When the news broke that the Vatican has agreed to “discuss” the issue of celibacy among priests of the Catholic Church, ‘enemies’ of the Church literally went into the orgy of celebration, thinking that their prayer has finally been answered.
But what if all Catholic – Roman, Eastern etc – priests are allowed to marry, enjoy sex and keep a family?
Those who are angling for the ‘liberalisation’ of sexual intercourse – to extend to Roman Catholic priests – argue that doing so will reduce the incidence of illicit sex among priests.
For the uninitiated, not all Catholic priests are celibates. The Coptic Catholic priests do marry. This means that celibacy is only exclusive to some sections of the Catholic Church.
At ordination, Catholic priests take oaths of obedience, poverty and celibacy.
Recently, the Pope’s new number two said that the practice of celibacy by priests in the Roman Catholic Church is open for discussion.
Archbishop Pietro Parolin said in response to an interview question with Venezuelan newspaper, El Universal, that “celibacy is not an institution; but look, it is also true that you can discuss (it) because as you say, this is not a dogma, a dogma of the Church”.
Parolin also noted that though the Church is not a democratic institution, it must “reflect the democratic spirit of the times and adopt a collegial way of governing”.
According to the National Catholic Reporter, Parolin’s comments “are raising eyebrows today, with some wondering if they herald looming changes in Catholic teaching and practice”.
It’s not clear exactly when celibacy became mandatory for priests, the Huffington Post explains, but “the first written mandate for chastity dates back to 304 C.E., when Canon 33 of the Council of Elvira stated that all ‘bishops, presbyters, and deacons and all other clerics’ should ‘abstain completely from their wives and not to have children.’ A definitive ruling was handed down at the Second Lateran Council of 1139, which ruled that priests were forbidden to marry.”
“In truth,” the National Catholic Reporter writes, “Parolin’s comments represent what might be termed the standard moderate Catholic line – priestly celibacy is a discipline, not a dogma, and can therefore be revised, but it nonetheless has value, and the Church is not a democracy, but it can and should be more collegial.”
In a 2012 interview, Pope Francis – then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio – said celibacy “is a matter of discipline, not of faith; it can change.” Pope Francis went on to say “I am in favour of maintaining celibacy, with all its pros and cons, because we have 10 centuries of good experiences rather than failures.”
What is celibacy?
According the best answer in Yahoo! Answers, celibacy means someone who abstains from sex; it doesn’t really matter if the person has had sex before.
For Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, “Celibacy (from Latin, cælibatus) is a state of being unmarried and sexually abstinent, usually in association with the role of a religious official or devotee. In its narrow sense, the term is applied only to those for whom the unmarried state is the result of a sacred vow, act of renunciation, or religious conviction. Celibacy has existed in one form or another throughout history and in virtually all the major religions of the world. Celibacy is distinct from the lack of interest in sex, which may be due to a number of reasons, such as asexuality.”
Celibacy within marriage
Some people even believe in celibacy within marriage, where one can marry for the purpose of spiritual companionship, mutual spiritual encouragement, restricting oneself to a relationship within married life only for freedom from karma as well as for the procreation and raising of God-conscious children, not for the purpose of having sex like pigeons and pigs. That is celibacy within marriage.
For those who hold the belief, husband and wife should encourage and support each other in preserving the vital energy for procreating and raising God-conscious children with spiritual values, and more importantly for using it in the service of God together for improving the afterlife, not just wasting it away by excessively lusty indulgence.
Pros of celibacy
Though the only disadvantage of celibacy is that some priests – who probably were not ‘called’ in the first instance or are demonic agents sent to destroy the Church – break their vows when the temptation seems so much, there are so many advantages of ‘keeping’ oneself.
Some people believe that Apostle Paul was once married, but was not married when he wrote the letter to the Corinthians. Let’s face it: Paul wrote the letter when he was, may be, in his 30s or 40s – the same age bracket most priests found themselves. So if Paul could abstain at that age, that means it is possible to abstain.
There is the belief in some quarters that the loss of semen is the unhealthiest act we can ever commit just for some momentary pleasure. Even the most health-conscious people don’t know that all their health-maintaining efforts lose much value due to their regular loss of semen. In Ayurveda, conserving semen is the most vital aid to increase the efficacy of the Ayurvedic herbs and medicines.
Loss of focus, enthusiasm and determination, paralysis or numbness of nerves, irritation, easy anger, suppressed vocal abilities etc. may occur due to the loss of semen.
You can lose your semen for some momentary pleasure and feel dull and dreary for many days.
Celibacy helps fasting: Fasting is a very vital spiritual exercise that cuts across religions. Though it is believed that through fasting, one can obtain rare spiritual levels, many people – yours truly inclusive – see the exercise an uphill task. Remember, the 40 days of fasting Jesus Christ embarked upon filled him with extraordinary power to make mincemeat of the devil, in the wilderness.
