TIME "renews" the celibacy debate. What's the point?

At the rate things are going, Pope Benedict XVI may find his next trip to the U.S. dogged by airplanes overhead trailing banners with images of aborted fetuses.

That was how Amy Sullivan, a senior editor for TIME magazine, kicked off her May 16, 2009, article, "The Pope's Stand in Obama's Notre Dame Controversy," which was quickly taken to the woodshed for being a snarky, ill-informed, and rather embarrassing piece of, uh, journalism (using the term as loosely as possible).

Sullivan is now back for more, once again ham-fistedly mixing together sensationalized "controversies" with a shallow understanding of Church teaching and practice. Her June 21, 2009, article, "Sex and the Priestly: Father Cutie Renews Celibacy Debate," begins with the sort of breathless, meaningless sentence you might expect to find at the head of a 10th-grade paper titled, "Why I Find the Catholic Church Annoying and, Like, Behind the Times":

It's hard out there for a pope these days.

How so? Is it because the world is so filled with sin, war, greed, hatred, corruption, and general nastiness?

Overshadowing the Pope's declaration [of the Year for Priests], however, was the news that earlier in the week Father Alberto Cutie — the Miami-based priest and television personality who left the Catholic church last month amid soap opera-worthy scandal — had married his girlfriend of two years.

Oh. Hmmm, that is rough: another Catholic failing to live up to his vows and Church teaching. What next: Catholic politicians supporting abortion and euthanasia? Catholics divorcing? Catholics cohabitating? Catholics contracepting? Catholic aborting?

Sure, Cutie made a fool of himself and it's always sad to see such lunacy. But isn't it a bit of a stretch, even for TIME magazine, to claim this has "overshadowed" the Pope's declaration of the Year for Priests? Well, I suppose it does make sense if you are certain, as Sullivan seems to be, that the most important thing for priests is to be married and/or have sex, preferably with whomever they want whenever they want:

Also making waves was the publication of former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland's memoir detailing his life as a closeted gay man within the church and the loneliness that drove him to pursue a sexual relationship with another man. ... Although both he and Cutie have insisted they do not want to be held up as poster boys for changing the Church's celibacy requirement, their stories have added new fuel to a long-simmering debate.

Yes, a "debate" that has been raging in editorial offices all across the fruited plane, as I noted in this May 17, 2009, post (scroll down to #4). In other words, when a priest or bishop admits to being a smooth-talking scoundrel/fornicator/unrepentant, attention-demanding homosexual, the story isn't about how he's a smooth-talking scoundrel/fornicator/unrepentant, attention-demanding homosexual, but how the Church needs to "change," because everyone recognizes the greatest virtues known to post-modern man are mindless change, meaningless change, and change for the sake of change—or is it change for the sake of "advocates of celibacy reform"?

The Catholic Church in the U.S. has a serious priest crisis — the number of men entering the priesthood has dropped by 60% over the past four decades and the current average age of active priests is 60. Many dioceses have been forced to close parishes or import foreign priests to deal with shortages. But advocates of celibacy reform say there is a better solution: ditch the 900-year-old church law prohibiting priests from marrying or being sexually active.

Of course, this is more than a bit misleading since it gives the impression that as the U.S. goes, so goes the world. But that's not the case at all, as Jeff Ziegler wrote in his 2008 CWR report on vocations worldwide:

The Church worldwide has been blessed since 1978 with a surge in the number of seminarians. According to data published in L’Osservatore Romano and the Vatican’s statistical yearbook (the Secretariat of State’s Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae), there were 63,882 diocesan and religious major seminarians when John Paul II began his pontificate in 1978; by the end of 2005, that number had grown to 114,439—a remarkable increase of 79.1 percent. During the same time period, the number of Catholics worldwide grew 47.4 percent from 756,533,000 to 1,114,966,000, while world population increased 48.8 percent, from 4.302 billion to 6.4 billion.

Most of the growth in the number of candidates for the priesthood took place in Africa, where seminarians more than quadrupled from 5,636 to 23,580, and in Asia, where the number nearly tripled from 11,536 to 30,066. The Americas, too, saw a growth in the number of seminarians, from 22,011 to 36,891, as did Australia and Oceania, whose numbers rose slightly from 784 to 944. The number of European seminarians, on the other hand, declined from 23,915 to 22,958.

