Jesuit Case for Celibacy

[Michie]

Here’s another great defense of celibacy: Jesuit Father James Martin on National Public Radio last year.

Listen to it here.

“Life in a religious order isn’t for everybody, but it’s not supposed to be,” he says. “Some of history’s most loving people have been celibate, Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, and oh, yeah, Jesus of Nazareth. He was a pretty loving guy. Chastity is one way of loving many people deeply and freely.”

The Jesuit Associate Editor of America magazine ends:

“People still ask if I regret leaving the corporate world, and I have an easy answer. Nope.”

http://www.ncregister.com/daily/jesuit_case_for_celibacy/

 

[Michie]

“There is a very bad argument for celibacy, which has appeared throughout the tradition and which is, even today, defended by some,” so wrote Father Robert Barron (of the above Catholicism Project) at CNN.com yesterday.

That argument is “not just stupid, but dangerous.”

He presents a better one ... a shrewdly “lefty” one.

Let’s start with the stupid, dangerous one. “It goes something like this: Married life is spiritually suspect; priests, as religious leaders, should be spiritual athletes above reproach; therefore, priests shouldn’t be married.”
He points out that the Bible and tradition contradict that, from Genesis to Pope John Paul II. Or, more accurately, from Isaiah to Anthony de Mello.
The piece is helpful in that it essentially lays out what we can call a “lefty Catholic” Case for celibacy.

Don’t get me wrong. Father Barron is the on-fire for evangelization force behind The Catholicism Project.We wrote about him here.

Writes Father Barron:

Isaiah the prophet put it thus: “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my thoughts above your thoughts and my ways above your ways, says the Lord.” And it is at the heart of the First Commandment: “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods besides me.” The Bible thus holds off all the attempts of human beings to divinize or render ultimate some worldly reality. The doctrine of creation, in a word, involves both a great “yes” and a great “no” to the universe.

Now there is a behavioral concomitant to the anti-idolatry principle, and it is called detachment. Detachment is the refusal to make anything less than God the organizing principle or center of one’s life.

Continued- http://www.ncregister.com/daily/cnn.com_a_case_for_celibacy/

 

[Fantine]

While it may come about someday that diocesan priests will be allowed to marry, priests who are members of religious orders--Jesuits, Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, etc.--will still take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

The difference will be that men aspiring to be priests will be able to do it within the diocesan system or as members of religious orders.

Presumably, there will still be men who are called to that way of life, just as there are men who are joining religious orders today.

 

[SpiritualAntiseptic]

Within a few years, I hope to be promising celibacy.

I've been interested in the fall-out from the Father Cutié issue. It's been interesting to listen to the mainstream liberal media attack it and offer opinion polls and op-ed pieces on the subject. I've snickered in following those discussions and such.

I suppose what bothers me the most is how completely off the mark people are on the issue. Either it was something the Church started a thousand years ago to secure property or it is done for some pragmatic reason like giving priests more time for ministry.

What's even worse is that now celibacy has become a conservative/traditional versus liberal/progressive issue.

Celibacy has nothing to do with "more time for ministry" and it is not something the Church implemented over material concerns. Celibacy is an imitation of Christ. It draws men and women away from our Earthly, natural call to marriage and allows us to act as we will in Heaven. We do not find intimacy in the opposite sex, but with God.

It is a spiritual thing which is so often cheapened when people try to address it by utilitarian standards.

 

[AllForJesus]

Celibacy is one very precious thing in priesthood and this is an opinion coming form someone who has seen both.