"Priestly Celibacy: Vatican or Gospel?"
Optional Celibacy: A Desperate Need in Today's Church
by Rev. James E. Sullivan
Aim: To demonstrate the vital need for celibacy to be optional.
M.T.: When two duties conflict, we must choose the higher duty.
Introduction:
I feel very strongly that the Church law on mandatory celibacy must be changed and changed very soon. I feel that way for two important reasons: first, because making celibacy optional is the only decent and Christian thing to do - the only way to end the loneliness and pain of thousands and thousands of really good men; and second, because, unless it is changed, the holy sacrifice of the Mass and the Eucharist will not survive. Catholics will become spiritually starved! Let's look at both!
A- Making Celibacy Optional the Only Christian Thing to Do:
Why do I feel so convinced of this? Because, for twenty-six years I was the Director of the Religious Consultation Center of the diocese of Brooklyn. And during those years I was deeply privileged, privileged as very few priests or bishops have ever been, to listen to the pain of untold hundreds of priests and religious sisters and brothers, to listen by the hour to really wonderful people who were deeply hurting.
It was the time when Vatican II had come to a close. You remember that, in the early years of the Council, everyone's hopes were so high. Pope John XXIII had appointed a special committee composed of bishops, theologians and lay people to study in depth the Church's ban on contraception. And even though Pope Paul VI had added some very rigid bishops to the committee, in its final report the committee voted overwhelmingly for the ban to be changed [147-3].. Married Catholics were ecstatic and priests, who were struggling with life-long celibacy, felt sure that the painful law of celibacy would soon be changed also.
But then came the heart-break! Paul VI refused to let the Council Fathers even discuss the ban on contraception or the law of celibacy. That was so outrageous! Here were twenty five hundred bishops representing the lived experience of the entire Catholic world and he wouldn't let them even discuss their peoples' struggles! And he then wrote two encyclicals: "Priestly Celibacy" and "Humanae Vitae", which re-enforced both disciplines. The let-down for the whole Church was unbelievable! We priests didn't say it openly but we were devastated! Throughout the entire world, the Vatican lost a frightful amount of credibility. Even the best of married couples just ignored what the Pope said about contraception. And priests and religious began to leave by the thousands.
At that time so many priests and religious were coming to me for counseling that it was impossible for me to do my parish work also. So I asked bishop McEntaggert if we could start a counseling center for all these hurting people. I gave the bishop a list of eighty priests and sisters, without revealing their names, of course. I just noted their age, their presenting problem, their diagnosis and the results of treatment. His eyes got that big! Who goes to a bishop with personal problems! So he gave me permission and within a year we had four full time counselors, each of us with our masters degree in counseling, several part time counselors and a few part time psychiatrists and psychologists. Over the next twenty six years we worked in depth with almost five hundred priests, two thousand religious sisters and brothers and hundreds of lay people both married and single. They came from all over the metropolitan area, as well as Connecticut and New Jersey. They were both parish priests and priests from some twenty seven different religious orders. They were really good, beautiful people, but they were hurting like a toothache!
It was heart breaking to listen to their pain. Really good people, who gave of themselves whole-heartedly to help others, and they were suffering terribly themselves. There was a fearful amount of loneliness and in most cases an awful struggle with repressed anger and sexual temptations. Besides individual counseling, we invited most of them to be a part of a group. The groups were composed of eight to ten people, priests, sisters and brothers, plus a priest and sister counselor. They would meet once a week for ninety minutes for a period of nine months and the group process was a tremendous help to them.
At first everyone would be shy and hesitate to talk about their problems but gradually all of them would open up and share their feelings. And they were so beautiful in understanding and supporting each other, that many life-long friendships developed among them. Really good people, who wanted to preach the Gospel and serve others, but they had been warned so often about the dangers of "particular friendships", that they were afraid to make close friends, afraid to share their feelings. And in a world that just reeked with sexual temptations, they had absolutely no legitimate outlet for the pressure of their own sexual feelings!
Of the five hundred priests that we counseled, forty nine had to leave the priesthood because they fell in love and wanted to get married. And all but one of them were exemplary priests, men who gave of themselves wholeheartedly to their people and men who were dearly loved by their people. But, they were immediately dismissed from the priesthood. All their education and experience, all their years of service and the love that their people felt for them, that all counted for nothing! They had to leave the priesthood that they loved and served so well.
When John Paul II became Pope, we hoped that things would be better. What a mistake that was. For his first ten years he not only dismissed them from the priesthood but he wouldn't even grant them a dispensation. They had to marry outside the Church that they had loved and served so well! It was absolutely cruel! And, meantime, the poor sick priests who were abusing children,they were protected; they were sent for treatment and reassigned to other parishes, where they could abuse again. It was such an unfathomable contradiction! And the only reason for such injustice was to protect the law of celibacy!
