THE ELEPHANT IN THE SACRISTY: THE SACRED SILENCE AROUND CELIBACY (PART I)

THE ELEPHANT IN THE SACRISTY: THE SACRED SILENCE AROUND CELIBACY

by Ted Schmidt

Part I

The forms of the apostolate should be properly adapted to current needs…Religious and social surveys made through offices of pastoral sociology, contribute greatly to the effective and fruitful attainment of the goal, and they are cordially recommended.
Decree on the Bishops' Pastoral Office in the Church, #17, Vatican ll

Si non caste, tamen caute
If not chastely, then carefully
Albert, Archbishop of Hamburg 1040 CE

Beginning in the mid-1980s Catholics were again and again scandalized by the growing phenomenon of priest pedophilia. This tsunami of abuse reached epic proportions in the first years of the new millennium. Much of the revelations crystallized in the Boston area around three notorious abuser priests James Porter, John Geoghan and Paul Shanley. The thorough reporting of these heinous crimes in a largely Catholic area resulted in a Pulitzer prize for The Boston Globe and the disgrace and fall of the powerful Boston Cardinal Bernard Law.

Similarly and in like manner, the Philadelphia diocese imploded in September 2005 with the long-awaited release of a grand jury's exhaustive report. Like its Boston analogue, the staggering results have permanently impaired the reputation of another papal loyalist, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. The latter resigned two years ago and the results of the investigation show how, "dozens of priests sexually abused hundreds of children" and "were excused and enabled" by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and its leaders, Anthony Bevilacqua and his predecessor John Krol.

As this catastrophe was unfolding, probably the worst ecclesial disaster since the Reformation, the faithful were jolted wide awake as well by the phenomenal abrogation of duty by a new breed of bishop whose primary loyalty was seen to be the protection of the institution, rather than the well being of the defenseless children and the heartbreak of families. Priest Donald Cozzens in his book Sacred Silence reckons that the scandal has directly touched one hundred thousand victims and with family factored in --about one million people. Add to this, the disgust and dismay of parishioners and you have a full-blown crisis. The fiscal implications while pale in comparison to the pastoral, nevertheless, are considerable. In the U.S. alone it is estimated that about $1 billion has been drained from Church coffers. The only positive side of this has been the increased demands of lay people in dismantling archaic clerical structures which have isolated the ordained from those in the pews.

The somnolent laity, too long codependent and enablers of patriarchal and clerical control of the people of God, quickly organized themselves in the U.S. and demanded serious change in the way the Church operates. The pedophilia/bishop leadership crisis had inevitably led to some serious analysis of deep structural problems, namely that because of the depleted ranks of male celibate priests (one half of the world's parishes do not have a resident priest), many misfits were kept on the job who should have been fired. To alleviate the crisis, the American bishops weakened by obsessive loyalty to Roman policies and cowed by an authoritarian pope, were loathe to raise the obvious conclusion that celibacy was not working. Long ago, the laity had recognized the "elephant in the sacristy" and were not afraid to name it. Except for the courageous few, why did the majority of the episcopate fall silent? Why had they forgotten that a bishop is not a servant but a brother? Why had they become mere stenographers for the Bishop of Rome? Tragically, as a whole they embodied the wishes of Pius XI who famously said, "Io non voglio collaboratori ma esecutori. ("I do not want collaborators but those who will execute my orders").

It seems the bishops were terrified of even addressing the issue as it would look like disloyalty to the pope, and it would call into question the fact that 80 percent of those who were abused were male adolescents. This admission would highlight the fact that large numbers of Catholic clergy are homosexual. Though gays are no more predisposed to molest than straights and homosexuality is not the cause of the abuse, there are simply a very high number of gays in the priesthood. While one should not prescind from this that homosexuality is the cause of pedophilia (the abuse of young male adolescents), to even question the cornerstone of Church organization would lead God knows where. Possibly a change in the celibacy requirements for priesthood? Possibly a recognition that the Holy Spirit of God might be signaling (gasp) that it is time for the radical equality of leadership roles at every level of the Church. Might this not be the inclusion which the Gospel demands today?