It has been discovered that hunger decreases due to celibacy nourishment. Common experience of loss of semen is an increased feeling of hunger thereafter. Preserving the vital energy makes one stronger and the feeling of hunger decreases. After a particular time period of let’s say two weeks of preservation, the need for food supply decreases and one can be satisfied with eating only two times per day. Otherwise one has to eat at least three times a day and a kind of slight feeling of hunger is practically felt throughout the whole day. Thus a great amount of food is required in order to reproduce the semen after ejaculation.
The energy lost by the loss of the vital energy cannot be fully replenished even by eating good food for many days because it takes a lot of time for the body to process and convert the food through all the above seven stages. That is why the hunger increases.
Advanced souls conquer over-eating by conquering the urge to lose their semen.
Is celibacy the problem?
But the Vatican has denied that its celibacy requirement for priests was the cause of the clerical sex abuse scandal convulsing the Church in Europe.
Suggestions that the celibacy rule was in part responsible for the “deviant behaviour” of sexually-abusive priests have swirled in recent days, with opinion pieces in German newspapers blaming it for fuelling abuse and even Italian commentators questioning the rule.
Much of the furore was spurred by comments from one of the Pope’s closest advisers, Vienna archbishop, Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn, who called for an honest examination of issues like celibacy and priestly education to root out the origins of sex abuse.
“Part of it is the question of celibacy, as well as the subject of character development. And part of it is a large portion of honesty in the Church but also in society,” he wrote in the online edition of his diocesan newsletter.
His office quickly stressed that Schoenborn wasn’t calling into question priestly celibacy, which Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed as an “expression of the gift of oneself to God and others”.
But Schoenborn had in the past shown himself receptive to arguments that a celibate priesthood is increasingly problematic for the Church, primarily because it limits the number of men who seek ordination.
Schoenborn personally presented the Vatican with a lay initiative signed by prominent Austrian Catholics calling for the celibacy rule to be abolished and for married men to be allowed to become priests.
In the days following Schoenborn’s editorial, several prominent prelates in Germany and at the Vatican shot down any suggestion that the celibacy rule had anything to do with the scandal, a point echoed by the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
A report endorsed in 2004 by the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, however, argued that an understanding of the problem of clerical sex abuse isn’t possible without reference to both celibacy and homosexuality, since the vast majority of U.S. abuse cases were of a homosexual nature.
While stressing neither celibacy nor homosexuality causes abuse, the report said: “The church did an inadequate job both of screening out those individuals who were destined to fail in meeting the demands of the priesthood, and of forming others to meet those demands, including the rigours of a celibate life.”
Though there are reports that some Catholic priests are advancing the cause for the abolition of celibacy, some Lagos Catholic priests who were approached on the issue did not see how the abolition of celibacy will help the Church. For them, the solution to sexual abuse by pervert priests is self-discipline.
A Theology scholar and Dominican, a religious congregation, Rev. Fr. Christopher Nnamani (O.P.), told Innocuous Scribbles that allowing every priest to marry will not solve any problem of sex abuse.
According to him, priests like him who hear confessions would confirm that even married men engage in sexual abuse and infidelity.
Fr. Nnamani confirmed that there are already married priests in the Church, wondering why the fuss this time around.
He added that even if priests are to be allowed to marry, it will be only for diocesan priests, not the religious.
Sex is not the ultimate end of marriage. If it is, there would not have been infidelity in marriage. So asking the priests to marry may not even quench their konji.
If celibacy is the cause of sexual abuse, why do we still have sexual abuse among Pentecostal pastors and married priests of other churches?
Have we considered the problems associated with marriage? A couple that wedded in July, after four weeks, approached the officiating priest to return their wedding rings, because they were not “compatible”.
Rev. Fr. Vin-Mario Chinedu Udoye of the Sons of Mary, another religious congregation, also said allowing priests to have sex is not a solution to the problem.
“If you allow a priest to marry, you would have succeeded in adding more burden – that of how to satisfy his family – to that of priesthood, which, in itself, is heavy,” he said.
He added that even if the “discussion” will change the status quo, it may come with some not-too-pleasant clauses, to discourage those who are not called, and those that would see the priesthood as a last resort for survival.
“Even if priests are to be allowed to marry, they may be asked to bear their family burdens; they may not live in mission house and may be required to work in order not to over-burden the Church. But if there is no clause, some people who are not called to the priesthood may abuse it.”
Another problem, according to him, is that if a priest has domestic appendages, he will find it difficult making sacrifices and taking some spiritual risks, which a celibate priest will easily do.
In summary, Fr. “Edu Jesu”, as he is fondly called, sees the development as an attack on the priesthood by enemies of the Church. “Their target is the Church; so they have started with the priesthood.”
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