Very Confused About Priest Celibacy Requirement

[TimothyH]

Priest and religious people are called aside to a leadership role. In this role one is married to the Church to say. So having a relationship with anyone else is not allowed. Also about the year 500 this was started as a tradition and a way of disciple to Christ so one would not focus more on family

Very few religious are called to leadership roles. Religious are called to be obedient. All religious make a vow of obedience to their superior, agreeing that if they don’t obey their superior in any command other than a command to sin then they lose their soul. Bennedictine and Cistercian monks and nuns pass through life unnoticed by the world in a state of humility, not leadership. God may raise up leaders among the religious but all religious are called to obedience.

And priests are not married to the Church. There is no such thing. Priests make a promise of obedience to the Bishop but they are not married to the Church.

-Tim-

 

[po18guy]

Rather, it is our currently trendy hipster, sex-saturated, sex-obsessed, sex-consumed, sex-based culture that views celibacy as almost inhuman. In a culture which largely bases an individual’s human value on their attractiveness and sexual desirability, celibacy seems to be foolish. Good it is that such single-faceted cultures pass away, in the manner of the individuals who form them.

The celibacy rule might have been compelling during the medieval era, when Priests lived in monasteries to focus entirely on transcribing the Bible, lighting candles, engaging in prayer and tending the gardens from which they eat.

Today, the vast majority of priests do not live in monasteries. The Celibacy tradition seems like a relic from the antiquated past.

I think that celibacy is even more compelling in a society that is dying from an inordinate pre-occupation with sterilized and meaningless sexual relations.

 

[TimothyH]

Humans are sexual beings, hard wired. Its a “gift from God”, we are told and to be utilized in marriage. Fine. So how can priests and nuns reject a gift from God? To me, the Celibacy rule seems so unfair, contrary to human nature, and dare I say unjust?

I am ignorant about the Church justifications of celibacy. Can someone please explain clearly the rationale for such a requirement?

Regards.

As one who practiced celibacy for a few years and was considering embracing the celibate life permanently, I can tell you that those who are called to celibacy are not rejecting a gift from God but are instead accepting an even greater gift.

Sex is a gift from God but there are few gifts greater than when God gives himself completely to you and you give everything back to him in return. I walked three years in this gift.

When God Asks for an Undivided Heart: Choosing Celibacy in Love and Freedom by Andrew Apostoli.

http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348112069l/1820382.jpg

-Tim-

 

[po18guy]

As one who practiced celibacy for a few years and was considering embracing the celibate life permanently, I can tell you that those who are called to celibacy are not rejecting a gift from God but are instead accepting an even greater gift.

Sex is a gift from God but there are few gifts greater than when God gives himself completely to you and you give everything back to him in return. I walked three years in this gift.

-Tim-

As it is with all charisms, they are often doubted, misunderstood and even condemned by those who do not yet understand. Teaching so that understanding may come of it is the key.

 

[FrStevenJones]

Humans are sexual beings, hard wired. Its a “gift from God”, we are told and to be utilized in marriage. Fine. So how can priests and nuns reject a gift from God? To me, the Celibacy rule seems so unfair, contrary to human nature, and dare I say unjust?

I am ignorant about the Church justifications of celibacy. Can someone please explain clearly the rationale for such a requirement?

Regards.

Catholic priests are celibate because Christ was a celibate, and priests are in Persona Christi. Christ’s bride is the Church. So it is with the priest. He gives himself as a spiritual father to the Bride of Christ: The Church.

 

[ClearWater]

biblehub.com/matthew/19-12.htm

Matthew 19:12
"For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it."

 

[Abu]

LiberalPrincess #1
I am ignorant about the Church justifications of celibacy. Can someone please explain clearly the rationale for such a requirement?
#9
The Celibacy tradition seems like a relic from the antiquated past.

First, real Catholics are faithful to the teaching of the Church or orthodox, NOT liberal or conservative or any other political label.

Second, celibacy is an Apostolic Norm and the celibacy required for priests from the time of the apostles was mandatory, and obligatory.

Cardinal Ratzinger in *The Theological Locus of Ecclesial Movements *(note 10), explains the unity existing with and from the apostles, including priestly celibacy.
“That priestly celibacy is not a medieval invention, but goes back to the earliest period of the Church, is shown clearly and convincingly by Card. A.M. Stickler, *The Case for Clerical Celibacy: Its Historical Development and Theological Foundations *(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995). Cf.also I: Cochini, Origines apostoliques du celibat sacerdotal (Paris-Namur, 1981); S Heid, *Zolibat in der friihen Kirche *(Paderborn, 1997).” (p 483 n 2)
Notes
9 Quoted by Roman Cholij, Celibacy, Married Clergy, and the Oriental Code. Eastern Churches Journal, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), p. 112.
10 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Theological Locus of Ecclesial Movements. Communio (Fall 1998), footnote 2, p. 483.

