Priestly Celibacy Under Attack

So Cardinal Schoenborn apparently agrees with Hans Kung that priestly celibacy is the cause of the sex abuse scandal sweeping the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Schoenborn used to be thought of as a successor to Benedict XVI, his former university professor, but lately it seems that Schoenborn has chosen to throw in his lot with the pro-homosexual, pro-sexual revolution forces in his own diocese even to the point of pressuring the Vatican to rescind the appointment of an orthodox bishop in Vienna.

Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church in Austria lies in ruins with attendance declining, vocations almost non-existent and services celebrating homosexuality in the cathedral.. Clearly, this disaster is the result of post Vatican II liberalism, sexual libertinism and a drift away from tradition and Scripture. Yet the solution from people like Kung is always more extreme liberalism, pushing the boundaries of sexual ethics and more novelties to make the Church "relevant" to an increasingly pagan society. You can almost hear the secular journalists hyper-ventilating with excitement at the thought of how high in the hierarchy the sexual revolution propaganda has now reached! (bolding is mine)

"A cardinal seen as a future candidate for the papacy has broken a Vatican taboo by raising the possibility that priestly celibacy is among the causes of the sex abuse scandal sweeping the Roman Catholic Church.

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna and a protégé of Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in his archdiocese's magazine this week that the Church must make an "unflinching examination" of the causes of the scandal.

He said that these included "the issue of priests' training, as well as the question of what happened in the so-called sexual revolution of the generation of 1968".

He added: "It also includes the question of priest celibacy and the question of personality development. It requires a great deal of honesty, both on the part of the Church and of society as a whole."

His remarks came days after Father Hans Kung, the dissident Catholic theologian, blamed the Church’s “uptight” views on sex for child abuse scandals in Germany, Ireland and the US.

The cardinal's spokesman, Erich Leitenberger, later issued a "clarification" claiming that the cardinal was not "in any way seeking to question the Catholic Church's celibacy rule" after headlines in the German and Italian press such as "Schönborn says priestly abuse is the fault of celibacy" and "Celibacy must be reconsidered, Schönborn says".

The cardinal's office said that he had been misinterpreted. Some observers said that he had been obliged to issue his "clarification" under pressure from the Vatican."

Now about this argument that priestly celibacy causes sexual abuse. Why would that be? Is it because we cannot expect people to practice self-control (not even with the help of the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit), so therefore we have to give the imperialistic, uncontrollable, sexual drive an outlet? That is a common post-Darwinian view of human nature and it fits best within a completely materialistic worldview that sees humans as highly evolved animals. But it denies that to be human is to exercise rational control over the bodily instincts.

Is the only possible solution to rape to make women let men have their way with them so the men won't need to force themselves on them? Are men not supposed to control their urges? Are they not supposed to be civilized? Here we see a curious thing: Western liberals and Muslims seem to agree that men cannot be expected to practice self-restraint. Muslims therefore order women to wear the burka, while Western liberals order women to go on the pill and be ready to put out on demand. But neither order men to zip it up and act like adults; only Christianity treats men like responsible persons and not like irresponsible children.

If a priest has a problem with pedophilia, how exactly is marriage supposed to help? Is he supposed to marry a child? If a priest is homosexual how is marriage supposed to help? Oh, wait, of course, right after the epic struggle to end priestly celibacy is won the next item on the agenda is same-sex marriage. So, actually, what seems to be about the question of priestly celibacy is actually about normalizing homosexuality.

More laxness in the area of sexual activity is not the answer. That way lies only more deviations, more heartache and more social problems. Priestly celibacy is under attack in our society for exactly the same reason that pre-marital virginity and marital fidelity is under attack - because the ideology of the modern, autonomous self and fulfillment through indulgence hates both as impediments to its so-called "freedom." But this is a false freedom, which must be countered by the true freedom of the Gospel in which we are set free to be persons made in God's image and capable of the sincere gift of the self and personal communion like that of the Triune God.

"If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed." (John 8:36) If you fall for the "freedom" offered by Hans Kung you will find yourself enslaved by your sinful nature.