Raising this thorny issue despite its obvious cogency would be an Episcopal career ender. Only the secure bishops had done so in the past. In 1985 the great cardinal of Brazil, Paulo Evaristo Arns had earnestly delivered a letter from the Brazilian episcopacy imploring the pope to relax the celibacy requirements. The pope rudely tore the letter up in front of the embarrassed cardinal. Similarly, John Paul ll pounded the table when Canadian Bishop Remi De Roo said that he thought the Church was sacrificing the Eucharist on the altar of celibacy. Many also recall the pope sitting in cold fury in 1979 as Sr. Theresa Kane suggested ministry should also be open to women. Now of course, such common sense requests are seen by papal sycophants as "disloyalty."

The attempts of so many committed Church people to drag the Church into the 21st Century and as the opening quote suggested, "adapt the church to its current needs" should be contrasted with the irrational and cruel harshness of the Episcopal class to dissent or even suggestions that celibacy, ministry, and sexual ethics needs to be dramatically rethought. Witness the recent Episcopal pillorying of priest Ed Cachia of the Peterborough Diocese in Ontario. The latter in response to a reporter's question about women being ordained, had the actual gall to welcome them and suggest it might open a dialogue in the broader Church.

The fear of Paul Vl

The modern day aversion to raising the issue can be traced to Pope Paul Vl's intervention in the midst, not only of the Second Vatican Council, but also at the height of the 1960s --that decade of sexual liberation. On June 12, 1965 the French paper Le Monde published a leaked draft of a speech by a Brazilian bishop by the name of Koop. Desperately short of clergy the good bishop asked the council to permit married priests to augment the diminishing number in his diocese. Koop's heartfelt plea would be later repeated by dozens of realistic bishops around the Catholic world. Canada's own Alex Carter, the late bishop of North Bay made a similar plea at the synod of 1971. Ever the realist, Carter was looking for help among the indigenous peoples of his diocese where celibacy simply was not accepted. In conversation with me over a decade ago the affable Carter chuckled at the shock his request evinced from the Italian and Spanish hierarchies," They almost crapped." (Yes, we used to have bishops like that). Similarly, our bishops of the north have repeatedly been turned down by an intransigent Vatican.

Paul Vl, aware that the request by Koop was about to hit the conciliar floor, pre-empted the world's bishops by refusing to allow even a discussion of the issue. Gary Wills in his book Structures of Deceit: Papal Sin quotes the Vatican peritus Fr. Rene Laurentin who wrote an article in Le Figaro at that time. The scholarly priest, the author of over one hundred books, basically said that the reason that the Vatican would not consider the end of celibacy was that any concession here would force the Church to deal with the thousands of priests who had mistresses all over the Catholic world. The Church at its highest echelons knew then that any serious discussion of this boiling issue would lead most thinking people to second curial Cardinal Seper's honest admission (1971), "I have no confidence that celibacy is working." Two years after the pope's refusal to air the question, he wrote an encyclical on the topic, supposedly to end the discussion.

This papal letter makes for tortuous reading. Much of Paul's reasoning hinges on the Matthean line (19:12) about "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven." Many scholars find this line problematic as a saying of Jesus (it is only found in Matthew). Taken in context the passage emphasizes the values of marriage and children. Although it is impossible to flesh this out here, we can safely say that the eunuch metaphor has nothing to do with lifelong celibacy and probably nothing to do with celibacy itself. There simply is no interest in the Gospels about celibacy. As well as several scholars have pointed out, the concept of voluntary renunciation of marriage is virtually unheard of in Judaism. While Pope Paul, a deeply sensitive churchman certainly believed that celibacy was a "jewel," his use of the New Testament to prove his point seems less than forthright.

Only three places refer to celibacy in the New Testament. Paul cites but does not quote two of them. In 1:Timothy it states, "a bishop must be irreproachable, the husband of only one wife" and virtually the same in Titus. What is shocking is the evangelist Paul's remark, "Do we not have the right to take a Christian wife like the rest of the apostles?" (1 Cor. 9: 5). Though Paul says he has not made use of this right (v.15), the truth is the disciples and apostles were not celibate (eunuchs for the reign), nor in fact were priests for eleven hundred years.

The proclamation of the Gospel and true discipleship has nothing to do with celibacy and the embarrassing lengths the Church has gone to in insisting on this mandatory discipline has done little for the people of God. In the end it has starved the people of Eucharist, increased the exodus of heterosexual priests who left to marry, left behind a predominantly gay priesthood many of whom serve the Church with zeal and dignity. Yet now it appears they too are becoming the scapegoat for the pedophilia crisis. In my next two articles I will trace the history of celibacy in the Church, a discipline which according to expert Richard Sipe less than 10 percent of priests have successfully negotiated.

