The White Flag of Surrender (Priestly Celibacy)

Crisis Magazine ^ | December 2003 | Deal Hudson

[NYer]

During the November meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Washington, D.C., the president of Call to Action presented the bishops with a letter from 6,000 Catholics asking that celibacy become optional for the priesthood. Their motivation, as quoted in USA Today, was to make the Eucharist more widely available. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Of course, anyone who knows the ways dissenters sell their wares will sense a pig in a poke.

For the past two years, false reform groups like Voice of the Faithful have been pointing the finger at celibacy as a cause of the sex-abuse scandal. The celibacy requirement, they argue, attracts emotionally immature men to the priesthood (tell that to the 65,000 priests serving in our country). If the Church allowed married men—or even women—into the priesthood, there would be a lower incidence of sexual abuse.

Besides being a blanket insult to all Catholic priests of the past millennium, the argument is baseless. When a group of Milwaukee priests issued a public letter supporting optional celibacy to their ordinary, Archbishop Timothy Dolan refused to be intimidated, and Bishop Wilton Gregory, the president of the USCCB, backed him up with a strong statement saying that the celibacy requirement would not be reconsidered.

So using the scandal to undermine the priesthood has not worked, and the dissenters are going back to their pre-scandal argument that the growing shortage of priests requires opening the priesthood to married men. This is what I call the “marketing” argument, and it’s a poor one. Yes, we need more priests, but there are good and bad ways of multiplying vocations.

Vocations are discovered in the midst of charity, devotion, and sanctity. Where have vocations been coming from for the past 20 years? From those families, parishes, communities, and dioceses most devoted to the orthodox teaching of the Church and its earnest practice. Communities of dissent have not produced vocations, although they have succeeded in leading people to doubt the relevance of the Church to their suffering. Who would heed the call to serve such a Church? Not I, not you.

Last month, I visited the remarkable St. Mary’s Catholic Center at Texas A & M University in College Station, Texas. Led by Rev. Mike Sis, this community has produced more vocations to the priesthood and the religious life than any other comparable community in the nation. How do they do it? College Station is a Protestant outpost in a largely Protestant state, in spite of its Mexican Catholic roots. But even the occasional visitor, like myself, passing through the church and the eucharistic chapel will marvel at the number of students on their knees in prayer and adoration.

Father Sis and his associates have created a place where Catholic students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to worship, learn, and praise without embarrassment or self-consciousness. It was a privilege for me to speak there, and the questions afterward—especially from the blue-shirted apologetics team—manifested a refreshing enthusiasm for the truths of our Faith. No wonder young men and women hear the voice of God in College Station.

The day before I went to Texas A & M, I spoke at my alma mater, the University of Texas, where I became a Christian as a junior and president of the Baptist Student Union as a senior. I didn’t have the same privilege of speaking at the University Catholic Center, run by the Paulist Fathers, in Austin. The students who asked permission for me to speak were told that I was too “controversial” and that I would only be allowed to come if some other speaker was put on the program for “balance.” In spite of this, I met an impressive group of Longhorn Catholics there; sadly, they just didn’t have the kind of leadership evident in Aggieland.

I doubt very much if Father Sis would have had this success by teaching the Catholic faith at the margins of dissent, as is so often the case on college campuses and in many parishes. He teaches and preaches Ex Corde Ecclesiae, and the fruit it bears speaks for itself.

Making celibacy optional is exactly the opposite of what encourages vocations. It’s wrong both in theory and practice. It changes the unique nature of our priesthood and sends out the message that celibacy was too difficult a burden for our priests to bear. For the Church to wave a white flag of surrender in the face of a sexually saturated culture would dispirit Catholics for generations to come.

Deal W. Hudson (hudson@crisismagazine.com) is the publisher of Crisis

[NYer]

St. Mary's Catholic Center Mission Statement

St. Mary’s Catholic Center is the Catholic Campus Ministry serving Texas A&M University and Blinn College. We strive to live and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through worship, education, service, fellowship, and stewardship, as a parish community of students, faculty, staff and others who choose to share in this mission.

http://www.aggiecatholic.org/images/newtitle.jpg

[NYer]

Father Sis and his associates have created a place where Catholic students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to worship, learn, and praise without embarrassment or self-consciousness.

[Domestic Church]

" I didn’t have the same privilege of speaking at the University Catholic Center, run by the Paulist Fathers, in Austin. The students who asked permission for me to speak were told that I was too “controversial”... "

Deal Hudson hardly strikes me as controversial. He just seems to be the voice of the practicing middle of the road.

[johnb2004]

I think Hudson is an orthodox Catholic.

[Domestic Church]

That's why it is so odd (except in Gramscian perspective) to have clergy refer to him as controversial since he follows the Magisterium. It's as if they are calling purple as green or black as yellow. It's blatantly false.

[gcruse]

"Although I belong to a church that condemns birth control, I am going to give up that intrinsic part of human life wherein sex is concerned."

"Whatever for?"

"Because it will please God."

"You mean this God?"

John 10-10 ... I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

"Uhm, you mean pointless sacrifice won't save me?"