**National Catholic REGISTER, May 19-25, 2002
Priestly Celibacy and Its Roots in Christ … Interview with Fr McGovern **
“The sacrament of Order gives the priest a share in the mystery of Christ as Spouse of the Church – as in Ephesians 5:23-31. The priest, as icon of Christ, has then to love the Church with the same spousal love, loving her with an exclusive, sacrificial love which results in all the fruitfulness of spiritual paternity, generating new children of God through his sacramental and pastoral ministry. This, according to John Paul II in Pastores Dabo Vobis, is the basic theological reason for celibacy.

“Recent scholarship on the history of celibacy in both the Easter and Western Church has shown that there is a considerable body of evidence in favour of the argument that priestly celibacy is of apostolic origin, based on Christ’s invitation to the Twelve to leave all things and follow him (cf. Mt 19:29). [5] Indeed, John Paul II points out in his 1979 Holy Thursday *Letter to Priests *that celibacy is so closely linked to the language of the Gospel that it refers back to the teaching of Christ and to apostolic tradition.

“What is clear from Scripture, from the early history of the Church, the writings of the Fathers, and the witness of many clerics, is that there has always been a tradition of priestly celibacy in the Church. This tradition was approved and spread by various provincial councils and Popes.

“At the Second Lateran Council (1139), it was decreed that a marriage attempted by a bishop, priest, or deacon was not only gravely illicit but also invalid. This led to the misunderstanding, still widespread today, that celibacy for higher clergy was introduced as late as Lateran II. In reality that Council declared invalid something that had always been prohibited.”
christendom-awake.org/pages/mcgovern/ncrinterview.htm

 

[St_Francis]

But as I understand it, celibacy is more of a tradition rather than relating to Church dogma or doctrine. The Pope is allowed to change this tradition anytime he wishes.

Celibacy is a discipline in teh Western church.

But what is permitted wrt “married priests?” It is that men who are married can be ordained–in the Western church they need special permission–it is not that priests, who are already ordained, can marry. Even in the Eastern churches, a man who is already ordained cannot marry, and if a priest is widowed, he cannot remarry.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

The celibacy rule might have been compelling during the medieval era, when Priests lived in monasteries to focus entirely on transcribing the Bible, lighting candles, engaging in prayer and tending the gardens from which they eat.

Today, the vast majority of priests do not live in monasteries. The Celibacy tradition seems like a relic from the antiquated past.

You say “a relic from the antiquated past” like that’s a bad thing. Much of what we (you and I) hold to be good and true and holy are “relics from the antiquated past,” as well as much of art and music and scholarship and, well, relics.

Aside from the very good answers you have been given already, there are logistical reasons why celibacy remains a discipline within the Church.

Priests in many orders take a vow of poverty as well as celibacy. Is this something that should be imposed on a wife? How does a man provide for the education of his children if he has taken a vow of poverty? It is possible that his wife could provide for them and that everything could be held in her name, but what kind of stresses would that put on his marriage? If his wife gets a transfer in her job or the offer of a more lucrative positionand he can’t join her, what then? He’s not supposed to quit like a person with a lay job can do. What if his wife leaves him? What if they divorce and his wife wants to take the children and live out of the diocese? Is he expected to pay the costs of having his children fly out to meet them? Is his diocese or his order expected to provide for his children after his death if he has a vow of poverty? Will that diversion of funds take away from the charitable work they are expected to do?

Priests take a vow of obedience. That means they go and live wherever the diocese or order tells them to go. If they are told to go live in a high-poverty, high-crime area to operate a school or conduct a pastoral mission, a single man can do it with fewer qualms than a man with a wife and children. If he is told to go to the Sudan to operate a hospital for the victims of civil war, will he be able to devote himself fully to the task if he is worried about his wife and children being killed?

Priests are expected to be available to provide the Sacraments. If a man has to hold a second job to provide for his family, or if he can’t get to provide the last rites to a dying man because he has to attend his daughter’s soccer game or his son’s graduation, it is possible that a rotation with single priests would be worked out. But if you’ve ever worked in an office, you know that can cause friction. It would also mean that Catholics would have to get used to a lesser level of services from their parish.

These things can be worked out, as Protestant ministers (who don’t generally take vows of poverty or obedience) do and as married Catholic priests (who have generally come out of very different pastoral traditions) do, but large scale adoption of the policy would make for a very different Church. It might also be possible that diocesan priests could be given dispensation to join as married men (not become married once they are priests), while members of religious orders might have to remain celibate.