The Commitment to Celibacy


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    When people talk about priesthood as a way of life, the conversation always comes around, sooner or later, to the question of celibacy. There is no shortage of books and articles about celibacy, and I have no intention of adding another one. I would like to offer a few thoughts on some of the questions about celibacy which come up most frequently.

    1. What exactly is the promise of Celibacy?

    The word celibate means unmarried. People remain unmarried for various reasons, and sometimes, indeed, for no reason in particular. Priests and deacons make a commitment to remain unmarried for the sake of the kingdom of God.

    2. What is the point of that kind of commitment?

    a) Celibacy as a Mark of Love:

    It is sometimes said that priests make a commitment to celibacy because the life of a priest is so busy that he would never be able to care for a family. It is true that priests are busy, but lots of other people are busy too. Many of these busy people are also good husbands and wives, fathers or mothers. It is also true, that many journalists, politicians, and doctors will say that their professional commitments can make it very difficult to have a normal family life.

    In reality, the reasons for celibacy are more symbolic than practical. Like marriage, celibacy is an expression of love. If it is not that, it has no meaning at all. The Irish Dominican, Fergal O'Connor says:

    Unless the celibate is really a man who is dedicated to the love of other people, a man given utterly and completely to all those in his care, in the way a married man is meant to give himself to his wife or a wife to her husband - unless he is this kind of man, then the sign value of his life is going to be dimmed seriously, just as the sign value of Christian marriage is dimmed when in fact true Christian love is not realised within it. (Celibacy and Virginity, Logos 1968)

    By choosing to remain unmarried, a priest expresses his commitment to the kind of love which Jesus lived in his own ministry, a radical giving of himself in the service of his Father, and of the people. Because, the love of a priest is not given exclusively to this particular woman or to this family, it can be offered freely to all, without any conflict.

    Celibacy must be seen as a way of living one's sexuality and not as a denial of it. A priest relates to other people, both men and women, as a man. This pastoral love is not just a vague love for people in general, but a real concrete love for real men and women. A priest may be living on his own, but his living is very clearly directed towards others.

    b). Celibacy as a Sign of the Kingdom

    As Christians, we say we believe in the Resurrection of Jesus. We believe that we are called to share in his life, and to find lasting happiness in our relationship with him. In practice, however, most of our energy goes into the here and now.

    People find meaning in all sorts of things; in pleasure, in power, and in wealth, to mention just a few. For very many people, in almost every culture, one of the things which gives real meaning and value to life is a good marriage and a happy family. Celibacy is not a denial of the goodness and value of marriage; but, because it points beyond the here and now, celibacy reminds us that our ultimate human fulfilment is in the kingdom of God. In the midst of our busy, and sometimes shallow life-styles, celibacy - if it is lived positively - is a way of saying is a way of saying hold on a minute, there is more to life than this.

    In our late 20th. century culture, sexuality - like everything else - can and does become a victim of the consumer mentality. Sexuality was created for companionship, for mutual enrichment, and for life-giving. Unfortunately, in our time it is too often associated with disappointment, betrayal, and even violence.

    Christian marriage and committed celibacy, together, challenge us to look again at our vision of sexuality and relationship. Through their commited love for each other, married people reflect the love of God. They remind us all, priests included, that it is in the giving of ourselves in love that we are enriched. Side by side with this, celibacy is a way of saying it's o.k. to sacrifice certain present joys for the sake of a happiness which lies in the future. Marriage and celibacy complement each other. Each in its own way is a sign of Christian hope. Rosemary Haughton, a married woman with a family writes:

    There are many stopping places on the road, and some of them are very lovely, so lovely that there seems little sense in going further. It is at this point, when the Christian is tempted to decide that all that matters is there and now...that the sign is needed of those whose public dedication takes it clear that they are going further, because there is further to go. (Celibacy and Virginity, Logos, 1968)

    Jesus lived his celibacy, with his feet on the ground. For Him there was no conflict between the present and the future. The kingdom of heaven is already among you, he said. His celibate life style never became a way of escaping from the immediate concerns of people. It was, however, a way of helping them to focus beyond their immediate concerns. The celibacy of Jesus was closely related to his simple life style and his obedience to the will of the Father. By not rooting himself too firmly in the world, He bore witness to the fact that our fulfillment is in heaven, and that is where our hearts should be. During his earthly ministry, however, he went about among the people, creating the conditions for the coming of God's kingdom in all sorts of practical ways.