Part II

Ecclesiastical celibacy is not a dogma. The scriptures do not impose it. It is even easy to effect the change. I take up a pen, I sign a decree, and the next day, priests who wish to may get married.
John XXlll

The Church as Institution . . . cannot bring healing to others until it first heals its broken notion of the human person. Nor can it be holy, or even recognize and affirm what is holy in the world, until it purges itself of unhealthy ideas about men and women and supplants these ideas with healthy ones instead.
Eugene Kennedy

At the recent synod on the Eucharist in Rome, many churchmen staring the obvious fact right in the face, stood up and basically said that the Roman Catholic Church is sacrificing Eucharist on the altar of celibacy. The adamantine wall of denial and the "see no evil" approach of John Paul ll had already been forgotten. This "elephant in the sacristy"(celibacy) for twenty-five years has been ignored by the previous pope who famously said to a Canadian bishop that God would provide celibate males. There would be no relaxation of the celibacy requirement despite half of the Catholic world's parishes being without a priest. Studies have consistently shown that the main reason for a dearth of candidates in the Roman Catholic priesthood is the celibacy requirement which the great Pope John XXlll stated he could end with a stroke of his pen. The time was not ripe for the sainted pope, but it assuredly is today.

Nobody questions that effective ministry need be coupled with celibacy. Our Orthodox and Uniate relatives as well as our Protestant and Jewish cousins seem to get along quite well without it. Granted marriage by itself does not confer effective leadership on a community either, but why this adamantine refusal to countenance a relaxation of a medieval demand? One reason of course was the ferocious personal commitment to the discipline by the late Pope John Paul ll. There can be no doubt that Karol Woytyla lived his celibacy in an heroic manner, yet the personal predilection and iron discipline of a pope should never override the wisdom and wishes and demonstrable needs of the whole Church. The simple fact is the insistence on celibacy has had grave consequences for the credibility of the Church.

Quite simply celibacy does not work, has not worked and the pretence that all is well is badly damaging the credibility of the Roman Church. The explosive sex abuse scandal has once again focused people's attention on this "precious jewel," as Paul Vl termed it. And while celibacy cannot be deemed the reason for such widespread sex abuse, there can be no doubt the unresolved and unsuccessful integration of sexuality is a major cause.

In the past (from 1139 CE onward), celibacy simply was the price that many paid for priesthood. For many it was a necessary burden which came with the territory. Many seemingly succeeded largely because of the extraordinary seamlessness of the Catholic culture --the great respect with which priests were held, their status unquestioned in the community along with the many unearned perks they received as "men of the cloth." The iron discipline and hierarchical nature of the Church was a given, as was the overall culture conservatism of repressed sexuality. This legalist authoritarianism structure was tacitly accepted by Catholics who found themselves in a largely Protestant culture. All this changed with the 1960s. The Second Vatican Council, described by English historian Eamon Duffy as "the most revolutionary Christian event since the Reformation," proclaimed that holiness was endemic to every state in life. Celibates had no great claim to virtue or holiness. Marriage now was championed as much for its mutuality as its procreational function. Celibates began to feel alone and unsure of themselves. The mass exodus of priests began, the overwhelming percentage to marry.

Celibacy always (as we will see) had been a burden, but had been propped up by the Catholic culture. It is commonly accepted that the most talented men left the priesthood, leaving many of the remnant angry, confused, and bitter. They had to work along with the genuinely fine priests who had made their peace with the hard discipline. With the cultural props disappearing, and with a more holistic view of sexuality appearing, celibacy's casualties became more obvious. The higher rate of alcoholism in the priesthood was revealed. One did not have to be Freud to observe the deleterious effects of celibacy --the "dried prunes" of crotchety pastors, their often-stunted emotional lives along with their loss of affectivity and capacity for laughter. Too many were obviously suffering a low-level depression. Michael Crosby quotes fellow Capuchin Martin Pables reference to "low level hostility" among some clergy. "They are not angry people; they are quietly and passively resentful. They resent the burdens of celibacy, the ineptness of religious leadership, the confusion of theology and the ingratitude of the faithful."