"Why should it?"

[conservonator]

Wow, 'djya come up with that little gem on your own?

[gcruse]

Well, John said 'twas Jesus came up with that. But you know the hazards of reading scripture without official mediation. :)

[matrix2225]

During the November meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Washington, D.C., the president of Call to Action presented the bishops with a letter from 6,000 Catholics asking that celibacy become optional for the priesthood. Their motivation, as quoted in USA Today, was to make the Eucharist more widely available. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Of course, anyone who knows the ways dissenters sell their wares will sense a pig in a poke.

My stand on celibacy is firm: NO to any changes on that! There are some who are called to be married and others who are called to serve the Lord thus serving us. I know many of you will get angry at me but I will stay firm on it; Celibacy is here for reason and it should stay that way. Those who are called and few are, are responsible for being a shepherds in the mist of us. We can go around and think that we are right but what is right sometimes can be wrong. Remember one thing; when it comes to Holy things don't change what God has decided to be. It is like marriage, what God has put together let no human intervene in it. To you all I would like wish you great God blessing for a New Year.

[conservonator]

Well, John said 'twas Jesus came up with that. But you know the hazards of reading scripture without official mediation. :)

That's one of the reasons He left a discernable Church. As my wife likes to remind me: "Just because you don't like maps doesn’t mean they’re not useful."

[gcruse]

My wife was like that. I reminded her that a map is not the ground it describes, and unless you know where you are when you look at it, it will be of no use whatever for your journey.

[NYer]

I think Hudson is an orthodox Catholic.

Is he a convert? According to the article, ...

"The day before I went to Texas A & M, I spoke at my alma mater, the University of Texas, where I became a Christian as a junior and president of the Baptist Student Union as a senior."

[LadyDoc]

I am puzzled.

Sex is a gift of God, and when a man and a woman give joy to each other under God's rules, they are open to the gift of new life.

Contraception means saying no to God, saying that sex is merely fun, and has nothing to do with the sacrifices of married life, nor of the joy of cooperating with the Lord to beget and nourish a new soul that will live forever in eternity.

The Contraceptive ideas that permeate our culture make children, alas, too often an unwanted side effect of sex for fun, rather than a joy and a way to serve the Lord. This is even true in my patients, who often have had tubal ligations so they don't have to worry about the Lord sending them an unexpected gift that might mess up their careers...yet as all doctors know, it is often these unplanned babies that, looking back from years later, turn out to be a major blessing in the lives of the parents.

Now, as I read your quotation as you put it, you are interpreting "life more abundantly" that Jesus gives the equivalent to sex i.e. fun without responsibility and without complications.

That makes sense to the world where fun and pleasure are the highest goal, but not to a Christian whose highest goal is to love the Lord our God and serve him, and to love our neighbor (including our unborn children) as ourselves...

[NYer]

John 10-10 ... I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

7

⁵ So Jesus said again, "Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep.

8

⁶ All who came [before me] are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.

9

I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.

10

A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.

11

I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

5 [7-10] In John 10:7-8, the figure is of a gate for the shepherd to come to the sheep; in John 10:9-10, the figure is of a gate for the sheep to come in and go out.

Our pastor, who has been to Israel, described the pastures where the sheep graze. Parts of the fields are sectioned off with a fence that has no gate. Hence the analogy of the gatekeeper. It has always been the practice of shepherds there to herd the sheep into the pasture and stand guard as "gates" to prevent them from slipping out.

Not sure I understand what that has to do with celibacy.

[gcruse]

Sex is a gift of God, and when a man and a woman give joy
to each other under God's rules, they are open to the gift of new life

Yes, indeed.  And to answer Jesus's sacrifice that we may be able
to live abundantly by saying," I'm giving up those joys and there
will be no life from my loins" is to toss that gift back to the giver.
And then to characterize this as something which will be pleasing
to the giver is to add injury to insult, is it not?

[ninenot]

Ahh, but DomCH: don't you know who is the Father of Falsehood?

Why are you so surprised?

[ninenot]

To you, apparently, 'abundant life' is more sex.

To others, who understand the Gospel, 'abundant life' is sanctifying grace.

Go away, oversexed troll.

[ninenot]

Call to Action presented the bishops with a letter from 6,000 Catholics

These bozos were out hustling petitions for about 3 months.

There are over 40,000,000 Catholics in the USA, and just for fun, let's say that 10,000,000 attend Mass weekly. Of that, let's say that 3,000,000 are adults who could sign a petition.

So in 12 Sundays, the "petition" only attracted 6,000 signatories?

That's only 120/State, or 10/week/State.

This is a news story like "Ants Crawl on the Ground" is a news story.

[gcruse]

To you, apparently, 'abundant life' is more sex.

Where did I say that?  I said it is an  integral part of life.  Would God be pleased if you
cut off your arm and went through life with only three limbs? 

Why is giving up a limb any less pleasing to God then giving up sex?

[ninenot]

Only gcruse could find 'unlimited sex' in a sheep pasture being equivalent to 'abundant life.'

But I don't want to pursue that line of thought too far...