    3. Is it really possible to live celibacy in a way which is creative and fully human?

    The question about Celibacy which probably arises most strongly for people who are considering priesthood is Can I live this way and still be a well adjusted, happy human being? People sometimes say to me: I think priests ought to be married, or Do you not think you would be better off married?. To listen to them you would think that married people never had any difficulies, never had to make sacrifices, and never felt lonely. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    The choice of marriage and family, and the choice of celibate ministry are both choices about how we will relate to others, how we can give of ourselves, how we can give expression to our love. Looked at in this way, a mature choice of celibacy is not a denial of the deepest wishes of the heart. It is another way of responding to them.

    a). Intimacy:

    Just a few thoughts about sex. The word sex comes from the Latin seccare which means to divide or separate. God has created humanity in such a way that there is a separateness between man and woman. It is the most fundamental separation of human beings, and as such it reflects all the others. But separateness is also the motivation and the dynamism for our connectedness. To put it simply, opposites attract, and this attraction tells us something of the common vocation of every human being to serve God in relatedness with others.

    Each one of us must have his or her own personal space, and must respect the personal space of others; this is separateness. At the same time, each of us is called into relationship with others; this is connectedness. The appropriate balance of separateness and connectedness in our lives is what we usually refer to as intimacy. It is the mid-point between two extremes. One extreme is the extreme of separateness, when I am so absorbed in myself and my own fears that I cannot relate comfortably with others. The other extreme is the extreme of connectedness, when I am so totally wrapped up in someone else that I lose touch with my own real identity.

    Personal space is marked by boundaries. These can be understood as physical or emotional. They equally have to do with what we reveal about ourselves, and what we expect others to reveal about themselves. Be close to people, but not too close. Don't build barriers between yourself and others, but know what your boundaries are, and try to discover and respect the boundaries of others.

    b). Friendship:

    St. Paul is the man who most strongly advocates celibacy in the New Testament but, if we are to understand Paul's attitude to celibacy, we need to see it against the broader picture of his attitude to relationships and to companionship in general. His letters are full of references to the men and women who, in different places, were his companions and fellow workers. It seems that he didn't think of celibacy in terms of being a loner. Reading between the lines one picks up a sense of the intimacy and the depth of these relationships.

    The struggle of celibacy, or chastity, is more likely to be a problem when we hit a bad patch, when we feel weak or over-tired, when we feel we have failed, that nobody loves us, or when the whole effort of priestly commitment seems to have lost it's wholesomeness. It is at these times that we most experience the need of warmth and tenderness, and if it is missing from our lives in its positive forms, we can find ourselves, even sub-consciously, looking for it in less healthy ways. This would seem to me to suggest that in those times of difficulty we really reap the benefits of good friends who can help to restore our sense of worth and of being loved and understood.

    Some of us probably need to push ourselves out a bit more towards others. Some of us need to occasionally draw back from a busy schedule of relationships to have time to reflect and pray. But all of us are created to be with and for others. Wilkie Au SJ writes:

    Those who insist that celibates should be intimate with everyone, but with no one person in particular, misunderstand the nature of human intimacy. It is impossible to be intimate in general without first experiencing the intimacy of friendship with one person. (By Way of the Heart, p. 165)

    I find that priest-friends can share my experience of ministry with its joys and its cares in a way that lay people cannot. But to have only priest-friends is to leave open the risk of clericalism and unreality. Older and younger friends, male and female friends, married and single friends all have something to contribute to who we are. I have always found, for myself at least, that my closest friends tend to be people who, while they differ from me in various ways, share my values, and respect my vocation as well as their own, whatever it might be.

