Celibacy & the future of the priesthood: John Paul II priests.

When 163 priests of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee signed a letter in 2003 urging that the discipline of priestly celibacy be made optional, the media response was overwhelming. The letter provoked similar letters in other dioceses, such as one signed by 113 priests in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Less publicized, though, were letters written by priests supporting mandatory celibacy, such as the one signed by the priests of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, and another by priests belonging to the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy.

Subsequently, a group of 556 seminarians from across the nation wrote a letter to Bishop Wilton Gregory, then president of the U.S. bishops' conference, in support of mandatory celibacy. As one of the two seminarians who organized that project, I want to help others understand why so many seminarians feel strongly about celibacy and its meaning in their future priesthood.

Msgr. Harry Byrne wrote an article in Commonweal (July 16, 2004) asking that celibacy be made optional. In his essay, Byrne stated that his "early questioning of celibacy has been confirmed" by his long experience of the celibate priesthood. Byrne's experience and distinguished ministry deserve our respect. Obviously, seminarians do not have the life experience of someone like Harry Byrne to draw on when tackling this question. Still, I think our experience as members of the church in the contemporary world gives us a unique perspective from which to view this ongoing debate.

In our own letter to Bishop Gregory we stressed the importance of idealism in our vocation to the priesthood--not our own ideals, but those of the church. I, for one, do not think of ideals as impossible goals or as concepts that exist only in the clouds. My ideals are based on church teachings, teachings that I recognize are impossible to live up to without the grace given by God.

Some may call us impractical or immature for basing our decision to enter the priesthood and embrace celibacy on a belief in grace. In my own life, though, I have come to accept the reality that everything is hopeless when grace is absent. Watering down our ideals is not the answer; turning to a God who can do all things is. That may sound like a slogan, but it is not merely a slogan to me. I believe that celibacy is both an ideal worth pursuing and that God will give me the grace to live it. Along with many of my fellow seminarians, I am excited, not resentful, that we have a chance to live it!

In our letter we wrote: "As seminarians, we are consciously aware that with the passage of time, the priesthood of Christ will be placed in our weak hands." Yet we are given confidence, knowing that many similarly idealistic young men have preceded us into the priesthood. Their goal, admittedly, has always been an impossible one: seeking Christian perfection. But again, all things are possible with God.

After the Second Vatican Council, many priests thought of themselves as "Vatican II priests" and were eager to exemplify the "spirit of the council." In a similar fashion, my generation is eager to be known as "John Paul II priests." Some find this objectionable.

Last year, Fr. Andrew Greeley characterized my generation as "Young Fogeys" (Atlantic Monthly, January 2004). Many young priests, he maintained, "are newly ordained men who seem in many ways intent on restoring the pre-Vatican II church, and who, reversing the classic generational roles, define themselves in direct opposition to the liberal priests who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s." Greeley went on to state that "Older priests today often complain that their younger colleagues are arrogant, pompous, and rigid, and that they love to parade around in clerical dress."

Are we "young fogeys"? I suppose I can sometimes be arrogant and even a little rigid in my attitudes. But these character traits are not limited to my generation or exclusive to the priesthood. Greeley doesn't seem to have any interest in finding out why we feel the way we do about the church and the ideal of priesthood.

It seems to me that one of the principal differences between priests who came of age during Vatican II and those of my generation is in how we regard church teaching. Although many attitudes and practices changed after Vatican II, the church's teaching on celibacy remained inviolable. In the council document Presbyterorum ordinis, priests are told that "celibacy is to be embraced and esteemed as a gift," and that priests "freely receive sacred celibacy as a grace of God." That teaching was confirmed by Pope Paul VI in Sacerdotalis coelibatus, and reaffirmed again in Pope John Paul II's Pastores dabo vobis, which states, "The church, as the spouse of Jesus Christ, wishes to be loved by the priest in the total and exclusive manner in which Jesus Christ her head and spouse loved her."

Regardless of generational differences, almost all priests recognize the spiritual value of celibacy. Even the Milwaukee priests who petitioned for the end of mandatory celibacy wrote that they "remain so grateful for the blessing that celibacy has been for so many priests over the years." Msgr. Byrne would seem to disagree. "Celibacy may be mandated, but the personal and social context so necessary for it to thrive cannot be legislated," he wrote. I am more optimistic. I think that the personal and social context can be sustained and strengthened. I think that it is happening now among the John Paul II "fogeys," not in our rigidity and supposed backsliding, but in our eagerness to give everything to God. I think that in our sacrifice the church will present an enormously powerful witness to a world that too often scoffs at idealism and has embraced a frankly antinomian attitude toward sexual morality.

Byrne and others are right, though, to warn that living up to the ideal of priestly celibacy is immensely difficult. Those of us about to embark on this vocation will need to be humble, and we will need the help of our fellow priests and of our congregations. Still, the difficulty of living up to the ideal does not negate the truth of the ideal.