Ziegler points out the stunning fact (go figure!) that countries with highest ration of seminarians display a vibrant Catholic culture, have Catholic schools that are loyal to Church teaching, have very committed and active priests, and have Catholic families devoted to family prayer and family devotions. Strangely enough, boys who are encouraged to consider the priesthood are more likely to actually consider the priesthood (no, really, it's true!) than boys who are either not enouraged or who are even discouraged. I suspect that even people without degrees from Harvard can see the commonsensical connection therein.

Sullivan, who is deeply, passionately, and obsessively concerned the Church keep up with the times, is also keen to cast doubt on the historical roots of the celibate priesthood:

For the first thousand years of the Christian church, priests, bishops, and even popes could — and often did — marry. At least 39 popes were married men, and two were the sons of previous popes. The ideal of celibacy existed, but as a teaching from the Apostle Paul, not a church doctrine. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul argued simply that single men had fewer distractions from their godly work: "He that is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife: and he is divided."

Over the centuries, the Church tried to split the difference, prohibiting marriage after ordination and encouraging married priests to abstain from sex with their wives after they had joined the priesthood. (The Eastern Orthodox CHurch continues to allow married men to be ordained as priests.) But it wasn't until the Second Lateran Council in 1139 that a firm church law allowing ordination only of unmarried men was adopted. Journalist and former priest James Carroll contends in Practicing Catholic that the reasons for this celibacy requirement were not purely theological. "Celibacy had been imposed on priests mainly for the most worldly of reasons: to correct abuses tied to family inheritance of Church property," he writes. "Celibacy solved that material problem, but because of the extreme sacrifice it required, it could never be spoken of in material terms. So it was that sexual abstinence came to be justified spiritually, as a mode of drawing close to God."

So, without getting into all of the numbers, what does this tell us?

1. Celibacy was not always the practice of the clergy. Check.

2. Celibacy was, however, an ideal presented by the Apostle Paul. Check.

3. The Apostle Paul made an appeal to practical living in presenting the ideal. Check.

4. The Eastern Orthodox continue to ordain married men. Check. Sullivan might want to note that this is also the practice of the Eastern Catholic Churches: "In the Eastern Churches a different discipline has been in force for many centuries: while bishops are chosen solely from among celibates, married men can be ordained as deacons and priests. This practice has long been considered legitimate; these priests exercise a fruitful ministry within their communities. Moreover, priestly celibacy is held in great honor in the Eastern Churches and many priests have freely chosen it for the sake of the Kingdom of God. In the East as in the West a man who has already received the sacrament of Holy Orders can no longer marry" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1580). It should also be noted that, in the East (whether Orthodox or Catholic), if a priest's wife dies, he cannot remarry.

5. Quoting former priests in this context is like asking Terrell Owens for an objective opinion of the 49ers, Eages, and Cowboys, and accepting his word without questioning it. Sure, he might give you some good stuff, but he's hardly a balanced, objective source.

Okay, whatever (it's 4:45 a.m. and I'm a bit irritable). Next?

Prospective priests understandably needed more convincing to embark on a life of chastity. Which is why, according to conventional wisdom among Catholic scholars, alongside the celibacy requirement grew a theological argument that God would bestow the "gift" of celibacy upon those whom He called to religious vocations. A document from the Council of Trent assured skeptical priests that "God refuses not that gift to those who ask for it rightly, neither does He suffer us to be tempted above that which we are able."

It might be good to note how a fellow named Jesus, who played a fairly major role in this whole Christianity thing, saidto his disciples, "For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it" (Matt. 19:12). Considering Jesus is God and that he wasn't married (how did he cope?!), despite Danny Brown's best efforts to set him up with Mary Magdalene, methinks it is a passage that shouldn't escape notice.

Donald Cozzens, professor at John Carroll University and author of Freeing Celibacy, has written that some priests do indeed feel freed from sexual longing and a desire for personal intimacy upon entering the Church. But "there remain other priests who believe deep down they are called to the priesthood but not to celibacy," he writes. "And for these men, the burden of mandated celibacy threatens their spiritual and emotional well-being." Weakland felt this challenge acutely, particularly once he rose to the rarified but also isolated position of archbishop. "I soon realized that a relationship with Jesus Christ, as intense as it might be on the spiritual level, could not fill the emptiness rising from the lack of the physical presence and reality of another human person," he writes in A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church.

