Clerical Celibacy Its Origins

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CLERICAL CELIBACY – ITS ORIGINS

Some Preliminary Explorations of the Church’s Discipline

of Clerical Continence.

Paper delivered by Paul A. Williamson, S.M., to a Seminar on Priestly Celibacy, at Holy Cross Seminary, Vermont Street, Ponsonby, Auckland, Tuesday, 22 February, 2000.

Bibliography:

ROGER BALDUCELLI, O.S.F.S., “The Apostolic Origins of Clerical Continence: A Critical Appraisal of a New Book,” Theological Studies 41 (1982) 693-705.

ANDREW BEARDS, “Celibacy: Discipline or Infallible Doctrine?” Homiletic and Pastoral Review (December, 1999) 18-28.

ROMAN CHOLIJ, Clerical Celibacy in East and West, Leominster, Hereford: Gracewing, Fowler Wright Books, 1989.

ID., “Celibacy: A Tradition of the Eastern Churches,” Priests and People 2/6 (1988) 208-222.

ID., “De Caelibatu Sacerdotali in Ecclesia Orientali: Nova Historica Investigatio,” Periodica de Re Morali Canonica Liturgica 77/1 (1988) 3-31.

ID., “De Lege Caelibatus Sacerdotalis: Nova Investigationis Elementa,” Periodica de Re Morali Canonica Liturgica 78/1 (1989) 157-185.

ID., “Priestly Celibacy in Patristics and in the History of the Church,” in For Love Alone. Reflections on Priestly Celibacy, Ignace de la Potterie, Max Thurian, Crescenzio Sepe, Jérôme Lejeune, et alii, tr. Alan Neame, Middlegreen, Slough: St. Pauls, 1993, pp.31-52.

CHRISTIAN COCHINI, S.J., The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy, tr. Nelly Maran, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990.

GEORGE T. DENNIS, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy, Book Reviews, Theological Studies 52 (1991) 738-739.

DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J., The Eucharistic Foundation of Sacerdotal Celibacy: Preliminary Clarifications and Distinctions [Unpublished Paper, 1997].

ID., Covenantal Theology: The Eucharistic Order of History, vols 1 & 2, Lanhan, New York, London: University Press of America, 1991.

THOMAS W. KRENIK, Formation for Priestly Celibacy: A Resource Book, St. Paul, Minnesota: National Catholic Educational Association, 1999.

JÉRÔME LEJEUNE, “Coeli Beatus: Observations of a Biologist,” For Love Alone, pp.83-88.

BERNARD J.F. LONERGAN, S.J., Method in Theology, New York: The Seabury Press (paperback), 1979.

WANDA POLTAWSKA, “Priestly Celibacy in the Light of Medicine and Psychology,” For Love Alone, pp.89-102.

IGNACE DE LA POTTERIE, S.J., “The Biblical Foundations of Priestly Celibacy,” in For Love Alone, pp.13-31.

CLIFFORD STEVENS, “The Law of Celibacy: Some Historical Corrections,” The Priest 50/5 (May, 1994) 42-47.

ID., Intimacy with God. Notes on Clerical Celibacy, Schuyler Spiritual Series, no.3, Schuyler: B.M.H. Publications, 1992.

ALPHONS MARIA CARDINAL STICKLER, The Case for Clerical Celibacy. Its Historical Development and Theological Foundations, tr., Brian Ferme, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995.

HEINZ J. VOGELS, Celibacy – Gift or Law, A Critical Investigation, tr., G. A. Kon, London: Sheed & Ward, 1993; original edition, Kösel Verlag, 1978; Köllen Verlag, 1992.

Recent Magisterium:

PIUS XI, “Ad Catholici Sacerdotii,” Encyclical Letter on Catholic Priesthood, AAS 28 (1936) 24-30

PIUS XII, “Menti Nostrae,” Apostolic Exhortation on Catholic Priesthood, 42 (1950) 657-702.

ID., “Sacra Virginitas,” Encyclical Letter on Consecrated Virginity, AAS 46 (1954) 161-191.

JOHN XXIII, “Sacerdotii Nostri Primordia,” Encyclical Letter on Catholic Priesthood, AAS 51 (1959) 554-556.