That outdated discipline must be changed!
B- Secondly, Unless Celibacy is Changed, We Are Going to Lose the Eucharist:
The Mass and the Eucharist are the very center of our spiritual nourishment.. In the last forty years we have lost well over 100,000 priests, over 20,000 in the United States alone. At present, one third of Europe's parishes, one third, do not have a single resident priest, that's over 40,000 parishes without their own priest! And the priests, who are serving and trying to cover two or three parishes are all getting older and more feeble. In our own diocese of Brooklyn, for example, we have five times as many priests who are 71 and
older--[the retirement age]--than we have priests who are 40 and younger. The future is bleak!
When I spoke to our bishop Daily a few months ago, he said: "Jim, we just have to pray for vocations." I said: "Bishop, we've been doing that for forty years. God expects more of us than that." And then I told him the true story about the prizefighter who blessed himself before the first round. He looked down and saw a priest at the ringside and he said to him: "That will help me, won't it, Father?" The priest answered: "Yeah, if you can fight!" Bishop Daily was a good sport. He laughed and said: "Okay Jim, you've got a point!"
Our bishops know that celibacy has to be made optional. They're at their wits end trying to staff their parishes. Then why do they continue their exasperating silence? Why do they dismiss from the priesthood those good men who have the integrity to admit that they can no longer be celibate, when the need for priests is so desperate?
The answer is that our bishops, regrettably, have forgotten a fundamental principle of moral theology, the principle that, when two duties conflict, persons must follow the higher duty. At that moment of conflict, the lesser duty is no longer binding on them. So, for example, a soldier has a duty to obey his captain but, if the captain orders him to shoot an unarmed prisoner, the soldier must follow his higher duty not to kill an innocent person. At that moment he's not so much disobeying his captain as he is obeying a higher authority. He is obeying God.
The same is true of other moral conflicts. A police officer must not obey his sergeant if his sergeant orders him to cover up evidence in an investigation. A congressman must not vote against his conscience even if the president himself pressures him to do so. And a priest must never reveal confessional secrets even if his life is threatened. True obedience, in other words, is obedience to the higher duty.
Salvation of Souls:The Supreme Law
Bishops obviously are no exceptions to this moral law. Even though the Vatican makes them swear a special oath of loyalty to the Pope before they can even be consecrated, they are not exempt from the supreme law, the salvation of souls! So, whenever any policy of the Vatican becomes a hindrance to the spread of the Gospel or to the spiritual welfare of their people, the bishops are bound in conscience to follow that higher duty. And, like everyone else, they must do this even if they suffer the displeasure and censure of the Pope!
This certainly seems obvious to any right-thinking person. The salvation of souls is the supreme law! And yet our bishops have either forgotten this higher duty or, more ignoble still, they have ignored it.
How I wish that just one of our diocesan bishops would have the courage to be true to the Gospel! For just one of them to take as his ideal the motto of the great Cardinal Merry del Val: "Da mihi animas; cetera tolle! Give me souls; take everything else!" Just one bishop to say with all his heart: "Take your honors and your Vatican approval; take your larger dioceses and your Cardinal's hat; just give me souls and whatever is good for their welfare!"
It would not involve a schism as some might fear. It would not be a denial of faith nor a repudiation of the Pope's authority. It would simply be a matter of putting first things first!- of making a necessary adjustment for the salvation of souls. The bishop could write a very respectful letter to the Pope. He could say:
"Your Holiness, I am writing this open letter so that you and my diocese will understand what I am about to do. I am about to ordain ten exemplary married men, [or call back ten married priests, who are just longing to serve]. I'm doing this in order to staff the ten parishes in my diocese that no longer have a resident priest.
I'm sure that you will understand, Your Holiness, because you yourself have not interfered with those bishops in Africa and South America who have priests serving in their dioceses who are living in a common law marriage. It is clear that you understand that the salvation of souls is the supreme law, much higher than the Church's discipline of mandatory celibacy. May God continue to bless you in your difficult tasks!" Signed: Bishop_______. Wow! The destructive silence and secrecy would be shattered! Both the Vatican and the bishops would be forced by the widespread publicity to initiate a healthy dialogue about celibacy and the other problems facing our Church. The Church would finally be the Church of Vatican II, the open, compassionate Church of Jesus!
NJ VOTF is a 501(c)3 organization, and all donations from 2003 to the present are tax deductible. We are very grateful for your generosity.