Crosby also points to process addictions among clergy --gambling, shopping, working, and exercise. The most severe, of course, is the power addictions which surfaced in the sex abuse scandals. While this is not the subject of our exploration here, it is necessary to point out the obvious problems which celibacy has brought. In my first essay I referred to the huge examples of concubinage existing in Africa and Latin America, not to mention that given the mass exodus of healthy heterosexuals and the obvious homosocial environment of the clerical life, we now have a predominantly gay priesthood. While this should not be seen as condemnatory of homosexuals, serious questions certainly need to be asked about such high percentages.

Why celibacy in the first place?

As we know the Church came out of Judaism as a reform movement led by Jesus, a liberal Pharisee. The first thing to say here in the Jewish world, celibacy, the voluntary renunciation of marriage is an utterly foreign concept. This is so obvious that we need not discuss it. "Be fruitful and multiply" was a duty particularly in a world where longevity was not known.

Judaism, however, like many movements of antiquity was radically affected by the dualism of Greek culture. From Pythagoras (6th c. BCE) to Plato (d. 347 BCE), the body is suspect while the soul is elevated and noble. We know Plato had a huge influence on Christianity with its distrust of matter and the body. We shall see this in the writings of the Church fathers later.

Historian Joseph Swain tells us that, "a wave of asceticism swept over the whole Greek world in the first century BCE." Philosophical schools like the Epicureans and Stoics promulgated celibacy. Stoicism, the greatest school of ancient philosophy, had its most profound impact from 300 BCE to 250 CE. Stoicism naturally lauded celibacy over marriage. A true Stoic like Seneca (d. 65 CE) could write that one "resists the assault of passions and does not allow himself to be swept into the marital act." Pliny the Elder (d. 79 CE) praised the elephant for mating only every two years! All over the Mediterranean pagan priests observed purity laws, denying themselves sexual intercourse before the sacred ablutions were performed. The Vestal Virgins were honoured in Rome and the largest mystery cult of that time, that of Mithras, championed the unmarried state.

Uta Ranke-Heinemann writes that "the negative assessment of sexual pleasure in the two centuries after Christ was further strengthened by the invasion of pessimism...which came out of the east...and would prove to be the most dangerous competition for Christianity. This we know as gnosticism." The latter movement greatly exacerbated the distrust of the senses and the hatred of the body which so infected the new religion. The only worthy part of the human is the spark of light from another world, the soul. The body was "the grave you carry around with you." A further departure from God's good creation you could not find --and Gnosticism's denigration of corporality had a deadly effect. Marcion, a Christian gnostic leader (c. 140 CE) identified sex with evil matter. For Marcion, Jesus could not have been born through the sex act and probably floated down from heaven. He himself was celibate and demanded the same of his followers. Though he had a large impact on the early Church, Marcion's extreme sexual asceticism got him bounced from the Church of Rome in 144 CE. In the desert area of Syria the Encratites held sway and they too deeply influenced the early Church. For them marriage was "polluted and a foul way of life."

Although the Church rejected the most extreme of these teachings, there is no doubt that she was radically influenced by them. The year 150 CE is chosen by historian Peter Brown as a Rubicon in this area. By then the powerful life-affirming and positive influence of Judaism had begun to wane, and the dualism and pessimism of the Hellenic world became dominant within Christianity especially in the areas of marriage and sexuality.

Looking back we see nothing in the apostolic community, which wedded celibacy to the essentials of Christianity. The earliest witness Paul, says he received nothing from the Lord on this matter. The canonical Gospels do not raise the issue. The first apostles and leaders were all married. We know nothing of Jesus marital state and the fact that nothing is said in the gospels about his traditional single state probably indicates that he more than likely was married. The writers assuredly would have commented on an itinerant Jewish rabbi who was unmarried. The Gospels are simply disinterested in biography. Other than the fact that we know Jesus had brothers (Mk.6: 3) we know little of his biographical details. The Gospels are simply not that type of literature. They are proclamations, sermon fragments, testimonies of his lordship. There is so little material about his life that we simply cannot know. What we have in traditional spiritual writing is well recognized today as sentimental conjecture with no historical basis. The eminent Notre Dame theologian Richard McBrien phrases it well: "Is it possible he was married? Yes…and without any compromise of the church's historic faith in him as truly God and truly, truly human." That the Church had a vested interest in proclaiming his single celibate status is beyond question. Infected by the Gnostic pessimism described above and the denigration of the body, the early Church fathers (and most especially the giant Augustine) elevated celibacy over the married state.

