by Christopher West
.
(The actual column is reprinted at the end of this post: Q)
.
In a recent column called “Ostriches at Vatican City” Steven and Cokie Roberts insist that the Catholic bishops have chosen to “bury their heads in the sand” by reaffirming the requirement of priestly celibacy. Steven and Cokie believe that “ending the ban on marriage is the easiest fix” for the priest shortage.
No Catholic would deny that we need more priests. And it’s true that the practice in the Latin rite of reserving priestly ordination to celibate men could change. The Catholic Churches of the East have valid, married priests.
So, if someone asks, “Why can’t priests be married?” the real answer is, they can. There is more to the Catholic Church than the Latin rite. However, with good reason, priests in the West are normally chosen from among men who have discerned celibacy as their vocation.
There is a supreme value to the celibate witness that seems entirely lost on Cokie and Steven. Understandable. Generally speaking, the Church in America has done a lousy job educating her flock on the meaning of the Christian vocations, and the scandalous behavior of some (avowed) celibates within the Church has only added to the confusion.
A short column can’t do justice to the issues, but it’s a start. First, in order to understand the value of celibacy, we must understand the value of marriage. Why? Because the Church bases the value of any sacrifice on the value of that which it sacrifices. For example, it would be meaningless for me to give up smoking for Lent. Smoking holds zero value for me.
The Church places such a high value on celibacy precisely because she places such a high value on that which it sacrifices — the union of the sexes. In the Catholic view of things, the joining of man and woman in “one flesh” is a sacred foreshadowing of the eternal union that awaits us in heaven (see Eph 5:31-32). God gave us sexual desire, you might say, to be like the fuel of a rocket that’s meant to launch us toward the stars and beyond, to the eternal mystery of Christ’s union with the Church.
But what would happen if those rocket engines became inverted, no longer pointing us heavenward, but pointing us back upon ourselves? Welcome to the implosion of the sexual revolution. The union of the sexes serves as an icon, a sign of our ultimate fulfillment, but it is the beginning of our demise when we worship sex itself. A culture that worships sex has surely lost sight of heaven.
Jesus says we will no longer be given in marriage in heaven (see Mt 22:30). Why? Because we no longer need signs to point us to heaven, when we’re in heaven. The “marriage of the Lamb” (Rv 19:7) — the union of love that alone can satisfy — will be eternally consummated.
In turn, Jesus calls some to remain celibate not for celibacy’s sake, but “for the sake of the kingdom” (Mt 19:12) — that is, as a living witness to the union that awaits us in heaven. Authentically lived, a celibate’s life proclaims that as beautiful and wonderful as the union of the sexes is, there is a greater love, a greater union worth “selling everything” for.
It is entirely fitting that priests would be called to this level of sacrifice. In a world that idolizes sex, we desperately need the courageous witness of priestly celibacy. For when it is properly lived, it very effectively reorients our rocket engines toward the heavens.
Perhaps the bishops who recently gathered in Rome, rather than having their heads in the sand, were actually looking toward the stars. Perhaps they’re not as kookie as Cokie thought.
.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
.
Christopher West is a fellow of the Theology of the Body Institute.
His books and tapes on the Theology of the Body are available from Catholic Exchange online store.
.
In a recent column called “Ostriches at Vatican City” Steven and Cokie Roberts insist that the Catholic bishops have chosen to “bury their heads in the sand” by reaffirming the requirement of priestly celibacy. Steven and Cokie believe that “ending the ban on marriage is the easiest fix” for the priest shortage.
No Catholic would deny that we need more priests. And it’s true that the practice in the Latin rite of reserving priestly ordination to celibate men could change. The Catholic Churches of the East have valid, married priests.
So, if someone asks, “Why can’t priests be married?” the real answer is, they can. There is more to the Catholic Church than the Latin rite. However, with good reason, priests in the West are normally chosen from among men who have discerned celibacy as their vocation.
There is a supreme value to the celibate witness that seems entirely lost on Cokie and Steven. Understandable. Generally speaking, the Church in America has done a lousy job educating her flock on the meaning of the Christian vocations, and the scandalous behavior of some (avowed) celibates within the Church has only added to the confusion.
A short column can’t do justice to the issues, but it’s a start. First, in order to understand the value of celibacy, we must understand the value of marriage. Why? Because the Church bases the value of any sacrifice on the value of that which it sacrifices. For example, it would be meaningless for me to give up smoking for Lent. Smoking holds zero value for me.