SECOND VATICAL COUNCIL, “Presbyterorum Ordinis,” Decree on the Ministry and Life of Presbyters, 7 December, 1965, AAS (1966) 1015-1016, no.16.

PAUL VI, “Sacerdotalis Caelibatus,” Encyclical Letter on Priestly Celibacy, 24 June, 1967, in Vatican Council II, More Post Conciliar Documents, Vatican Collection, vol. 2, gen ed. Austin Flannery, O.P., Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1982, hereafter Flann2, pp.285-317.

SYNOD OF BISHOPS, “Ultimis Temporibus,” the Ministerial Priesthood, 30 November, 1967, Flann2, pp. 672-694, see espec., part II, Guidelines for the Priestly LIfe and Ministry, I, “Priests in the Mission of Christ and the Church,” no.4, ‘Celibacy,’ pp. 687-690.

JOHN PAUL II, “Pastores Dabo Vobis,” Post-Synodal Exhortation on the Formation of Priests in the Circumstances of the Present Day, 25 March, 1992, Boston: St. Paul Books & Media, 1992, espec., nos. 44 & 50.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, 11 October, 1992, English version, Homebush, N.S.W.: St. Pauls, 1994, hereafter CCC, see espec., nos. 1579-1580 & 1599.

0. Introduction:

Human beings evaluate what they have come to know. Evaluation in theology, according to Lonergan’s view, is a particularly important and distinct theological task. It takes place in the functional specialty of “dialectics.”[1] There we line up and promote what we are for and set out what we are against. In Lonergan’s language, we make clear what we consider to be “positions” and “counterpositions.” “Positions” are our “values” and we are to promote them. “Counterpositions” are averred “disvalues” and these we are to reverse.[2] The process always takes place in some mental context, “within some horizon.” Any horizon takes its measure from our personal standpoint. Horizons give us a view and at the same time limit our view.[3] What is “within our horizon” we tend to notice but what lies outside it, is beyond our ken. Horizons are complementary, genetic or dialectical. On the question at issue, “clerical celibacy,” a canonist’s, a Catholic clinical psychologist’s and a systematic theologian’s horizons are complementary, just as a quantity surveyor’s and an architect’s, or a doctor’s and a nurse’s horizons are complementary. But now that I have studied the question at some length, I know that my understanding of celibacy has changed and developed. With the acquisition of clearer historical knowledge and more profound theological reflections on the question, I have passed through differing but related horizons. They were stages on a journey to my present theological horizon. We are talking about “genetic horizons.” But the third type of horizon is much more intractable and far more important than the other two: the “dialectical horizon.” “Dialectical horizons” are clean opposed. What makes sense in one horizon just does not make sense in another. What in one horizon is considered a value, in a dialectically opposed horizon, is considered a disvalue. It is important to avoid confusing these three different kinds of horizon but above all to resist the temptation to flatten out “dialectical horizons” by making them out to be complementary or genetic. If we do this, we risk engaging in the futile task of attempting to square the circle. Now, recent work has convinced me that on the important question of priestly celibacy there are at work two dialectically opposed horizons.