Virgin birth

As Christianity moved into the Hellenic world hobbled by the pagan asceticism above, and as the Hebraic unity of flesh and spirit was broken apart by this new anti-body sentiment, sexual abstinence was elevated to new heights. Nowhere is this seen as in the use of the virgin birth story as a buttress to the celibate state as superior and ultimately to be linked with priesthood.

As early as 310 CE, the Council of Elvira (Spain) was the first Church council to attempt to separate the sacred from the sexual and establish a clerical elite. Prominent of course in this whole area has been the use of the Virgin Birth story as a welcome support to the superiority of the single state and the degrading of sex. The story, unknown to Paul and to Mark, was interpolated into the Christian scriptures at a late date. The early Church theologian Justin Martyr simply understood the myth as parallel to other Mediterranean stories about superstars like Plato, Alexander and Augustus who it was said, were sired by gods copulating with women. The story is about Jesus, not Mary --his uniqueness, his singularity and deep origin in God. Nobody in the first century would have taken it as history. Yet the beautiful myth of "God's paternity" often seen in Hebrew scriptures (Isaiah 43:6, Hosea 1:10) was literalized. The poetry that new life was "fathered" in Mary by God's spirit has been rendered dead by fundamentalism. Even the genius Aquinas, a man of his time, had fallen prey to this anti-sex bias. In response to Jerome's nemesis Helvidius (c. 380 CE) who dared to suggest that Joseph had sex with Mary after the birth of Jesus, Aquinas huffed that "This error is an insult to the Holy Ghost whose shrine was the virginal womb wherein he had formed the flesh of Christ: wherefore it was unbecoming that it should be desecrated by intercourse with man." (Summa lll.28.3)

Here we see something which should not shock us. Aquinas, the greatest doctor of the Church, breathed in quite naturally the noxious fumes of the Church's anti-body history. Today this need not trouble us. But to insist on celibacy and an all male celibate priesthood is to ignore the persistent promptings of the Holy Spirit.

Part III

If anyone says the married state is to be placed above the state of virginity or of celibacy and that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity and celibacy than to be united in matrimony, let him be anathema.
The Council of Trent, 1563

The devil never harmed the church as much as when the church herself adopted the vow of celibacy.
Peter Comestor

I believe that mandatory celibacy may have done as much or more evil than any other church policy when one considers all its consequences in terms of the exclusion of women and the negative reading it gives the laity on sexuality.
Anthony Padovano

Celibacy as a church discipline has been getting a hard time lately. In these past two articles I have looked at its early history, how it came into the Church when a huge wave of asceticism moved through the West in the first century before Jesus, and how the prevailing Stoic philosophy carried these anti-body ideas through the Greco-Roman world for the first few centuries of the common era, how the extreme sexual asceticism, basically unknown in Judaism, became dominant in Christianity. Augustine, the towering Church father of the fourth century seemed consumed by his supposed sexual depravity (though not his abandoning of his concubine) and handed on to posterity his sexual pessimism, his linking of sin and sex. It was Augustine who gave the name pudenda to our genitals. The Latin translation means, "to be ashamed."

For Augustine, the Virgin Birth myth proved to be a perfect canister to safeguard Jesus' absolutely pure birth. No human contact. No sexual arousal as Jesus was conceived. Behold the only human not to pass on "the original sin" of Adam. It is impossible to estimate the staggering effect this negative teaching has had on generations of Christians. Lost to history are the writings of Augustine's antagonist Julian, the son of a bishop and married to a bishop's daughter. Julian rejected Augustine's negative view of sexual desire and original sin. For him, sexual desire within marriage furthered the divine plan and was only abused in extramarital affairs. Sadly, Augustine's defective thinking won the day and as Richard Sipe has written, "Sexual pleasure=women=evil." The championing of celibacy can be traced in large part to Augustine. The unbalanced ecclesiastical thinking, this preoccupation with sex throughout the centuries is a negative gift from the man from Hippo, North Africa. It has nothing to do with Jesus.

