The importance of priestly celibacy.

My wife and I, while driving home one evening in May, were listening to a rather unusual news report on the Pope's recent Apostolic Letter, Misericordia Dei (May, 2002). Never had we heard a popular and secular radio station report on the Pope's latest instruction to bishops. The report, needless to say, was dripping with sarcasm, as if to say, "Look who's telling us that we have to confess our sins to them."

The very next morning, CBC news reported on the arrest of Father Paul Shanley; this tragic story was immediately followed by another unusual news report on the wide selection of religions and spiritual movements that are now available for anyone interested in "spiritual shopping." This "commercial" was quite obviously strategically placed so as to discredit the Catholic option. Part of this report showed a brief clip of a Catholic Mass in progress, which was referred to as dull in comparison to the new and exciting options available today, which included New Age gurus and various kinds of massage therapies and healing techniques.

None of this should come as any surprise to a Catholic in this glorious era, when it is becoming increasingly more difficult for young people to be Catholic and remain faithful to the truths of the gospel. Something like 1% of priests have been involved in paedophilia--no doubt too high a percentage--and some bishops were involved in cover ups, but today we are given the impression that anyone who wears a collar is a paedophile "waiting to happen". Despite Philip Jenkins' sociologistic findings that the incidence of clergy sex abuse of children is just as high, if not higher, among married Protestant clergy, the repeated highlighting of Catholic instances and the total lack of interest in non-Catholic cases contributes to the prejudice and lends the false impression that the requirement of celibacy is the principal cause of this disorder. That is why many people today are calling for the abolition of celibacy, arguing that this will accomplish a great deal in terms of improving the situation in which the Chur ch currently finds herself.

What is the role of the priest?

Behind the popular debate on celibacy is the assumption that priests are marriage counsellors. And if they are marriage counsellors, wouldn't marriage only improve the quality of their work? One medical student with whom I was debating this issue argued that married people experience things that non-married people do not. "Shared experiences," she added, "help people understand one another. By understanding marriage problems better--through first-hand experience--priests will be able to relate better to their parishioners." At this point in our debate, I decided to ask some very specific questions.

First, why are people seeking the priest and sharing their marital difficulties, if they know that the priest has never been married, and if it is so obvious that the priest cannot help them as well as someone who is married and has been through it? Secondly, what are some of the things that people bring to priests about which priests have no clue? What knowledge does a priest lack (by virtue of his not having married) that is so necessary in order for him to understand the person who comes to see him? What have parishioners complained about in the past regarding their priests' lack of knowledge or inability to offer decent counselling, by virtue of the fact that they are not married? What have priests complained about in the past regarding their own lack of knowledge or inability to understand their parishioners, by virtue of the fact that they are not married?

I was eager to hear her answers to these questions, because I was convinced that her responses would settle the dispute once and for all. In fact she did settle the dispute in my mind, for she had absolutely no answers to these questions. To each one she replied: "I don't know". "But," she continued, "I can imagine that there are many things that priests are clueless about."

The fact is we can all imagine anything we want to imagine. That is the difference between fiction and nonfiction. It is not the case that whatever is imagined is true. To be true, there must be a correspondence with what is real. Of course, there are many things that priests are clueless about, for there is a great deal that all of us are clueless about. But what specific knowledge, necessary for his priesthood, does he lack that must not be lacking? No answer was forthcoming.

Priests are not marriage counsellors

The truth of the matter is that a priest is not a marriage counsellor. A priest is one who offers sacrifice; that is, the sacrifice of the Mass. The priest has nothing to give but Christ, and he is commissioned to proclaim nothing other than Christ, and Him crucified (1 Cor 2, 1-5). If married couples approach him, he can give them everything that they need for a successful married relationship, which is not clever and experienced advice, but the Person of Christ. Just as the lame man at the Beautiful Gate turned expectantly towards Peter and John, hoping for something that they didn't have, so too none of us should expect anything from a priest except what he has to give: "I have neither silver nor gold, but I will give you what I have in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene: walk! Peter then took him by the hand and helped him to stand up" (Acts 3,1-7).

People come to the priest for hope, and a good priest who knows what he has can give them precisely that--for his entire life is a living sign of eschatological hope, the hope for eternal life. Celibacy is first and foremost an eschatological sign. Marriage and family are great human goods. In fact, matrimony is a sacrament. It is holy. And sexual expression between the married couple is holy, and, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, actually merits an increase in divine grace.

Reasonable sacrifice

But there are higher goods than human goods, and these are supernatural goods. Renouncing anything that is not good is not a sign of a higher good, nor is it necessarily virtuous. Marriage is part of the natural order of basic human goods. Therefore, from a purely natural or mundane point of view, it makes no sense whatsoever to deliberately give up such a great good. What could possibly be the "reason"? The only way such a sacrifice can be at all "reasonable" is if there are greater goods for which this sacrifice is made.

In other words, the Church teaches that marriage is good and holy on the one hand, yet priests are required to give up marriage on the other. This can only make a person think. In other words, the priest who gives up these basic human goods is giving testimony to something greater. We've all heard the expression "Put your money where your mouth is". Well, that's in a sense what the priest is doing. He's witnessing to the reality of these higher goods, the goods of the kingdom of God. Because marriage already has a natural meaning, in itself it does not point to something eschatological.

But as a married baptized person, I am called to love my wife "as Christ loved his Bride, the Church, who gave himself up for her" (Eph 5, 25). As such, married life is sacrificial. In the context of marriage, we are called to make all sorts of sacrifices. Each person is bound to remain faithful to his/her spouse, and to give up the possibility of a relationship with any other man or woman. Couples will have to abstain from sex during fertile periods if there is a good reason not to have a child. And when couples go through marital difficulties and those sugary feelings are just not there anymore, we know this is not the end of the world nor the end of our relationship. We can still remain committed to one another and love one another in the highest sense of "willing the good of one another" despite our feelings.

A priest's witness

The faithful and celibate priest witnesses to this ability all the time, because his entire life is devoted not to erotic love, or conjugal love, or love based on feelings, but agape love, which is a sacrificial love, a love that exists on the level of the will. And it is this love that marriage is ordained to achieve--a love, I might add, that couples know almost nothing about at the start of their marriage.

Furthermore, the kind of example that a priest provides is one that can be inspiring and emulated by both the single and the married alike. A person who is single, who has not found the right person to marry and will likely not do so, and who may find himself or herself single for the rest of his/her life, can live that life, remain faithful to the gospel, and be very happy. How do we know? Because Father so and so is living that life, and note how happy and full of joy he is. In fact, the happiest people I have ever known were all priests or nuns, full of love, full of joy, and full of the spirit of holiness. These people live a life not devoted to temporal goods or pleasures, as most people do. Rather, they live for God, and they show us how to live for God alone.

Perhaps it is this continued witness to something eternal and unchanging, something above and beyond the fleeting nature of temporal goods and human power, that irks the devotees of moral relativism who dominate the media today. Yet it is the reality witnessed to by Catholic priests that is the foundation of genuine democracy. Despite the inadequacies of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it does begin by affirming this very principle: "Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law."

It should come as no surprise that Svend Robinson sought to have this statement removed from the Charter. He may very well succeed one day. Who, then, will be left to witness, in his body, in his manner of dress, in his lifestyle, and in the personal sacrifice of the married state, if not the Catholic priest? (+)

Doug McManaman is a high-school teacher of religion at Fr. Michael McGivney Catholic Academy in Markham, ON.