Pope Paul VI and Cardinal Wojtyla, c.1967
Posted on 06/22/2014 2:42:07 PM PDT by NYer
A common criticism of the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexual morality has to do with the largely unmarried clergy who are charged with preaching the message. The accepted wisdom is that celibate males have no business telling married couples how to live their lives: “What do they know about the subject?”
I remember a particularly egregious example. In 1974, Earl Butz, then U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, ridiculed Pope Paul VI’s opposition to contraception, “He no playa the game, he no maka the rules.” He later apologized, but in reality he was only saying publicly what many, including many Catholics, were saying privately.
I’ve never understood this. Jesus, God Incarnate, was a celibate male. Why would any Christian assume that a man striving to emulate Christ in the flesh would have nothing to offer about the nature of love?
Christians agree that God is love. What they don’t agree on is what should be derived from this fact.
I’ve taught natural family planning for almost twenty years and I consider one of the most important elements of this instruction to be what is conveyed about the nature of love. I always hesitate to use an adjective such as “true” to describe a noun such as “love.” It seems inadvertently to give status to any falsehood parading as truth.
Love is what it is. Everything else is a pretender and should be described with its own noun. Love is not lust; love is not use; love is not convenience. Love is divine, with all that implies.
St. John Paul II’s pontificate emphasized church teaching about love and its incarnational aspects. From 1981 through 1984, he devoted a whole series of audiences to this subject, which he dubbed “The Theology of the Body.” These talks were later gathered into a book and became the basis of serious theological reflections
Although continence for the sake of the Kingdom was an important aspect of this teaching, the theology on marriage seemed to get the most focus when it was disseminated and discussed. Celibacy was initially given short shrift, which is unfortunate, because the fact of the matter is, if you don’t understand or appreciate continence for the sake of the Kingdom, you aren’t going to appreciate or understand the nature of the sacrament of marriage.
Pope Paul VI and Cardinal Wojtyla, c.1967
A keystone of St. JPII’s teaching in this matter is found in Gaudium et Spes:
Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, “that all may be one. . . as we are one” (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God’s sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself. [24]
The essence of love is a willingness to give a sincere gift of self. We only love when we act like God. God the Son showed us what this means by giving such a complete gift of Self that He emptied Himself, as St. Paul tells us, going all the way to the cross.
Our life of love is a continuum that starts here on earth and is fulfilled in Heaven. The crucifixion was completed by the resurrection, when love conquered even death. Celibacy for the kingdom is the eschatological symbol of love and it has much to teach those of us who are married.
In a 1981 audience, reflecting on Christ’s words about the resurrection of the body found in Mt. 22:30, St. JPII wrote:
The reciprocal gift of oneself to God – a gift in which man will concentrate and express all the energies of his own personal and at the same time psychosomatic subjectivity – will be the response to God’s gift of himself by man, a gift which will become completely and definitively beatifying, as a response worthy of a personal subject to God’s gift of Himself, “virginity,” or rather the virginal state of the body, will be totally manifested as the eschatological fulfillment of the “nuptial” meaning of the body, as the specific sign and the authentic expression of all personal subjectivity. In this way, therefore, that eschatological situation in which “they neither marry nor are given in marriage” has its solid foundation in the future state of the personal subject, when, as a result of the vision of God “face to face,” there will be born in him a love of such depth and power of concentration on God Himself, as to completely absorb his whole psychosomatic subjectivity.
It is the mutual gift of self that is imaged in conjugal love. Without denigrating the noble vocation of marriage, it can rightly be said that the couple undertaking marriage can find no better guide to understanding the essential nature of the gift of self than the celibate priest who has emptied himself in imitation of Christ.
Let’s thank our priests for showing us this most radical example of self-gift.
Well put!
It will be our secret.
“If you meant something different you should have written something different.”
One typo does not negate a consistent argument made across multiple posts on a single thread. No sane person would think I was arguing priests are inherently superior to married men as marriage counselors, since that was the argument of the article that I was taking issue with. Further, your reply made it clear you understood my point as I intended, since you quoted my sentence:
“Really? Someone who is not married is superior in discussing marriage to a married counselor?”
In response you wrote, “Really is it now a requirement that ALL marriage counselors be married? When did this law pass? Is it just for your state or all states?”
