20100517 Question: Celibate Priests

11: Celibate Priesthood... Why?

11. First, to define the word celibate: celibate means "unmarried." It does not simply mean "single;" rather it signifies that someone has chosen to give up the goods of marriage and all it entails in order to serve more devotedly a higher cause. When a man chooses to accept the gift of celibacy, he is choosing to love the Church as Christ loved the Church, with his whole life. There are arguments from Scripture and history that point to a married priesthood in the early centuries A.D., and they are correct. As one sees in the Eastern Churches (Orthodox and Catholic), a married priesthood has existed for centuries. What is sometimes forgotten is that, for the first several centuries A.D., if a married man were to become a priest or bishop, he and his wife would be expected to be continent, meaning abstaining from sexual relations. While this discipline lasted for a substantial period of time, the Churches saw that it was not going to be tenable in the long term. In the East, the Churches eased the practice of continence for parish priests except for Sundays and Holy Days, but transitioned to a rule of celibacy for bishops, after the pattern of monastics. In the West, the Church judged that it was best for the good of the faithful that their priests maintain that single-minded devotion; therefore, they chose to augment the rule of continence with a promise of celibacy in order to remove the obstacle of married life. Each of these paths has their own difficulties, but it should be noted that since the initial conflict over clerical celibacy, evangelization has flourished in the Latin rite (the West). In fact, the "Western" Church has now been in Russia, the Far East, India, Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, Indochina, and the South Pacific in addition to Europe and all of the Americas. Some may posit other arguments, but I think the devotion to things above that a celibate must have has been a central principle in the spreading of the Gospel to nearly every known people of the world. If you want to discuss any particular Scripture passage, just reply or comment.