The Church places such a high value on celibacy precisely because she places such a high value on that which it sacrifices — the union of the sexes. In the Catholic view of things, the joining of man and woman in “one flesh” is a sacred foreshadowing of the eternal union that awaits us in heaven (see Eph 5:31-32). God gave us sexual desire, you might say, to be like the fuel of a rocket that’s meant to launch us toward the stars and beyond, to the eternal mystery of Christ’s union with the Church.
But what would happen if those rocket engines became inverted, no longer pointing us heavenward, but pointing us back upon ourselves? Welcome to the implosion of the sexual revolution. The union of the sexes serves as an icon, a sign of our ultimate fulfillment, but it is the beginning of our demise when we worship sex itself. A culture that worships sex has surely lost sight of heaven.
Jesus says we will no longer be given in marriage in heaven (see Mt 22:30). Why? Because we no longer need signs to point us to heaven, when we’re in heaven. The “marriage of the Lamb” (Rv 19:7) — the union of love that alone can satisfy — will be eternally consummated.
In turn, Jesus calls some to remain celibate not for celibacy’s sake, but “for the sake of the kingdom” (Mt 19:12) — that is, as a living witness to the union that awaits us in heaven. Authentically lived, a celibate’s life proclaims that as beautiful and wonderful as the union of the sexes is, there is a greater love, a greater union worth “selling everything” for.
It is entirely fitting that priests would be called to this level of sacrifice. In a world that idolizes sex, we desperately need the courageous witness of priestly celibacy. For when it is properly lived, it very effectively reorients our rocket engines toward the heavens.
Perhaps the bishops who recently gathered in Rome, rather than having their heads in the sand, were actually looking toward the stars. Perhaps they’re not as kookie as Cokie thought.
.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
.
Christopher West is a fellow of the Theology of the Body Institute.
His books and tapes on the Theology of the Body are available from Catholic Exchange online store.
.
Ostriches at Vatican City'
By COKIE ROBERTS
and STEVEN V. ROBERTS
Catholic bishops from around the world have chosen to bury their heads in the sand. Apparently, even that uncomfortable pose is preferable to taking the steps necessary to deal with what many of them call the greatest problem facing the Church today — the acute shortage of priests.
Meeting for the first time since Benedict became pope; the bishops emerged from a three-week-long conference reaffirming the requirement of priestly celibacy. In a stunning display of cognitive dissidence, the men meeting in Rome also enthusiastically endorsed the central role of the Eucharist in Catholic life. But thousands of the faithful are denied the sacrament on a regular basis because there is no priest anywhere around.
When the bishops assembled in early October, prelates from the most developed countries to the least told tales of parishes without priests. New Zealand's Denis Brown, according to the Catholic News Service, insisted that isolated villagers "have as much right to participate in the Eucharist" as anyone else. He then asked why it's OK for former Anglican priests who are married to function as Catholic priests, while Catholic priests who marry are not.
Why indeed? And why is it OK for priests in Eastern rites to be married but not those in the Western, or Roman, rite? The answer echoes "Fiddler on the Roof" — tradition. Priestly celibacy is not a matter of dogma or theology; it's one of discipline and tradition. And, as it did with the proscription against meat on Friday, which was imposed as a discipline on the faithful for centuries, the Church can simply change the rule.
But the bishops have emphatically decided not to. In fact, when early reports from the secret meeting revealed the mere fact of discussion about the celibacy rule, the Vatican cracked down on the prelates' access to the press. Yet another case of firmly inserting head in sand — stop talking about the issue and it will go away. Still, no matter how much the men married to tradition wish it weren't so, the shortage of priests presents an eventually untenable problem for an evangelizing church.
The Vatican's own statistics show a 52 percent increase in the numbers of the faithful between 1975 and 2002, to more than a billion worldwide, compared to a static number of priests at less than half a million. In the United States, the Catholic population grew from about 49 million to a little more than 64 million, while the number of priests declined by 22 percent, down to about 45,000. And the situation is getting worse. A sociologist at Catholic University has found that for every 100 priests who die or leave the priesthood, only 30 to 40 replace them.
Now the Vatican is sending out signals that it will instruct seminaries to refuse to admit celibate homosexuals, which is likely to cut down even more on the numbers of men opting for ordination.
Allowing priests to marry might not totally make up for the shortfall, but it could certainly help alleviate the dire situation of more than a quarter of U.S. parishes that are priestless. Other Christian denominations in this country have seen the ranks of their clergy, who are allowed to marry, grow at the same time that the Catholic numbers dwindled.
There are, of course, some practical problems associated with a married priesthood. The Church would be responsible for supporting the wives and children and would experience the same difficulties as other institutions in trying to reassign entire families instead of single men. And there's the potentially embarrassing question of the size of priests families, with parishioners curious to see whether their pastors might be practicing birth control.