That is not, in any way or in any post, what I said. You constructed a straw man to attack and pretended I was arguing that marriage counselors MUST be married. You knew what I wrote, and you deliberately argued about something I NEVER wrote. I’ll let others determine the truthfulness of your response.
“But for those married couples who do recognize that spritual component they will seek out those whose calling had lead them to perfect their love of Christ. Agape is superior to eros.”
Odd. I thought ALL CHRISTIANS were called to perfect their love of Christ. Indeed, God Himself has predestined us ALL to be conformed to the image of His Son. Further, according to the Word of God, we are ALL priests, offering sacrifices of thanksgiving, good deeds, etc.
There are no priests at all in the New Testament, under the New Covenant, apart from Jesus as High Priest and ALL believers.
Of course, there are some who in their earthly existence are given positions of responsibility, but then, both of those offices say their holders are to be husbands of one wife, and the author of this article rejects what God has revealed.
The only debate is if a single man could be a deacon or elder, since one of the qualifications of each is to be married. But then, since the office of priest does not exist in scripture, I suppose there is no harm in making up one’s own rules for one’s own office, unrestrained by God’s divine revelation to man.
The idea that celibacy draws one closer to God than marriage is a pagan idea. But then, so are priests who offer a sacrifice of Jesus again and again and again...
So are you suggesting that the Catholic Church force all priests to be married? Because unless all priests are married, a "married clergy" does not prevent such a thing. It will still happen.
If it is a choice to marry or not, then considering the power that the gays have in the seminaries, you would still find the heteros leaving the seminaries and leaving us with gay clergy or gay sympathetic clergy anyway.
Homosexuals in the priesthood is the main issue. Not celibacy. I don't normally bother with the latter topic.
Um, you need to read Goodbye, Good Men.
http://www.amazon.com/Goodbye-Good-Men-Liberals-Corruption/dp/0895261448
Not sure why can't get this to be clickable.
When you use HTML in your posts, such as italicizing words, the automatic hyperlink feature is disabled. So to make links clickable, you need to avoid using HTML anywhere in a post or use HTML to link to an URL.
I have avoided using HTML in this post so your link now becomes clickable.
http://www.amazon.com/Goodbye-Good-Men-Liberals-Corruption/dp/0895261448
Thank you for that! I find the posting here a bit picky/difficult.
There are people called to remain celibate and devote themselves to serving God. That is fine. But their celibacy does not make them superior as marriage counselors. In fact, it raises some question about whether God accepts them for an office in the Church, since the list of qualifications DOES include marriage. I personally, using my own personal interpretation of scripture, believe they ARE allowed, although an exception to the rule. But it certainly is hard to argue that the exception to the rule has become the rule, and the rule has become the exception...
“Therefore an overseer [episkopes] must be above reproach, the husband of one wife...He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?”
“Let deacons [diakonous] each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well.”
Really the Bible is pretty plain about this. Even the Apostle Peter was married as were many OT prophets and men of God. Paul gave his opinion and stated it was just his opinion that being unmarried would be less cumbersome. That is obvious but NOWHERE was it a requirement. When these are pointed out I hear we are anti-Catholic. No we are pro-Bible. This is the Word of God versus the word of some men in Rome. Every verse a Catholic quoted me on this thread only makes my point and agrees with my position!
You’re welcome. It took me a few months to figure it out even though it’s in the posting guidelines.
I don’t see what the big deal is; for Mary set the example!
I...
must...
resist...
Is there an easy link to the guidelines? Whenever I look for the rules, etc. on the page, I can’t seem to find a way to pull them up.
Says the person whose chosen religion had a little thing called the Inquisition...
Let's try some easy math:
There are approximately 1.2 billion Catholics world wide;
If merely 1% of them 'ask' Mary for help just once each day;
that means that 12 million separate prayers are headed Mary's direction every day.
Given that there are 86,400 seconds per day... (24 hours times 60 minutes times 60 seconds)
...that means that Mary has to handle approximately 139 'requests' per second!
Purty good fer someone NOT 'devine'!
ALL churches?
Even those 7 CATHOLIC ones mentioned in Revelation?
Mary; now this kid of yours has wandered off and probably gone back to the Temple.
Can't you control Him?
After all; it's been 12 years now since...
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