Celibacy: Beware of Quick-Fix Solutions
Peter said to Jesus: “We have left all we had, to follow you” (Lk 18:28).
The prevalent American-inspired monoculture affirms materialism, consumerism, and hedonism, and exploits our animal craving for instant gratification. Perpetual celibacy affronts these secular values. Its very “foolishness”(1 Cor 1:25) means that its prophetic sign-value is intense.
But when religious vocations collapse and priestly numbers remain static for a generation, it seems prudent to consider pragmatic solutions. And yet, our Catholic instincts tell us that a managerialist response to spiritual needs is unlikely to satisfy. Quick-fixes are especially dubious (Mt 9:16).
Faced with puzzling arguments that apparently prove that the Church’s rule of obligatory sacerdotal celibacy is in irreconcilable conflict with her teaching on the centrality of the Blessed Eucharist, the average Catholic will be mystified. In this climate, a straw poll may well record a significant vote in favour of relaxing or abandoning the rule.
The first question is whether the issue can be decided on anecdotal evidence and gut feeling.
Are history, tradition, and the theological grounding of the rule to be ignored? Is the true state of the problem to be extrapolated from our immediate experience? The “Priests for Tomorrow” initiative of Rosebank parish in Johannesburg, by-passes these wider issues and sets them in a shallow factual matrix. In so doing, they offer the wrong solution to the wrong problem.
More problematic are the terms of the debate. So long as it is predicated on “rights” (the “right” of women to be ordained, the injustice of “imposed” celibacy, the laity’s “right” to demand the Sacraments from Christ’s Church, and so on), it will generate strife because this “rights” discourse (appealing to, but in fact subverting, the core teaching of the Second Vatican Council) feeds directly into congregational theories of Church governance which necessarily repudiate papal and episcopal authority.
It is impossible to conduct a sincere and honest debate on celibacy which presupposes so radical a reconstruction of the Church. If the debate is to be meaningful, some other point of departure is needed. The current argument, nevertheless, requires a response.
The advertisement published three times so far in The Southern Cross presents this theorem: (a) the right of the lay faithful to frequent reception of the Eucharist (b) is imperilled by the artificial obligation of sacerdotal celibacy which (c) arbitrarily inhibits priestly vocations, leading (d) to a dearth of priests, therefore (e) celibacy must be made optional. This argument is false or weak in all its limbs.
(a) The lay faithful have no objective “rights” to the sacraments. Nothing in canon law or the magisterium justifies the reading that the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Orders are a quasi-commodity which the Church must supply at the point of demand.
(b) The rule of obligatory sacerdotal celibacy derives from apostolic times and is not a late or inauthentic accretion confected by structures of patriarchal domination to meet transitory needs.
Obligatory celibacy is not extraneous to sacred orders but—in ways which differ in their precise application—has always been fundamental throughout the Church, East and West. None of the Eastern Churches permit a priest to remarry after the death of his wife; none will dispense a celibate priest from his vows so that he might marry; and none will appoint a married priest as bishop. It is not “just” a discipline.
(c) The argument that if the discipline were relaxed there would be a flood of candidates inverts the Catholic sense of “vocation” which is grounded not in conforming the priesthood to the will of the individual, but in God’s call (Jn 15:16).
Just as (in another context) many are called but few are chosen (Mt 20:16), so also many offer themselves uncalled (cf Lev 10:1; Nb 16).
(d) Any credible analysis of the problem must be truly Catholic in its reach. Little attention has been paid to hard facts—let alone to interpreting them in context—and only a few can be mentioned here; but a small adjustment of perspective discloses an extraordinarily varied picture.
For example, in the archdiocese of Durban priestly numbers swelled from 106 in 1970 to 142 in 2006 (+34%) while the Catholic population grew by 18%. In Mariannhill (where Catholics increased by 10%) diocesan clergy quadrupled to 37 in 2004 from nine in 1970. In Pretoria in the same period, priestly numbers jumped from 74 to 113 (+53%) while Catholics increased by 63%.
Meanwhile, the tragic shortage of priests in much of Latin America has been apparent for decades. The urgency is undiminished. In recent weeks the Holy Father appointed new bishops to the sees of Diamantina (431000 Catholics with 61 priests), Joinville (641000 with 93), and Janauba (310000 with 20).
Large areas of Africa are similarly afflicted. The bishop of the newly erected diocese of Viana, Angola, has 500000 Catholics in his care with 37 priests.
In 2004, Umzimkulu in KwaZulu-Natal had 141000 Catholics and 15 priests. The challenges facing the archdiocese of Johannesburg (1 million Catholics, with 180 priests) pale by comparison.
But Africa as a whole is fruitful in vocations: the Catholic population grew from 95 million in 1994 to 150 million in 2004, and the numbers of priests (the great majority indigenous) kept pace, expanding from 21000 to 31000 in the same decade.
Parts of Asia are even more marvellously fruitful: South Korea is a prime example. In Latin America the trend is hopeful.
(e) The causal relationship is unproven. Sacerdotal celibacy is far from being the obvious culprit.
In England, between 1990 and 2005, Anglican full-time stipendiary male clergy fell by 31% (from 10480 to 7219). In the United Methodist Church (USA) male ordinations dropped from 700 in 1974 to 400 in 1994, and the numbers of clergy under the age of 35 collapsed from 3219 in 1985 to 850 in 2005. Complex societal factors are at work.
This much is sure: pressure for “optional celibacy” causes the vocations trumpet to put out an uncertain sound (1 Cor 14:8), and stop-gap palliatives inevitably imply lack of trust in Divine Providence (Jer 3:15).
Only incessant prayer to the Lord of the Harvest (Mt 9:38) can ignite the revolutionary self-sacrificing zeal which fuels the priesthood; and only the love of Christ (2 Cor 5:14) drives priests to forswear family and worldly comforts to labour for souls.
Martin Keenan retired to South Africa in 1991 from England, where he had been in practice at the Chancery Bar in London.
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