gift of celibacy". The prooftext is 1 Cor 7:7. Perhaps that's correct, but there's the danger that when we think we know what a passage means, we stop asking questions. Or rather, we think there are no questions to ask. 

Indeed, it's customary to posit a gift of celibacy and leave it at that, with very little explanation of what a gift of celibacy actually amounts to. They don't bother to delve into that. Has anyone ever actually met a Christian with the "gift of celibacy"? Or is that an idealized abstraction based on the received interpretation? 

One thing a gift of celibacy might mean is that some Christian men (and women) lack any heterosexual libido. Or, if not quite devoid, have a very low libido. As if the man suffered from a severe testosterone deficit. 

Is that what Paul means? Possibly. That, however, would be highly abnormal, and I wonder if Paul is saying that physical abnormality qualifies some men for full-time ministry. Seems odd that something that unnatural and anomalous would be a prerequisite for full-time ministry. 

Is it the supernatural equivalent of chemical castration? Possibly. However, Scripture doesn't generally treat an unnatural misfortune as a necessary qualification for serving God. 

In addition, the human sex drive isn't just physical but psychological. It includes memory, imagination, anticipation, and longing for a special kind of companionship (spouse and kids). Is there a gift of celibacy that erases all that from the psychological makeup of some Christians? Did Paul think he was a freak? 

2. The traditional interpretation hinges on a single word–charisma–which is usually rendered "gift". Is that reliable? In 1 Corinthians, Paul uses charisma as an umbrella term to cover a variety of phenomena. Are such disparate examples reducible to a one core idea? Is he using the same word for stylistic unity? Should we define the examples by the word or define the word by the examples?

3. Rom 11:29 provides an instructive comparison. When Paul refers to "gifts" and "calling", are those meant to be distinct concepts, or do they function as rough synonyms? That passage is assumed to refer back to Rom 9:4-5. What's the allocation? Are some of those items gifts while other items are vocations? Are all those items both gifts and vocations? 

If we distinguish between the meaning of words and the meaning of concepts, the concept of a divinely impose duty captures the basic idea. Israel had (has?) a divine calling, with corresponding obligations. The ideas of gift and calling merge in mission or commission. 

4. Rather than approaching the question from a philological standpoint, suppose we approach it from a biographical standpoint. We know from Acts and Galatians that God singled out Paul to perform a particular mission. A mission which will entail great personal hardship and sacrifice. Similar in that respect to the vocation of OT prophets who had a thankless ministry. 

5. In addition, Paul discusses the Christian obligation, as circumstances demand, to forswear what's in your best self-interest for the benefit and common good of others. All told, I'm inclined to think that what Paul is talking about is not a "gift of celibacy" but the fact that on occasion, celibacy is an onerous necessity. Sexually, they are wired the same way as normal men and women, but God has put them in a situation where they are obligated to tough it out, despite the personal strain. Again, that's comparable to the sacrificial mission of some OT prophets. 

Celibacy and abortion

Here's an issue I've never seen discussed (which doesn't mean it hasn't been discussed). As is well-known, bishops have no compunction about engaging in elaborate schemes to conceal the sexual activity of priests. And the news coverage is focussed on homosexual priests.

However, you also have straight priests. I don't know if they're in the majority or minority. Of the total number of straight priests, a percentage have affairs with women. Or trysts with prostitutes. 

The question this raises is what bishops do when a priest impregnates a woman? A parallel question invokes a pregnant nun. How do you keep that a secret?

In the case of a nun, her superiors might instruct her to give the child up for adoption. 

In the case of a woman whom a priest impregnated, hush money is a possibility. Say a one-time lump sum payment to make her go away.

However, the safest and most cost-effective way to conceal an unwanted pregnancy would be an abortion referral. Does the policy of mandatory celibacy facilitate abortion? Do bishops avoid the scandal of pregnant nuns or women impregnated by priests by discreet abortion referrals?

I've never seen this discussed, but since there are undoubtedly children conceived in this situation, the question of what happens to them is inevitable. Clearly something happens to them. It's not that we don't hear about it because no such children are conceived. Rather, we don't hear about it because measures are taken to keep that under wraps. Do such measures include abortion? 

“Pope John Paul II” Photographed in his Underwear With a Woman

The year Karol Cardinal Wojtyla became "Pope John Paul II"

Hundreds of letters and photographs that tell the story of Pope John Paul II's close relationship with a married woman, which lasted more than 30 years, have been shown to the BBC.

The letters to Polish-born American philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka had been kept away from public view in the National Library of Poland for years.

The documents reveal a rarely seen side of the pontiff, who died in 2005.

There is no suggestion the Pope broke his vow of celibacy.

Of course, he never married. But that bolded statement doesn’t mean he never had sex.

There is a frequent misunderstanding about how the word “celibacy” is used in the Roman Catholic Church. The “vow of celibacy” is not a vow not to have sex; it is a vow not to marry. The old Catholic Encyclopedia makes the distinction this way:

The vow of chastity forbids all voluntary sexual pleasure, whether interior or exterior: thus its object is identical with the obligations which the virtue of chastity imposes outside the marriage state.

Strictly speaking, it differs (though in ordinary language the expressions may be synonymous) from the vow of celibacy (or abstinence from marriage), …

The violation of the vow of chastity is always a sin against religion; it constitutes also a sacrilege in a person who has received Holy orders, or in a religious, because each of these persons has been consecrated to God by his vow: his vow forms part of the public worship of the Church.

A person who, in defiance of his solemn vow, attempts to contract marriage, incurs the excommunication reserved to the bishop by the Constitution "Apostolicae Sedis".

That is a big difference. “Secular” priests (contrasted with those who join religious orders) don’t take vows of “poverty, chastity, and obedience”. They do however take vows of “celibacy”. A priest who has sex with a woman, or sodomy with a man, can confess the incident and be done with it. A priest who marries is in a whole different world of legal trouble with “the Church”.

Enter this story about Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, who later became known as “Pope John Paul II”.

“Pope John Paul letters reveal ‘intense’ friendship with woman”. The folks at Rorate Caeli tweeted that link with the message “The IMMENSE dangers of Express-Canonization”.

Of course, we all know that “Pope John Paul II”, who died in 2005, was “fast-tracked” into Sainthood, and was canonized by “Pope Francis” in 2014.

The Rorate folks are suggesting that the “fast track” was just simply too fast, and some important things were missed. Such as this “friendship”, for which there is now hard evidence in the form of letters and photographs.

Of course, the canonization committee provided the usual Roman Catholic explanation for the failure to incorporate these letters and photos into the process: “It’s not our fault”. They said:

The process of saint-making is usually long and very costly, but John Paul II was fast-tracked to sainthood in just nine years.

Normally the Vatican asks to see all public and private writings when considering a candidate for sainthood, but the BBC has not been able to confirm whether the letters were seen.

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints said it is up to individual Catholics to decide whether to send in documents.

"All our duties were done," it told the BBC in a statement. "All private documents, sent by faithful as a response to the edict, and documents found in important archives were studied."

The article concludes, “The National Library of Poland disputes that this was a unique relationship. It says it was one of many warm friendships the Pope enjoyed throughout his life.”