Celibacy

[Melody]

Please read this very interesting article BEFORE posting your replies!

Church will benefit if priests are able to marry

Looking fwd to reading your views on the same!

Blessings,

Melody

[Seeker]

I'm sorry Melody, I didn't read the article before posting.  I didn't want to register at the web site.

In my view, celibacy is a gift from God to the Church.

[Melody]

Have copy pasted the article here - thought it was an interesting read...

Church will benefit if priests are able to marry
By Muriel Porter
January 31, 2005

Celibacy is a rule that the Catholic Church can and should change.

The call by Australian Catholic priests to be allowed to marry is the latest move in a long-running debate that dates back almost to the beginnings of institutionalised Christianity.

The newspaper headlines about the recent submission to the Vatican from the National Council of Priests could theoretically have been written at almost any stage since the 4th century.

The present plea is justified on the basis that drastic action is needed to restore priestly numbers, which in the Western world have dropped markedly over the past 30 years. In Australia the decline is estimated to be about 20 per cent overall, with a much greater drop - about two-thirds - in the numbers of trainee priests.

The requirement of priestly celibacy is perhaps the sole reason for this unprecedented decline. The Anglican and Protestant churches, which permit their clergy to marry, have not suffered any significant shortage of trainees over the same period.

With so few recruits entering the ranks of the priesthood, the average age of Melbourne's Catholic clergy is now more than 60, compared with 44 in 1977 - an alarming statistic. Maintaining the traditional pattern of sacramental worship provided by priests will grow increasingly more difficult unless something is done urgently.

As commentators have pointed out frequently over the past few decades, a married priesthood would not only attract considerable numbers of potential clergy, but would also hopefully allow the return to active ministry of the many priests who left to marry. The acute shortage could be overcome virtually overnight.

So what is the problem? Unlike the issue of women priests, which the Pope has declared to be theologically impossible, the celibacy requirement is not a matter of church doctrine. Rather, it is a discipline only formally imposed on the clergy in 1139, when a church council declared clerical marriage invalid. What the church has banned, the church can restore.

The spiritual gift of priesthood and the spiritual gift of celibacy are not the same."In response to the priests' submission, letter-writers have quickly offered some reasons why the church should not change the celibacy rule. Unmarried clergy have more time to serve their parishes, some have argued. But if a married priesthood provided many more priests, then parishes would all be much better served. In any case, knowing how hard-working most married Protestant clergy are, I would be very surprised if the argument had any substance.

Others have pointed out that celibate clergy are cheaper to maintain and easier to move. Certainly a reordering of financial and housing arrangements would be required for married priests, but that would be a small price to pay for the full restoration of parish ministries.

A former Anglican priest, a married man who was allowed to keep his wife and family when he joined the Catholic priesthood, has - ironically - claimed the celibate priesthood should be retained because it witnesses to the value of sexual abstinence. Father John Fleming has put his finger on the main reason behind the celibacy law, since it was first mooted by a local synod in Spain in the early 4th century.

Sexual intercourse with a woman, even if she was his wife, was held to make a priest cultically impure, because sex was always regarded as defiling. Priests who slept with their wives should not celebrate Mass, or any other sacraments. The requirement of sexual abstinence swiftly made the clergy a class apart, on a higher plane of holiness than ordinary lay Christians. It also gave the clergy patriarchal power based on the avoidance of intimacy with women, the defilers.

Despite the rhetoric, many parish clergy continued to marry and have families until the Middle Ages. But then a fresh insistence on clerical cultic purity - and the papal desire to control clergy loyalty - eventually led to the outright banning of clergy marriage.

Compulsory celibacy has never really worked. As some of the promoters of this latest appeal to the Pope have pointed out, the spiritual gift of priesthood and the spiritual gift of celibacy are not the same. They do not necessarily come together. Forcing priests without the authentic "charism" of celibacy to live without human intimacy is not only cruel, it is also dehumanising and impractical.

The Protestant reformers recognised these problems in the 16th century, and insisted clergy be permitted to marry. They wanted clergy to model for their parishioners the virtues - indeed, the holiness - of marriage and family life. In the process, they unwittingly began the long, slow process, still not complete, of restoring to women the spiritual equality they had enjoyed in Jesus' ministry.

In the 21st century, a full-scale review of the Catholic celibacy law would be long overdue, even if the church did not have its staffing crisis. In the face of that crisis, a review is now a matter of extreme urgency.

Dr Muriel Porter, an Anglican laywoman who writes regularly for The Age on religion, wrote her doctoral thesis on the subject of clergy marriage.

SOURCE: 'The Age' http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/01/...7020254938.html

[Melody]

Unlike the issue of women priests, which the Pope has declared to be theologically impossible, the celibacy requirement is not a matter of church doctrine. Rather, it is a discipline only formally imposed on the clergy in 1139, when a church council declared clerical marriage invalid. What the church has banned, the church can restore.

Also can anyone prove the above to be true/false? [Rev. Eric, you around?]

Thx,

Melody

[Seeker]

Melody,

The Catholic Encyclopedia has a thorough article on celibacy in the Church.  The discipline of celibacy actually started as early as the third century, but seems to have been finalized in the eleventh century.  Read the article for yourself to see what I mean.

Thanks for posting the text of the article from Australia, I appreciate it.  Though it is correct that celibacy is a discipline that can change (witness the Episcopalian and Anglican minister converts who are allowed to join the priesthood yet remain married) there is a long tradition in the Church of priestly celibacy.  I also believe it to be a gift, rather than a curse for the Church.

The article from The Age makes three statements that I take issue with:

1.  The requirement of priestly celibacy is perhaps the sole reason for this unprecedented decline.

2.  As commentators have pointed out frequently over the past few decades, a married priesthood would not only attract considerable numbers of potential clergy, but would also hopefully allow the return to active ministry of the many priests who left to marry. The acute shortage could be overcome virtually overnight.

3.  Compulsory celibacy has never really worked. As some of the promoters of this latest appeal to the Pope have pointed out, the spiritual gift of priesthood and the spiritual gift of celibacy are not the same. They do not necessarily come together. Forcing priests without the authentic "charism" of celibacy to live without human intimacy is not only cruel, it is also dehumanising and impractical.

The statements are conjecture.  It doesn't necessarily follow that by allowing priests to be married, that the shortage would disappear.  Besides, is the shortage global or local (in "developed" nations)?  The third statement looks at celibacy from a worldy, not a godly view.  

Though the numbers of priests have declined in the West, they have increased in places like Africa.  God provides.  

The decline in the West could be due to men not answering the call, not necessarily because the Church does not allow priests to be married.  Celibacy and chastity have been attacked in the West for decades now.  No wonder a celibate lifestyle is not admired in the West.  But is that God's will, or man's?  

Besides, simply increasing the number of priests, or the pool of potential priests is not necessarily the answer we should be looking for.  How about better preparing and strengthening those who answer the call?