Augustine's contemporary, St. Jerome (d.420 circa CE), the greatest biblical scholar of antiquity, had a profound effect on the linking of celibacy with priesthood. The towering scholar of priestly celibacy Henry Lea states, "No doctor of the church did more than St. Jerome to impose the rule of celibacy on its members, yet even he admits that at the beginning there was no absolute injunction to that effect." Jerome, like Origen, castrated himself as he went about extolling virginity as superior to marriage. So galling was the fact that the apostles were married that Jerome even changed the translation of wife to "female servant." In a fit of celibate fervour, he maintained that all the great biblical heroes were single. But just as Augustine had as his nemesis the more balanced Julian, so did Jerome. Jovinian (d.406 CE) a monk from Milan had the effrontery to challenge the whole Church including the Pope Servicius on the topic of celibacy. "With more zeal than discretion" (Lea) Jovinian redefined the word prophet with the simple declaration that marriage was as virtuous as virginity. This set the whole clerical establishment against him, and he was vilified and chased from town to town with his many adherents. The "monster who spreads poison" Jovinian was cornered, tortured, and excommunicated. The same dynamic continues today. Now the exile in the Catholic Church is internal as dissenting theologians are kept from challenging non-infallible teachings like celibacy, and only those who swear to never raise this issue and that of female ordination are raised to the bishopric.

Pope Innocent I (401-17), the pontiff of both Augustine and Jerome, had a novel idea which fimplemented, would have allowed the Church to come to grips with celibacy. One lapse of chastity and out of the priesthood. Simple as that. Celibacy equals chastity. Instead this was never enforced and never became law, for the simple reason that the long experience of the Church has shown how absolutely unworkable celibacy is. As the recent sex scandals have proven, the hierarchical leaders have tolerated every lapse, no matter how grave, for the simple reason that the Church could not function otherwise.

This is not new. It has been the consistent experience at every level of priesthood --from the papacy to the curia to the parish. There have been massive cover-ups everywhere as the latest scandals in Ireland and Philadelphia have shown. If every jurisdiction had had the power of subpoena, the same results would have been forthcoming. At the highest levels of ecclesial decision-making the obvious truth that biology is difficult to circumvent is acknowledged. Unless celibacy is freely chosen, explored in depth in seminaries instead of evaded, unless it is painstakingly and gradually implemented, serious repercussions necessarily will ensue. The history of this failed imposition is there for all to see. Elizabeth Abbot in her A History of Celibacy states that "in Africa clerical celibacy is practiced mainly in the breach…and in Latin America there is a teeming morass of under-serviced Catholics and surreptitiously uncelibate priests…a majority of Brazilian priests are uncelibate, perhaps 60-70 percent…in the Philippines a small majority of priests live with women."

Popes were sons of priests

Many popes were sons of priests and bishops. For example: Boniface (418-22), Gelasius (492-496), Agapitus (535-536), Silverius (536-7), Theodore (642-649) and we have yet to get to that epoch of dissolution, the Renaissance. Historians estimate the number of married popes at around 40 and four have been canonized as saints. "No historian," Hans Kung writes in The Catholic Church: A Short History, "will ever discover how many children these holy fathers fathered, living in monstrous luxury, unbridled sensuality, and uninhibited vice." The notorious Franciscan Sixtus IV (1471) sired several sons and made his corrupt nephew Pietro Riario a cardinal. Sixtus licensed the brothels of Rome and partly with this money gave the Church the "Sistine" chapel. Sixtus, of course, paled next to the barbarian Rodrigo Borgia -- Alexander VI (1492-1503), "the Tiberius of Christian Rome" as Gibbon called him. He had ten known illegitimate children. At age 58 he took a fifteen-year-old mistress whose brother became the future Paul III. His son, the notorious Cesare Borgia became a cardinal at eighteen.

But we are slightly ahead of ourselves. As the Roman Empire crumbled and the Dark Ages ensued, monasticism grew confident that the ascetic celibate life was superior to marriage. Beginning in the Middle East, notably Egypt and Syria, celibate monks formed communities in staggering numbers. Female celibates as well organized. Even here in an age of sexual pessimism, nature reared her insistent head. Convents became dumping grounds for unhappy daughters and as Henry Lea states, "The blindly bigoted and turbulently ambitious found a place among those whose only aim was retirement and peace." Out of necessity monastic rules became tightened and it allowed the Church to consolidate both her power and her property. And as for celibacy Lea dryly observes, "As to the morals of monastic life it may be sufficient to refer to the regulation of St. Theodore Studita, in the ninth century, prohibiting the entrance of even female animals." The omnipresence of "vagrants of the worst description" created sexual havoc and inevitably produced the genius who strove to mitigate the enfolding disaster, St. Benedict of Nursia (circa 500 CE) the founder of the Benedictine order and the Monte Cassino abbey.