Which explains, I suppose, the $450,000 settlement. 'Nuf said. George Neumayr says more so I don't have to.

Okay, let's fast forward to the final paragraph:

As for Benedict, it seems unlikely he will be more inclined to revisit the Church's celibacy policy. In 2006, he publicly reaffirmed the spiritual purpose of the requirement and made it clear that dissenters on the issue would not be tolerated, excommunicating an African bishop who had ordained several married men as priests. For now, at least, celibacy is not open for discussion. And that is why Father Cutie, Catholic priest, is now Alberto Cutie, Episcopal priest-in-training.

First, Sullivan doesn't seem to grasp that discussing or debating Church discipline is quite different from disobeying and breaking said discipline. Catholics are free to discuss all sorts of factors related to the discipline of clerical celibacy in the Western Church. But that doesn't mean a rogue bishop who is directly disobeying the Pope can run around ordaining men he isn't supposed to be ordaining. Duh. Plus, wouldn't it be nice to hear from a priest or bishop who explains why he is celibate and happy, normal, loving, whole, devoted to Christ, loyal to the Church, and so forth? (More on that later this week, by the way.)

Secondly, her conclusion is a complete and utter falsehood. Fr. Cutie is an "Episcopal priest-in-training" because he chose to be. He chose to break his priestly vows. He chose to leave the Catholic Church. He chose to become Episcopalian. No one made him do any of those things.

Yet in Sullivan's world, it is the always the fault of the Pope, the Church, and loyal Catholics when priests break their vows, grope their girlfriends in public, or jump in the sack with other men. In her world, the Church doesn't have the right or authority to define the parameters of priestly discipline, but it does, somehow, have the amazing and powerful ability to make men fornicate and sodomize. Go figure.

Comments

[Fr Don Malin]

Makes me think that possibly we should also see headlines like:
LAW ABIDING COP CAUGHT SPEEDING: RENEWS QUESTION OF VALIDITY OF SPEED LIMITS--film at 11!

[Ed Peters]

Time, etc., can carp about celibacy, I guess, but they can't debate it. The only place it can be "debated" in any meaningful sense of the word is at the highest levels of ecclesiastical authority, where, I suggest, the celibacy issue is non-existent.

Fr. Cutie simply adds his name to a centuries' long list of priests who promised one thing and did another. His conduct no more raises anew the question of celibacy than would spousal misconduct "raise anew" the "question" of matrimonial fidelity.

[Josh]

First, Ms. Sullivan needs to get her facts straight. For the first thousand years, priests, bishops, and popes, could not get married. However, married men COULD be ordained. Carl, you note that in the Eastern Church, after a priest's wife dies, he cannot remarry. The same is currently true of a deacon ordained in the West. In fact, it has always been the Church's teaching that the state (not sure if this is the right word, however, in my meaning, married or single) one is ordained in is the state he remains for life.

If the discipline (which needs to be contrasted against doctrine) of the Latin Rite of the Church regarding a celibate priesthood were to change, priests would still not be allowed to be married, but married men might be admitted to the priesthood.

Funny though, the best evidence Ms. Sullivan could have used to justify a married priesthood would be to document the current vocations boom going on in the Anglican Church today...oh wait, nevermind.

[David]

Just posted a few minutes ago, here is an unbelievably insulting article by Ruth Gledhill on the soon to be released Encyclical.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6555937.ece

[Maria]

I'm so sick, tired, and disgusted of hearing how these grown men keep whining and moaning about how they can't have sex. This is what it boils down to, after all, sex. Not love, intimacy, companionship, sacrifice, family, children. To love is to sacrifice. They had no love for the Christ they professed to represent. In the end, it was all about them. If they were not faithful to Jesus Christ, they will not be faithful to anyone. They are not asking of priests any more than they ask of me as a single woman or any single man out there. As a single woman who is chaste, I don't go around crying to everyone how bad I have it. How sad and pitiful. Not manly at all! Mr. Cutie was just a media star and Archbishop Rembert Weakland is disgusting. What an embarrassing successor to the apostles. Next thing you know, this will turn into the new civil rights fight, yuckkk!

[David]

What really angers about Gledhill's article is that I can see already that the paper is preparing the ground for another attack on the Catholic Church. If there's anything at all that even appears wrong with the Encyclical, however small, it'll be used to hammer the Pope.

