Celibacy is better than marriage—don’t be threatened by this truth

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 22, 2025

These days it’s impossible to say that celibacy is higher than marriage without some Catholics taking offense. Even if you make the right qualifications—what is objectively better may not be subjectively better for a given individual, marriage is still good, married people can be saints—people are still set off by the mere statement that one state of life is in itself superior to the other.

I often use the word “higher”, because it seems to connote something that is better in itself, without the lower goods being “worse” (in the sense of being bad, rather than less good). But it really doesn’t matter whether you say “higher”, “better”, or “superior”—these are synonyms. Obviously, it is better to be higher than to be lower.

This is what the Church teaches. If the words of St. Paul and our Lord Himself aren’t good enough for you, here’s Pope St. John Paul II: “the Church, throughout her history, has always defended the superiority of this charism [celibacy] to that of marriage” (Familiaris Consortio 16).

And here’s Pope Pius XII: “Virginity is preferable to marriage then, as We have said, above all else because it has a higher aim: that is to say, it is a very efficacious means for devoting oneself wholly to the service of God, while the heart of married persons will remain more or less ‘divided.’” (Sacra Virginitas 24)

It is of course better, subjectively, to live the life one is called to. Yet it is not enough to say that celibacy is better for some while marriage is better for others. Celibacy is better than marriage, absolutely speaking. In fact, in the long run, we are all called to celibacy.

In the next life, all will be celibate. None will be married. Therefore marriage exists for the sake of producing celibates. When something exists temporarily and partially for the sake of an end that is permanent and universal, the end is better than the thing through which the end is achieved. Marriage also exists in this world to provide an image of the heavenly (celibate) wedding feast of the Lamb. In the next life the image will pass away and only the reality will remain. The thing which an image depicts is better than the image. The logic is undeniable.

From the standpoint of heroic virtue, too, it’s simply more praiseworthy—a higher perfection—to abstain from earthly goods for God’s sake in this life. Even within marriage, the Church has always seen it as praiseworthy (though not obligatory) to abstain from relations once childbearing years are over.

We should not be afraid of this word “better”. There is certainly more that can be said, but beware of smothering the truth with too many qualifications. It must be allowed to stand forth in its austere brilliance. Qualifications should be made serenely out of love of truth, rather than in a panic of haste to be insulated from a truth that makes us uncomfortable.

Satan’s greatest victory in the modern age has been to convince people that hierarchy is oppressive and that what is higher threatens the dignity of what is lower. Even many Catholics shy away from the language of “higher” and “better” for fear that this appears to demean lesser goods.

But there is ultimately no way around this misunderstanding other than to confront it directly. We have to teach people that hierarchy is willed by God, that it is good and loving and generous, that what is higher indeed safeguards, includes, and pours down blessings on what is lower.

Someone who thinks that being lower (either in being or in office) means being compromised in one’s own proper dignity is incapable of growing spiritually, because like Eve she will be insecure about her standing next to anyone who possesses greater spiritual goods than she does. The sad irony is that egalitarians fail to recognize the most profound goods of their state in life—for instance the way that marriage images the ultimately celibate wedding feast. They waste their lives pridefully “grasping at equality”, contrary to our Lord’s example.

Perhaps still squirming to avoid the topic, some ask: why does it matter to know which is better, so long as one follows one’s own calling?

First, because truth matters. Second, for humility as I gratefully accept the goods and the position which God has offered to me, and give due honor to those who have taken a higher path. As St. Paul said, all members of the body are necessary, but not all are equal in rank. Third, because I must realize that we are all supposed to pursue the same eternal goods, recognizing which goods are desirable purely in themselves, and which goods are desirable for the sake of a certain end.

If we decide that marriage is an equally lofty path to holiness as celibacy, then it logically follows that sex is a spiritual end in itself—a perfect rationalization for carnal overindulgence. People who might otherwise accept the grace of celibacy will not be provoked to thirst for something higher if they are reassured that it’s all equally good.

Hierarchy is not the only truth that matters—equality has its place too—but it is one without which the order of the universe and the right ordering of our lives are unintelligible. Embracing it is essential to destroy pride, the principal vice of the modern world. It strikes at the heart of Satan’s resentment against God, and the reason our first parents fell. We cannot downplay it without consigning ourselves to spiritual mediocrity, or worse.