Still, ending the ban on marriage is the easiest fix for the problem. We would prefer that the Vatican allow women to become priests — a decision that would probably solve the shortage overnight. Women make up more than 80 percent of the lay people performing some form of ministry in the Church. But Pope John Paul II firmly shut the door on even discussing women's ordination, calling the all male clergy a matter of doctrine, not discipline.
If the bishops succeed in shutting down debate on an end to celibacy as well, they will be condemning countless Catholics around the world to a life where the blessings of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, are not available. Then what does it mean to be a Catholic? That's the question these men need to pull their heads out of the sand and answer.
Steve Roberts' latest book is "My Fathers' Houses: Memoir of a Family" (William Morrow, 2005). Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by e-mail at stevecokie@gmail.com.
Copyright 2005, Newspaper Enterprise Assn.
and STEVEN V. ROBERTS
Catholic bishops from around the world have chosen to bury their heads in the sand. Apparently, even that uncomfortable pose is preferable to taking the steps necessary to deal with what many of them call the greatest problem facing the Church today — the acute shortage of priests.
Meeting for the first time since Benedict became pope; the bishops emerged from a three-week-long conference reaffirming the requirement of priestly celibacy. In a stunning display of cognitive dissidence, the men meeting in Rome also enthusiastically endorsed the central role of the Eucharist in Catholic life. But thousands of the faithful are denied the sacrament on a regular basis because there is no priest anywhere around.
When the bishops assembled in early October, prelates from the most developed countries to the least told tales of parishes without priests. New Zealand's Denis Brown, according to the Catholic News Service, insisted that isolated villagers "have as much right to participate in the Eucharist" as anyone else. He then asked why it's OK for former Anglican priests who are married to function as Catholic priests, while Catholic priests who marry are not.
Why indeed? And why is it OK for priests in Eastern rites to be married but not those in the Western, or Roman, rite? The answer echoes "Fiddler on the Roof" — tradition. Priestly celibacy is not a matter of dogma or theology; it's one of discipline and tradition. And, as it did with the proscription against meat on Friday, which was imposed as a discipline on the faithful for centuries, the Church can simply change the rule.
But the bishops have emphatically decided not to. In fact, when early reports from the secret meeting revealed the mere fact of discussion about the celibacy rule, the Vatican cracked down on the prelates' access to the press. Yet another case of firmly inserting head in sand — stop talking about the issue and it will go away. Still, no matter how much the men married to tradition wish it weren't so, the shortage of priests presents an eventually untenable problem for an evangelizing church.
The Vatican's own statistics show a 52 percent increase in the numbers of the faithful between 1975 and 2002, to more than a billion worldwide, compared to a static number of priests at less than half a million. In the United States, the Catholic population grew from about 49 million to a little more than 64 million, while the number of priests declined by 22 percent, down to about 45,000. And the situation is getting worse. A sociologist at Catholic University has found that for every 100 priests who die or leave the priesthood, only 30 to 40 replace them.
Now the Vatican is sending out signals that it will instruct seminaries to refuse to admit celibate homosexuals, which is likely to cut down even more on the numbers of men opting for ordination.
Allowing priests to marry might not totally make up for the shortfall, but it could certainly help alleviate the dire situation of more than a quarter of U.S. parishes that are priestless. Other Christian denominations in this country have seen the ranks of their clergy, who are allowed to marry, grow at the same time that the Catholic numbers dwindled.
There are, of course, some practical problems associated with a married priesthood. The Church would be responsible for supporting the wives and children and would experience the same difficulties as other institutions in trying to reassign entire families instead of single men. And there's the potentially embarrassing question of the size of priests families, with parishioners curious to see whether their pastors might be practicing birth control.
Still, ending the ban on marriage is the easiest fix for the problem. We would prefer that the Vatican allow women to become priests — a decision that would probably solve the shortage overnight. Women make up more than 80 percent of the lay people performing some form of ministry in the Church. But Pope John Paul II firmly shut the door on even discussing women's ordination, calling the all male clergy a matter of doctrine, not discipline.
If the bishops succeed in shutting down debate on an end to celibacy as well, they will be condemning countless Catholics around the world to a life where the blessings of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, are not available. Then what does it mean to be a Catholic? That's the question these men need to pull their heads out of the sand and answer.
Steve Roberts' latest book is "My Fathers' Houses: Memoir of a Family" (William Morrow, 2005). Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by e-mail at stevecokie@gmail.com.
Copyright 2005, Newspaper Enterprise Assn.
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