[Ed Peters]

What Josh said. And Maria.

[Nick Milne]

Perhaps I'm not reading it carefully enough, but what about the Gledhill article is so "unbelievably insulting?" I'm just not seeing it. Has it been changed between the time of its posting and now, maybe?

I am sure David is right that the Times and every other paper will be all over any perceived problems with the encyclical with their typically uninformed reportage and commentary, but I do not see such hostility in the article in question.

[Rick]

Regarding Sullivan's claim that "1.Celibacy was not always the practice of the clergy." I think that we can make an argument that celibacy while not always the practice was the norm, and marriage the exception. The Synod of Rome and the Councils of Elvira and Carthage, all in the 4th c., call all married clergy to perfect continence with their wives. All cite this as the teaching of the apostles. Fr. Jaki points out in his book on priestly celibacy that Council of Trullo (7th c.) was the first council of any type that allowed married priests to use their conjugal rights.

[Tom]

Wow. I don't know what to tell Abp. Weakland, but if God's not enough to fill his "emptiness," I'm not sure a human lover is going to be up to the task. How'd you like to be that guy? "Well, God wasn't enough for me, so now I'm counting on you."

[Kala]

The same is currently true of a deacon ordained in the West.

As far as I am aware some deacons [all who have asked?] have been given permission to remarry by their bishop after their wives have died.

[Gail F]

I don't read Time but I glanced through last week's issue at a doctor's office today. There was a superficially well-written but carefully neutral one-page piece about Wichita, KS, and how the people there want to stay out of the abortion debate (hint to writer: staying out of it is really taking a side) and a really stupid extract from a new book by Robin Wright, "The Evolution of God," about how to solve all problems among Jews, Christians, and Muslims by making everything be a "non-zero-sum" situation rather than a "zero-sum" situation, whatever that means. The theory is that there is a "code" in the scriptures that proves how the idea of God changed in all three religions depending on circumstances -- sometimes it was okay to get along with people of other religions (when everyone benefited) and sometimes it wasn't (when the opposition could be wiped out). No one has ever noticed the code, though, until now.

How anyone could entertain such a silly idea is beyond me. (Sometimes, apparently, these situations arise themselves, and sometimes we will have to engineer them -- now there's a great idea.) But the scariest part is that people who believe this stuff are, in the end, the people who get killed whenever it's "zero-sum time" for the other side. In the end, it is not natural for people to care so little about everything that anything is fine. And if the "good" people are the ones who don't care, guess who will be the ones who care? Doesn't anyone see this??? Apparently no one at Time does.

[Marie C. Mundra]

The Catholic Church bases her mandate of priestly celibacy on the example of Jesus Christ in His own life. Catholic men are not forced to be priests in the Catholic Church. It is a choice one makes for the love of God. It is a calling or vocation. “Many are called but few are chosen” Those chosen to the priesthood, willingly and lovingly sacrifice having a wife and biological children and worldly possessions so that they can fully give themselves to God in the service of His Church and God’s people.

The duty of a husband is firstly to his wife and children. If husbands and wives are faithful and mutually love and sacrifice for each other there would not be so many divorces. The duty of a Catholic priest is to give God to the world and to take the world up to God by his life of sacrificial prayer and works. He is called to be a spiritual father of many and faithful to his spouse the Church.

Ordained priests are chosen from among men of faith who live and intend to remain celibate "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Called to consecrate themselves for life, with an undivided and joyous heart to God and his ministry, they sacrifice that which is good, choosing celibacy as a sign of new life to serve God’s people. There is a direct connection that exists between Christ and the priest. A priest’s chaste celibate love for the church is a sign of Christ’s presence to the faithful. He makes Christ present through his sacramental ministry at the altar and in the confessional and is acting, not simply in the name of Christ, but in the person of Christ…he is “another Christ”, whose total gift of self to the church as spouse, is an integral part of his priestly life making him a spiritual father to countless souls.

Father Cutie’s problems started when he forgot that he is firstly a priest and not when he met a woman. Had he been faithful to his priestly calling, by a steadfast life of prayer, sacrifice and obedience for the love of God and souls he would not have thrown away the gift of his Catholic Priesthood. Again, no man is forced to become a Priest in the Catholic Church.