Singleness and the Christian Vision of Marriage and Family

A question was raised by my post on the Chastity Ethic versus the Promiscuity Ethic. What about singleness? Is celibacy not an important part of the Christian witness? Does not an ethic that exalts marriage inevitably denigrate singleness? (I think this captures the spirit of the question.)

First, single people are part of families. Everyone has a mother and a father and, hopefully, siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents etc. Everyone has been raised in some sort of family and has personally benefited from that family (or in many cases, of course, been harmed). Everyone a single person knows and is in community with is also a product of a family. And single people inevitably will know more married people than single people (unless they live in a monastery or convent). The average local congregation will have many families in it. So, the point is that single people, just like everyone else in society, have a serious interest in the well-being of the family as an institution and how it is doing in contemporary society. (Strong families improve everything from the crime rate to the amount of mental illness in a given society.) And single people will very often have an impact on families as friends, mentors, teachers of children, uncles or aunts etc. We must never think that singles are somehow indifferent to families and the influence (for good or ill) flows both ways. (This is similar to argument that everyone should pay taxes to support public schools, rather than only the parents of children in the schools.)

Second, Luther was wrong to urge the destruction of the monasteries and convents. I believe it was a political move and endeared his version of the Reformation to land greedy princes. Apart from the shoddy politics, however, it was a theological mistake. He thought that most people should marry and that no one should be forced into a life of celibacy. Both points are undoubtedly true, but they do not justify the denigration of the celibate life or the positive contribution celibates have made to the Church down through the centuries. At times, the secular clergy have been so abysmally corrupted and the Church so weak and in need of reform that the Church was literally saved by celibate monks being appointed bishops and sometimes wearing their hair shirts under their colorful robes in the execution of their duties. (Study the history of the island monastery of Lerins, which at one point provided most of the bishops of Gaul.)

Luther was also wrong because the celibate is a living rebuke to the calumny that all must inevitably succumb to the temptation to sin sexually. Of course some celibates have fallen into to sexual temptation, but that many have not is the thing that should cause wonder. And indeed, the world is always gleeful when a priest or monk falls because that provides a rationalization for its sins. But when a celibate lives a chaste life, that is in itself a rebuke to licentiousness.

Luther was also wrong because humans created in the image of God are rational, moral creatures with the power of moral choice. We can, through repeated sinful acts, fall into vice and become sexually addicted. But we can also, with the help of grace, through repeated resistance to temptation, develop the virtue of chastity. Protestantism has, I believe, offered such feeble resistance to the sexual revolution in part because it does not have a monastic movement helping to hold up the virtue of chastity for the Church as a whole.

Third, much of the Christian Tradition, building on Paul's words in I Cor. 7 has viewed the celibate state as the superior one. This is going too far; a balanced view sees both the celibate and the married state as good and virtuous (both being founded alike on the virtue of chastity) but different in the goods that each one embodies. The most important good of the celibate state is not the functional one - i.e. the ability to serve Christ and the world in ways that a married person could not. This is a good, but not the highest good. The highest good of the celibate state is that single persons bear a witness to future eschatological state of the kingdom in which, as Jesus said, there will be no more marrying or giving in marriage. Just as Christian marriage witnesses to the goodness of God's creation and the continuities between creation and redemption (continuities relating to the central importance of love), so Christian celibacy witnesses to the goodness of God's plan of redemption and the goodness of the coming Kingdom (a goodness that has love at its core.)

Love is central both to the married and the celibate state. In both cases there is a need for the mortification (in the sense of the disciplining) of the flesh and the gift of self to the other. The celibate life enables a different (non-sexual but real) gift of the self to others; think of pioneer missionaries who took the Gospel to remote places of the earth and often suffered martyrdom. Celibacy enabled this costly witness. Celibacy can also enable less dramatic, but nevertheless significant ways of giving of the self in ministry and service.

To summarize, then, celibacy is a vocation within the Church and a witness to the Kingdom of God. It is not to be despised, but rather embraced by the Church as a necessary component of the Church's mission in the world. In the Kingdom, we will all be celibate. Yet, in that state, the virtues of marriage will not be left behind, but taken up and transfigured along with the resurrection body and the life in God. And this will be true both for those of us called to marriage in this life and also for those of us called to celibacy in this life. Both celibates and married people are one in the body of Christ. All of us are finally the bride and he is the groom.