At the heart of it, the issue is hermeneutical and historical. Recent scholarship on celibacy has emphasised two radically divergent approaches represented by two German Catholic scholars: Gustav Bickell [1838-1917] and Francis-Xavier Funk [1821-1917].[4] Bickell, noted canonist and orientalist, argued for the “apostolic origin” of clerical celibacy and, along with this, an intimate, even intrinsic relationship between ordained ministry and “celibacy,” a word yet to be understood and defined. By contrast, Funk, historian, theologian, recognised editor of critical patristic texts, and, by far, the better known of the two, disagreed. Clerical celibacy was merely the result of Church law. It is imposed for the first time at the Spanish local Council of Elvira in 306. The relationship of celibacy to ordained ministry is purely juridic, merely a matter of ecclesiastical discipline and hence with only an extrinsic relationship to the ordained ministry. And, in the developed and rather more simplistic views of some of Funk’s followers, the Church herself, through the opposed discipline of the Oriental Churches,[5] provides a better alternative for our contemporary context, in the form of “optional celibacy.” Unhappily for the Church, this debate, up to the present, has been very one sided. Originally, Bickell did not respond to Funk’s criticisms of his work. As a result, Bickell’s scholarship was both untested and undefended and Funk’s opposed thesis carried the day.[6] It was followed by Vacandard in his Célibat ecclésiastique, the article on “celibacy” in the celebrated Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique. It was supported by a whole host of scholars and commentators, including H. LeClerq, Hefele, Herman, and most recently Roger Gryson, in his book, Les origines du célibat ecclésiastique du premier au septième siècle Gembloux, 1970. This latter book proposed the thesis that priestly celibacy was the result of a “cultic ritualising of priesthood”in which the Old Testament Levitical law of “ritual purity” was gradually imposed upon an unwilling Latin Catholic priesthood. This movement was helped by a growing esteem for virginity within the Church which went with a very pessimistic view of human sexuality and a dis-esteem for marriage. Through its many popularizers, Gryson’s book has had an extraordinary influence on the common view of the Church’s understanding and discipline of clerical celibacy.

And so, until almost the nineties, Funk’s thesis that clerical celibacy was a merely “ecclesiastical and disciplinary and predominantly Latin phenomenon” held sway. But recent new scholarship, which is historical, canonical and systematic, tends in another direction. It supports the contention of Gustav Bickell that clerical celibacy is a very ancient discipline, “apostolic,” in some sense, that it has an intrinsic connection with the ordained ministries of bishop, presbyter and deacon and, from the earliest beginnings, as far as we are able to detect them, was in place and obliged the whole Church, both Eastern and Latin. Three major figures support this general contention. The first is now a Jesuit missionary. The eventual outcome of a doctoral dissertation at the Institut Catholique, in Paris, in 1981, Christian Cochini published a massively important book: Origines apostoliques du célibat sacerdotal, Paris: Le Sycomore, Ëditions Lethielleux.[7] From the evidence provided by early patristic and canonical sources, this author examines minutely the origins and development of clerical celibacy within the Church. Cochini’s findings were both suported and used in the canonical studies of a young Eastern Catholic scholar, Roman Cholij. Born, 1956, after studies in the Medical Sciences and Psychology at University College, London, he was ordained for the Apostolic Exarchate for Ukrainian Catholics in Great Britain in 1983. He did philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome, and in 1986, gained his doctorate in Canon Law from the Gregorian University, also Rome. Formerly, secretary to the Apostolic Exarch of the Ukrainian Catholics in Great Britain, and vice-chancellor of the Apostolic Exarchate, he is now registrar and canon law lecturer at the Pontifical Oriental Institute, in Rome. His doctoral dissertation on the famous Quinisext Council, the Council in Trullo, 691/692 A.D., was published in 1989 as Clerical Celibacy in East and West, Leominster: Gracewing, Fowler Wright Books. The third and final scholar is now a cardinal and archivist of the Holy Roman Church, Alphons Maria Cardinal Stickler. His book, The Case for Clerical Celibacy. Its Historical Development and Theological Foundations, tr., Brian Ferme, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, was published in English in 1995.

The findings of these scholars and the implications for a correct theological understanding of clerical celibacy in the Church today are what I hope to present for the remainder of the time allotted me.

1.Scriptural Foundations:

1. Synoptics

Various texts of Scripture from the New Testament are used as a foundation for the Church’s discipline of celibacy for her higher ministers: that is, those who offer at the eucharistic altar. A most obvious text comes from the synoptic traditions:

Then Peter answered and said, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you. What are we to have then?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Amen, I say to you, when everything is made new again – paliggenesia - and the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, you yourselves will sit on twelve thrones to judge the Twelve Tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses, brothers, sisters, father, mother, children, wife or land for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times as much, and also inherit eternal life. Many who are first will be last, and the last, first.[Mt 19,27-30; Mk 10,28-31]

The “leaving of wife,” implicit in Mark and Matthew, Luke makes explicit:

Peter said to him. ‘Look, we have given up our possessions and have followed you.’ He said to them: ‘Amen, I say to you: There is no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children on account of the kingdom of God who will not receive an overabundant return in this present age and in the world to come eternal life.’ [Lk 18,28-30].