    c). Falling in Love:

    People say it is sad to think of a celibate person who falls in love and cannot be married. I think it is even more sad to think of a celibate person who has never been in love. To be in love means to be called into oneness with somebody. Love sometimes begins with infatuation; in fact infatuation has been described as love's novitiate. But a relationship which remains rooted in infatuation is more an expression of my own felt needs than an expression of love for the other person as a person. The challenge of all true love, and this includes the challenge of celibate love, is to move beyond the stage of infatuation into a loving intimacy with people which is respectful of both their commitments and of my own. To love someone truly as a celibate demands, not that we repress our love, but that we deepen our capacity for expressing our love in other ways. To respond appropriately to our feelings and to control our desires doesn't mean to deny them. Purity based on sexual denial is a fraud. Again Wilkie Au expresses this very well:

    Sexual denial hardens the heart and makes it arrogant. It closes the heart to mercy, renders it incapable of understanding the weak, and powerless to pronounce the words of Jesus to the woman caught in adultery. Such a purity is too glacial to be compassionate. (By Way of the Heart, p.145)

    d). Loneliness:

    A lot of people seem to think that priests are very lonely. Sometimes we are lonely. At other times, we look forward to being on our own for a while. Loneliness is part of the human condition, and it affects everyone from time to time. It is possible to be lonely in a crowd. It is possible to be lonely in a marriage, or after a partner has died or gone away.

    The important point is that celibacy is not the cause of loneliness, and marriage is not necessarily a solution for it. Sometimes, by trying to fill up the emptiness instead of accepting it, we end up causing ourselves more pain. In the final analysis, no other person can completely fill up our emptiness. Only God can do that.

    e). Commitment:

    One thing which makes celibacy possible and enriching is a clear commitment. If the commitment is only provisional or tentative; if we live all the time in the land of maybe and if only, then we already begin by leaving the door open for that commitment to drift and become dissipated. If only means that my body is here but my heart is somewhere else. There is no greater recipe for being miserable because, whatever situation you find yourself in, you are only half in it.

    f). Relationship with God:

    The relationship of faith with God, is the most important single relationship we have. It is he who calls us and he who sends us. Our celibacy means something because of our relationship with God. For this reason our commitment to it will remain strong only as long as it is linked to a living relationship of faith. It is possible to leave aside the good things of marriage and family life only because of a commitment to another way of loving and another way of expressing who we are. This relationship of faith needs to be constantly nourished with prayer and good works according to God's will.

    Alongside this, a regular encounter with the God of love in the Sacrament of Reconciliation also helps to remind us that we have someone who loves us in spite of our weakness and accepts us whether or not we are successful in all that we set out to do.

    4. Conclusion

    Celibacy means different things at different stages in life. Sometimes it is easier; sometimes it is more difficult. As Jesus remarked, it is not for everybody. One thing I have noticed is that the difficulties of celibacy seem to relate to the practical level of my experience. They have to do with how I feel in concrete situations. On the other hand, the joys seem more related to the achievement of goals and values which sometimes seem more remote. I don’t get up every morning and jump for joy because I am celibate, but I could honestly say that I feel a great sense of joy about what celibacy makes possible in my life, in spite of some of the undeniable feelings of loss that might go with it. To quote one Irish priest:

    I suppose there is such a thing as a sterile celibacy which is full of self pity. Perhaps there is a fertile celibacy too which brings life to those who have been broken by living. Without drawing up the theological arguments for celibacy, I think of the celibate as a wandering minstrel who is a victim of his song. He must keep moving or his song will die. The danger of celibacy is not in loving other people, but in not loving them enough. I think celibacy is not for people who do not know how to love. The celibate must be eminently able to love and know that in all love there is pain". (Fr. John Mc. Cullagh, in Dagmar Kolata, Priests: Telling it as it is , Veritas, 1992)

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