Things never changed for the better. Ecclesial giants like St. Boniface (726 CE) seemed powerless to enforce the codes of celibacy and mitigate the promiscuity in the abbeys. "The clergy were still stubborn...some defended themselves as being legitimately entitled to have a concubine." Boniface, the right hand of Pope Zachary, feared for his life as he attempted to discipline his unruly clergy. By the time of Charlemagne (800), "unchastity remained a corroding ulcer," according to Lea. The failure was never ending. Edicts prohibiting cohabitation of women and clergy were constant and absolutely ineffectual. Convents, as the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle (836 CE) states "were rather brothels than houses of God." Infanticide of unwanted children became common. Part of the monastic discipline was the letting of blood in the hope of alleviating the effects of prolonged continence. And Sigmund Freud was still one thousand years away on a distant horizon.

The eleventh and twelfth centuries were the absolute zenith of papal power. At the Second Lateran council of 1139 all priestly marriages were declared invalid and priests' wives and children became the Church's property. Mass protests erupted to no avail. This was a massive change not understood by most people who think that clerical celibacy dates from the twelfth century. As we see from above, celibacy and priesthood co-existed from the fourth century on. No more. A priest was so set apart from lay people that marriage was inconceivable. Gregory the Great in 602 declared that a priest's marriage was valid, but he now had to choose. Ordination simply invalidated marriage. Things only got worse and without the discipline of marriage, concubinage and promiscuity became rampant. Hear the frustration in the voice of one of the church's great saints, Bernard of Clairvaux (1135): "Take from the church an honourable marriage and an immaculate marriage bed, and do you not fill it with concubinage, incest, homosexuality and every kind of uncleanness?" From Norman times (eleventh century) at least until the sixteenth century the cullagium, a sex tax was collected, if one wished to keep his concubine.

Hans Kung writes, "A church of celibate men established the prohibition of marriage. In the Eastern churches the clergy other than bishops remained married and were therefore more integrated into the structure of society. By contrast, the celibate clergy of the West were totally set apart from the Christian people above all by their unmarried state."

St. Ulric (d.1093 CE) a Cluniac monk whose feast day is July 14 spoke common sense to the issue. He simply argued for married priests on scriptural grounds and his witty comment survives to this day: "Some prelates are pressing the breasts of Scripture to make them yield blood not milk."

Council of Trent

It has often been said about the Council of Trent that it unnecessarily highlighted everything that the Reformers rejected --and so when it was convened that which in a large part provoked the Reformation, namely celibacy, became the rigorous standard of the Catholic renewal. In classical arrogance which yielded not one whit to these upstart heretics, Rome demanded instant obedience and refused to budge on celibacy. Charles Lea dryly comments, "The regulations which concerned the morals of the clergy were sufficient for their purpose if only they could be enforced yet as they were but the hundredth repetition of an endeavour to conquer human nature, which had always previously failed, even those who enacted them could have felt little faith in their efficacy." And fail they did as the next five centuries proved. Human nature does not change --and as history shows, the Church did not change.

The corrupt papacy, saved once by the return to poverty movement of Francis and his passion for the Jesus of the stable, once again accentuated not the evangelical values of the reign of God, but the massive apparatus of a powerful system. The local clergy who had so shamelessly abused their status as mediators of grace in the confessional and at the altar, once again were set above the laity, bathed as they were in an aura of sanctity.

Celibacy is about control and property. At a basic level a single man without a family and a partner is easier to control. The growing power of the bishops with families caused huge problems as valuable property, huge landed estates was handed down to family and other relatives. Boniface VIII (d 1303) is said to have given away one quarter of Church revenues to his family! A married priesthood simply had divided loyalties.

Unencumbered and isolated he became a pawn in an ecclesiastical game, a loyal soldier in a clerical institution, expected to give absolute obedience to his Episcopal overseer. Celibacy assured this loyalty --no more families to support, no more property to hand on. What Trent demanded once again was the single state (coelebs, Latin for alone). It could never guarantee chastity. You could break your vow hundreds of times and you would be welcomed back. Commit matrimony once and you were gone. Raise a family in a responsible way, cherish one woman and harness all your sexual energy into your work made more sense to Luther and the reformers than to keep imposing celibacy and denying everybody's natural right to wed. Such was the advice of the great priest Erasmus of Roterdam in 1525. "I would like to see permission given to priests and monks to marry, especially when there is such a horde of priests among whom chastity is rare. How much better to make concubines into wives and openly acknowledge the partners now held in infamy! How much better to have children to love and rear religiously, as legitimate offspring of whom there is no need to be ashamed and who in turn will honour their sires." The admirable Dutchman was despised by the hierarchy, and his book burned the same year.

As we have noticed in the recent sex scandals pathetic men used the power and prestige of the priesthood to destroy young lives. They gave up marriage but not chastity. A recent new book, The Bingo Report has linked sexual abuse to mandatory celibacy and researcher Dean R. Hoge makes the point that "the celibacy requirement is the single most important deterrent to new vocations to the priesthood." The powerful spirit force of Vatican ll with its universal call to holiness emptied seminaries and caused a massive exodus from priestly ranks. When the penny dropped that the laity had as much a claim on sanctity and holiness, the celibate life lost much of its allure. The "white martyrdom" which drained so much energy from celibates suddenly lost its rationale. The cultic purity of the priest which at the same time degraded sex has collapsed in our time. Celibacy and ministry turned out to be two different vocations. Similarly, the embarrassing arguments for an all-male priesthood are in fact the last gasp of a warped misogynist history. Scripture scholars have utterly demolished the apostolic origins of celibacy and priesthood, and cultural historians have ably unmasked the obvious conditioning of a patriarchal time.

Conclusion

Church leadership would have us believe that celibacy has a long and noble tradition within the Church. It doesn't. In these few articles, I have merely scratched the surface of the terrible price we have paid for the imposition. In no way should this be seen as an attack on the marvelous ascetical discipline which few have mastered and most non voluntarily. Today, 40 years after Vatican II, living as we do in a world which accepts women as equals, in a church which affirms the gifts of the baptized but which still discriminates on the basis of gender, at a time when after the greatest scandal since the Reformation has humiliated the Church, a scandal which clearly points to the unsuccessful integration of sexuality, we still adamantly refuse to revisit this discipline. That we do not have a priest for every second parish in the Catholic world appears not to bother some hierarchs. That the Roman Catholic Church appears willing to give up the laity's right to the Eucharist rather than dismantle the celibate male-only priesthood is sad beyond words. The greatest Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Rahner gave that gentle Pope Paul Vl advice which the Church needs to hear. "If in practice you cannot obtain a sufficient number of priests in a given cultural setting without relinquishing celibacy, then the church must suspend the law of celibacy."

Not a few in and out of the Church link power and celibacy. Theologically the Catholic Church does not belong to the Pope or the bishops or for that matter, the laity. It belongs to Christ and this ultimately must demand a better way for non-celibate lay people to participate at every level of the church. The clericalized power of control presently lived out in the Church is not compatible with the vision of Jesus. The untenable continuation of priestly power accessible to celibates who then attempt to control the sexual lives of all the faithful can no longer be the modus vivendi of a healthy church. Lay people who comprise 99 percent of the Church are now much too educated, enlightened and democratic to allow this to continue. Endowed every bit as much with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, lay people are demanding the end of an autocratic structure and the end of the feudal clerical stranglehold on decision making. This is a natural evolution which can result in healthier modes of priesthood.

It has often been said that power is the aphrodisiac of the celibate. We have read enough of past history and seen enough of the present to see the harm done by celibacy: From the pathetic careerism of the upwardly mobile who do not understand that the gospel is about downward mobility, to the repressed sexuality of so many good gay men, to the alcoholism of the lonely celibate, and the frigid asceticism of the poor pastor whose battle with celibacy has cost him his whole affective life. We have tragically observed the wrecked lives of the innocent destroyed, those who became the victims of too many who acted out the twisted power relations with children, adolescents, and women. Lamentably we have watched the sorry codependency of the many who mistook holiness for a safe place in the comfortable arms of a bureaucracy.

Finally, one of the obvious benefits to a relaxation of the celibacy demand in the Church would be a much more wholesome attitude toward sex. The preoccupation of this holy and mysterious life force by a celibate priesthood has badly skewed Catholic morality. The end of celibacy and the deeper appreciation which only comes with experience will grace the Catholic Church with much more authentic wisdom in this realm.

Ted Schmidt is Editor of Catholic New Times.