These pericopes appear to have their sitz im leben in Jesus’ ministry. They are typical of Jesus’ teaching. They focus on the urgency and peremptoriness of God’s imminent reign. They are in perfect harmony with Jesus’ other sayings concerning the overriding task of discipleship, to follow him and “leave the dead to bury the dead” [Mt 8,22] Or, that anyone loving “father or mother, son or daughter more than him would not be worthy of him” [Mt 10,37; see also 10,34-36 & 38-39]. Or that following him, entails “losing one’s life” [Mk 8,35] and “taking up the Cross” [Mk 8,34]. The urgency of the task of proclaiming and symbolically, even “sacramentally” enacting the coming rule of God takes precedence over all other accustomed routines, no matter how sacred. To follow Jesus is to identified with his person, to engage in his mission, and through the strange “law of reversals” [Mk 10,31] to participate in his destiny and share his ultimate vindication.[8] But what, in fact, does “leaving one’s wife” mean for those called to Holy Orders as deacons, presbyters or bishops. Patristic witness and early Church canons of the universal Church, Churches of West and East, as we shall see, make this very clear.

2. Paul’s Letters

From the Pauline corpus, the Catechism of the Catholic Church[9]cites 1 Corinthians 7,32-35:

I want you to be free from anxiety. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint on you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord.

Paul is giving answers in a reasonably systematic way to various questions put to him by the Church. The specific issue here concerns marriage and virginity. The context, like that of the Gospels is eschatological and apocalyptic: v.29. ho kairos sunestalmenos estin – “time has been shortened” – tempus abbreviatum est. Again, v.31b. paragei yar to scheema tou kosmou toutou – “the outward form of this world is passing away” – praeterit enim figura huius mundi.[10] As for Jesus, so for Paul, the eschaton relativises all worldly and merely human relationships and routines. In the context of kairos - the “now of salvation” and the presence of the Lord’s grace, Paul’s obvious preference is for celibacy or virginity: “Indeed, I wish everyone to be as I am, but each has a particular gift from God, one of one kind and one of another” - v.7. We also note his opening phrase: theloo de humas amerimnous einai - “I wish you to be without cares” – v.32. His sharp contrasts between unmarried or virgin and the married, which he exemplifies according to both genders makes this evident:

An unmarried man is anxious – merimna - about the things of the Lord, how he may please God –v.32b.

An unmarried woman or virgin is anxious – merimna - about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in body and spirit – v.34b.

But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided – memeristai - vv.33-34a.

A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.

3. Pastoral Letters – Unius Uxoris Vir

The phrase, unius uxoris vir, - “a husband of one wife” - frequently is found in early canonical legislation and in early patristic witnesses to the Catholic Church’s universal praxis of clerical continence. Unius Uxoris Vir is a consecrated phrase, a stereotypical expression. It comes from the corpus of the Pastoral Letters. Its significance as the basis for the Church’s developing trajectory of celibacy among higher clerics Ignace de la Potterie, S.J., a well-known biblical scholar, was the first to recognise. De la Potterie’s argument forms the basis of what follows.[11] The texts examined so far, de la Potterie argues, could refer to any disciple of Jesus.[12] But are there any which are more specific? Does anything in the canonical writings specifically relate celibacy and ministry? The texts in question come from the Pastoral Letters The first refers to episcopoi: 1 Tim 3,2; the second, to presbyteroi: Tit 1,6; the third, to deacons: 1 Tim 3,12. There is also a fourth text: 1 Tim 5,14: - unius viri uxor – “a wife of one husband.” This is a feminine complement of the other three. It refers to the special order of widows which exercised a ministry in the early Church. These texts need to be interpreted within the context of 2 Cor 11,2 and Eph 5, 22-32.

This saying is trustworthy: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Therefore, a bishop must be irreproachable, married only once – mias kunaikos andra – unius uxoris virum, temperate, self-controlled, decent, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not aggressive, but gentle, not contentious, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children under control with perfect dignity; for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of the Church of God? [1 Tim 3,1-6].