At least in one sense, the church offers us nothing but impossible ideals. Lumen gentium states, "Therefore in the church, everyone whether belonging to the hierarchy, or being cared for by it, is called to holiness." Later the document cites Christ's mandate: "Be you therefore perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48). In the eyes of the world, such perfection is simply impossible. I agree: in the eyes of the world it is impossible. Yet any Christian who does not recognize that God's grace turns our weakness into strength has not yet delved into the mysteries of his religion! And one of the mysteries of our faith is the way in which the practices of the church itself embody that grace.

Byrne should recognize that the church has always mandated more than can be legislated, and has left it up to God's grace to make it happen. Christ mandated Christian holiness; St. Paul legislated norms for living this holiness, as did St. Ignatius of Antioch, and all the ecumenical councils up to and including the Second Vatican Council. Celibacy is another difficult mandate, one of the norms that serve as a channel for grace, a grace that benefits not only the priest but the entire church. Yet understood and lived apart from God's grace, celibacy remains just another impossible ideal.

I will not speculate on why many older priests feel that mandatory celibacy has outlived its usefulness. I will speculate, however, on why so many members of my generation feel that celibacy is especially valuable at the current hour.

One of my fellow seminarians has compared celibacy with fasting. Since celibacy is closer to abstinence than to fasting, I realize this analogy limps. But it is still illuminating. Fasting, even among those who take religion very seriously, has lost its value in light of dieting, my friend notes. When people look at fasting, they can only see the goal of losing weight. So too with celibacy; many understand celibacy to be a kind of "dieting" from sex. Thought of in this way, it is little wonder that people, even within the church, fail to grasp its value. We seminarians were profoundly shaped by contemporary consumer culture, and know this lack of comprehension firsthand. In this context, then, it is not surprising that many seminarians had conversion experiences prior to entering the seminary. To embrace an institution with values so different from those of the popular culture, we needed to look more deeply at certain issues. Could celibacy, we pondered, be something more than a dieting from sex?

To be sure, it was God's grace that helped us make the leap, but God worked through the people around us. Often conversion took place in the context of a Steubenville conference or a youth group. Before our conversion experiences, we led "normal" American lives, largely unconcerned with spiritual realities. Many of us were cynical or only occasional churchgoers. At some point, though, we needed to change our way of life. If we were going to become true believers, we could not remain passive. We could no longer think of the church as something that acted on us. Instead, it became necessary to voice our own "I believe!" To accomplish this, we needed to act in opposition to what we had been doing. The church is countercultural, and we had been led to its water by God's grace. We chose to drink. Our Christian identity became countercultural, forged in a rejection of our former secular selves. Now we want to remain in the world while embracing an identity that is not of the world.

In calling for the end of mandatory celibacy, the Milwaukee priests stated that the "primary motive for our urging this change is our pastoral concern that the Catholic Church needs more candidates for the priesthood." Given my experience of the contemporary world, I don't think that making celibacy optional will increase the number of priestly vocations. The young men who are serious enough about their faith to feel a call to the priesthood are not the kind of men for whom celibacy is an insurmountable obstacle. Those truly called are by definition those who are ready to accept the grace of God by which the impossible becomes possible. We want to witness to the world the Good News of salvation, and to do this we must be radical--we must be set apart. And what is more radical in today's world than to accept freely the charism of celibacy?

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee wrote in his reply to the 2003 letter written by his priests: "This is the time we priests need to be renewing our pledge to celibacy, not questioning it." This is how I and many of my fellow seminarians feel: We are eager to take this pledge! We know our society and we know ourselves. If our religion were a matter of practical concerns and mundane pleasures, we would pass it by in the same way that we passed by so many other seemingly valuable things on our way to conversion to the supernatural order. The church is not like any of these other things. It is able to fulfill longings that nothing else can. I believe many priests look at the real-life problems of the church and move too quickly to a secular or so-called practical solution. But young men and women today turn toward the church because it is otherworldly. We want celibacy because we want to signify to our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ that God is something very much worth living for. We want to marry the bride of Christ as other Christs! This is the reason we became seminarians. This is why we are willing to speak up in favor of mandatory celibacy.

We have heard the teaching of John Paul II that we will be given the special grace of celibacy in order to live out our priesthood. We eagerly proclaimed to the world in our letter that, as future sharers in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, we "yearn with all our hearts to offer this celibacy up to the Lord with undivided hearts, at the service of his church."

Far and Near

In the high grass of Zimbabwe,
A lioness adopts a fawn,
Walking on pulled in, velvet claws
Across a field of blood-stained thorns.

Smoke thunders down a water-fall.
Forgetmenots blue the air.
A red hand pictured on a wall
Recalls a death of long ago.

Here, in a village of surmise,
Accustomed to a bitter weed,
I am an insect of an old
Fire that I circle around.

--Stephen Stepanchev

Franz Klein, a seminarian of the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, is studying theology in Rome. He graduated from St. John Vianney Seminary and the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota.