Postscripts From The Catholic Spitfire Grill

It’s that forum I hang out on again. The topic of priestly celibacy has come up and the more I think about it the madder I get. I won’t quote what’s been said but I would like to adress the recurring themes I hear in this recurring conversation that I have with Protestant Believers who have “issues” with priestly celibacy. Why? Well I don’t think I can say these things in that particular conversation and if I don’t say them somewhere I am just going to explode and this is my blog so I’ll say it if I want to….

First. Yes, I know Peter was married. Yes, I believe Peter was the first pope. That does not mean that the RCC has ever believed or taught that every single solitary aspect of Peter’s life should be imitated in perpetuity. For instance, we really think that whole denying of Jesus three time things is something we should not seek to emulate. Although being married clearly does not fall into the same category as betraying Christ, it does not necessarily follow that it means we are required to accept his life choice as dogma.

Second. Yes I know the “husband of one wife” verse. Even as a Protestant, I never interpreted that verse as a positive requirement to marry. I have always wondered if the same people who attempt to bludgeon me with that verse over the priestly celibacy issue would fire a pastor if he was widowed? Or require a young youth pastor to marry in haste in order to qualify for a position? I suppose there might be denominations like that but when you get right down to it, doesn’t it make sense that it would mean ‘no more than one wife’? Especially in light of other scriptures and the words of our Lord himself?! To save time, I am just going to cut and paste from Scripture Catholic (scroll down the page to section IV):

Matt. 19:11-12 - Jesus says celibacy is a gift from God and whoever can bear it should bear it. Jesus praises and recommends celibacy for full-time ministers in the Church. Because celibacy is a gift from God, those who criticize the Church’s practice of celibacy are criticizing God and this wonderful gift He bestows on His chosen ones.

Matt. 19:29 - Jesus says that whoever gives up children for the sake of His name will receive a hundred times more and will inherit eternal life. Jesus praises celibacy when it is done for the sake of His kingdom.

Matt. 22:30 - Jesus explains that in heaven there are no marriages. To bring about Jesus’ kingdom on earth, priests live the heavenly consecration to God by not taking a wife in marriage. This way, priests are able to focus exclusively on the spiritual family, and not have any additional pressures of the biological family (which is for the vocation of marriage). This also makes it easier for priests to be transferred to different parishes where they are most needed without having to worry about the impact of their transfer on wife and children.

1 Cor 7:1 – Paul teaches that it is well for a man not to touch a woman. This is the choice that the Catholic priests of the Roman rite freely make.

1 Cor. 7:7 - Paul also acknowledges that celibacy is a gift from God and wishes that all were celibate like he is.

1 Cor. 7:27 – Paul teaches men that they should not seek marriage. In Paul’s opinion, marriage introduces worldly temptations that can interfere with one’s relationship with God, specifically regarding those who will become full-time ministers in the Church.

1 Cor. 7:32-33, 38 - Paul recommends celibacy for full-time ministers in the Church so that they are able to focus entirely upon God and building up His kingdom. He “who refrains from marriage will do better.”

1 Tim. 3:2 - Paul instructs that bishops must be married only once. Many Protestants use this verse to prove that the Church’s celibacy law is in error. But they are mistaken because this verse refers to bishops that were widowers. Paul is instructing that these widowers could not remarry. The verse also refers to those bishops who were currently married. They also could not remarry (in the Catholic Church’s Eastern rite, priests are allowed to marry; celibacy is only a disciplinary rule for the clergy of the Roman rite). Therefore, this text has nothing to do with imposing a marriage requirement on becoming a bishop.

1 Tim. 4:3 - in this verse, Paul refers to deceitful doctrines that forbid marriage. Many non-Catholics also use this verse to impugn the Church’s practice of celibacy. This is entirely misguided because the Catholic Church (unlike many Protestant churches) exalts marriage to a sacrament. In fact, marriage is elevated to a sacrament, but consecrated virginity is not. The Church declares marriage sacred, covenantal and lifegiving. Paul is referring to doctrines that forbid marriage and other goods when done outside the teaching of Christ and for a lessor good. Celibacy is an act of giving up one good (marriage and children) for a greater good (complete spiritual union with God).

1 Tim. 5:9-12 - Paul recommends that older widows take a pledge of celibacy. This was the beginning of women religious orders.

2 Tim. 2:3-4 - Paul instructs his bishop Timothy that no soldier on service gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim his to satisfy the One who enlisted him. Paul is using an analogy to describe the role of the celibate priesthood in the Church.

Rev. 14:4 - unlike our sinful world of the flesh, in heaven, those consecrated to virginity are honored.

Isaiah 56:3-7 - the eunuchs who keep God’s covenant will have a special place in the kingdom of heaven.

Jer. 16:1-4 - Jeremiah is told by God not to take a wife or have children.

But what really bugs me, what is just setting my hair on fire is the attitude that celibacy is a discipline “imposed” on priests. First, that just mocks the voluntary and loving sacrifice that they have made to better serve the faithful. Nobody is forced to be a priest. Nobody gets them drunk or knocks them on the head only to have them wake up the next morning and be told that they made a vow of celibacy while they were unconscious. The Catholic Church is not shang hai’ing men into the priesthood. Second, to question the vow of celibacy taken by men who enter the priesthood is to treat them like children incapable of making up their own mind. Just like the Catholic Church isn’t giving Rohypnol to unsuspecting Roman Catholic men and telling them in the morning that they made a vow of celibacy, they don’t let 5 year olds into the priesthood either. The process is long and there are plenty of obstacles in the way. Men who enter the priesthood will tell you that they had to work hard for the privilege of making those vows and that plenty of people along the way tried to talk sense into them and put obstacles in their way to make sure the decision was made with care and prayer and much deliberation. 

Lastly, why does it seem to me that the most vocal critics of priestly celibacy are those on whom it isn’t imposed? Why does it seem to rankle those who aren’t Catholic or those who have no intention of entering the priesthood even if they could marry? I would just like to point out that the discipline of preistly celibacy is imposed on priests by priests (bishops) who have taken that same vow. They must think there is some deeper benefit! Don’t ya think? 

When the priests themselves start telling me that priestly celibacy doesn’t help them pastor their flocks more effectively THEN I think we’ll have reason to re-think the whole matter.  

New Advent has an article which discusses the reasons and history behind the discipline of priestly celibacy. In case you want something more substantive than my venting.

Edit: I blogged about the comments to this post here.

The discussion in the Catholic Spitfire Grill this evening turned to the day’s ability (or inability) to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession). Several members we unable to receive the Sacrament today because the there were more penitents than the priest could hear in the allotted time. We need to pray not only for vocation to the religious life but also for those priests that they would have great fervor for those who desire the sacraments and for the strength and grace to administer them.

From St. Faustina:

Most Merciful Jesus, from whom comes all that is good, increase Your grace in men and women consecrated to Your service, that they may perform worthy works of mercy; and that all who see them may glorify the Father of Mercy who is in heaven.

Eternal Father, turn Your merciful gaze upon the company of chosen ones in Your vineyardupon the souls of priests and religious; and endow them with the strength of Your blessing.  For the love of the Heart of Your Son in which they are enfolded, impart to them Your power and light, that they may be able to guide others in the way of salvation and with one voice sing praise to Your boundless mercy for ages without end.  Amen.

Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light remains on my mind. Mother Teresa’s heroic faithfulness leaves me breathless with the desire to imitate her in some small way. And in my small way, I’ve some to the realization that all worhtwhile spiritual virtues develop in their own “Dark Night.” The strongest faith is that which remains in the absence of consolation. Our Lord said it this way In Matthew 5:43-48

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on (your) right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.  “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

It’s all a “dark night” folks. On a lesser scale for us lesser souls but aren’t we called to be faithful, even if we have no consolation? Isn’t that when our faith is strongest? Because it’s being tested? We are supposed to love when we are getting hit back. To hope when it’s “obviously” hopeless. To stand and pray in the face of ridicule. Not because Our Lord is sadistic but because it’s good for us and makes us strong.

 ”Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I go back again. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD!” Job 1:23 

I just wish I wasn’t a weenie.

Lest you think I am totally materialistic, the words I would MOST like to hear are from our Lord and they are “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

After that…for today at least….they are from DHL tell me that my new laptop is “With delivery courier.”

Strike up the band and wipe the lip prints from my computer screen! (My son just suggested that we take the day off of school in celebration….snort….I’m not THAT happy.)

I started this post earlier this week in hopes I would get it up the day after the 10th anniversary of her death. Then Amazon delivered 

Now I could tell you that I decided to wait on posting in order to have a more complete blog post. That would be a lie. Frankly, I was so riveted by the contents of the book itself that I didn’t want to stop reading long enough to blog. Then my internet connection went out which forced me to spend still more time meditating on the life of this extraordinary woman. When I recommend books to my friends I generally exhibit several levels of enthusiasm from ‘this particular book isn’t that great but I think that you’ll find what you need in it’ to ‘no, that belongs in your CART, not your wishlist.’ I tell you without a trace of humor in my voice, I told a friend of mine yesterday to buy this book right that minute and pay for 1-day shipping. (With Amazon Prime 1-day shipping is $3.99)

And so I post this in honor of the 51st anniversary of Our Lord’s “call within a call” to Mother Teresa to reach out to the poorest of the poor on September 10, 1946.

I’ve resisted developing an attachment to Mother Teresa…there I said it…..think of me what you will, but I am shallow and vain enough to not want to do what everyone else is doing because everyone else is doing it. Thankyouverymuch. But I am fighting a losing battle as the Holy Spirit continues to use Mother Teresa’s words and example to speak to me. So as the Catholic blogosphere pauses to remember Mother Teresa let me add my grateful thanks to our Lord for her life, her unspeakable courage, and her continued efforts (whether she is aware of them or not) to reduce even me to humility and to encourage even me to embrace suffering. If all Mother Teresa did was selflessly devote herself to acts of charity and love in India and found the Missionaries of Charity, she would still be worthy of sainthood. But the more I learn about her, the more I realize she ranks with one of the great Catholic mystics of all-time. Mother Teresa wrote with acts of her life more about the Gospel of our Lord and the meaning of the words “Take up your cross and follow me” than all of the Doctors of the Church combined.  

I’ve meditated on why it is that Mother Teresa’s life and writings should speak to me in a way that St. Thérèse of Lisieux, or St. Teresa of Avila, of St. John of the Cross do not. I wonder if it is not that Mother Teresa is more like me than they were. No I don’t mean that I am in her league with respect to virtue or wisdom or charity or any other good Christian attribute that you’d like to name. What I mean is that like me, she was a mother. Not in the same way that I am, but a mother of all of her Missionaries of Charity Sisters nonetheless.  She also had to straddle the difficult balance of the giving of oneself in practical temporal ways and the need and desire to shut oneself up in prayer. Even though she was a vowed religious woman, I think that my life as a wife and mother and temporal duties of that life and my desires as a Christian have some tiny parallel to her life.

And although I am sure that this posthumous examination of her faith by those who would tear it down has just begun (and in some cases gotten fresh wind in the sails) I am intensely weary of it. Here is a woman who (with the approval of her confessor) made a private vow to deny Jesus nothing that He asked of her and then spent the rest of her life listening intensely to the smallest leading of His so that she might instantly do His will. Some, who did not know her and have judged her based on a few quotes of hers taken out of the context of all of her life and words are saying that she was not even Christian; yet her life was the embodiment of the advice she gave to so many. In her words ” “Today I made a new prayer –Jesus I accept whatever you give—and I give whatever you take.” On Holy Cards that portrayed Ecce Homo with the words from Psalm 68 “I looked for one that would comfort me and I found none,” she would write, “Be the one.” One of her sisters (Sister Fatima Sebastian) describes her as a woman “totally, passionately, madly in love with Jesus.” I wonder how many of those who would question the Christianity of Mother Teresa would themselves be described in those words. I wonder how many of us, could say “I want with my whole will only Jesus” and then have our lives stand as the sole evidence of the Truth of that statement?

Yes, she wrote about lacking the “feeling” of faith and some are using that to describe her as faithless or even, incredibly, as an atheist. But listen to what else she wrote:

No Father, I am not alone.–I have His darkness–I have His pain–I have a terrible longing for God–to love and not to be loved. I know I have Jesus–in that unbroken union–for my mind is fixed on Him and in Him alone, in my will.

Cough. Lots of atheists I know write like that. During the early years of her darkness, before she began to understand and to embrace it. Before she began to see some of the purpose for it, her spiritual director, Father Neuner, wrote about that transformation:

It was the redeeming experience of her life when she realized that the night of her heart was the special share she had in Jesus’ passion…Thus we see that the darkness was actually the mysterious link that united her to Jesus. It is the contact of intimate longing for God. Nothing else can fill her mind. Such longing is possible only through God’s hidden presence. We cannot long for something that is not intimately close to us. Thirst is more than the absence of water. It is not experienced by stones, but only by living beings that depend on water.

Mother Teresa radiated Christ to all who knew her. She was the living gospel of Christ and His dedicated servant. Someone said of her:

She seemed to delight in you. It was not something of charity that was burdensome, which destroys the dignity of the poor, but it was something that she delighted in….You had the sense that she considered it a privilege to do this. She comforted you when you were sad. She encouraged you when you were doubting whether you could do something.

Her work was a witness to the power and light and love of Christ within her. It was her complete and total surrender to His Will that enabled Him to work so powerfully through her. And I am humbled and am forced to ask, does my life reflect such a total surrender? It should. What could He do through each of us, if we allowed Him to use us without consulting us? (Another of Mother Teresa’s bits of wisdom.) If one totally surrendered woman could accomplish so much for the Kingdom, what could a billion such souls accomplish?

But what about her gifts to me? Well as I have previously mentioned, I have had some rough patches in my personal life in the last few years. Some months ago I took the time to go on a silent retreat in an attempt to make some sense of the pain in my life. The Lord threw me the lifeline I needed but He used the hands of Mother Teresa in a very significant way to toss it my way. Her letter to the Missionaries of Charity which outlines some of her understand of her “call within a call” was just what I needed to help me remember….probably more profoundly than I have ever realized it before….that I was truly loved by God. Perhaps God used her, because like her (but for different reasons) I have had a kind of “Dark Night” of my own. Here is some of that letter:

Be careful of all that can block that personal contact with the living Jesus. Devil may try to use the hurts of life, and sometimes our own mistakes, to make you feel it is impossible that Jesus really loves you, is really cleaving to you. This is danger for all of us. And so sad, because it is completely opposite of what Jesus is really wanting, waiting to tell you. Not only that He loves you, but even more–He longs for you. He misses you when you don’t come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don’t feel worthy. When not accepted by others, even by yourself sometimes — He is the one who always accepts you….

…Why does Jesus say “I thirst”? What does it mean? Something so hard to explain in words– if you remember anything from Mother’s letter, remember this–”I thirst” is something much deeper than Jesus just saying “I love you.” Until you know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for you –you can’t begin to know who He wants to be for you. Or who He wants you to be for Him.

I know that there are some who think that Mother Teresa’s wishes to have her correspondence burned should have been honored. She was afraid that her correspondence might turn some away from Jesus who she loved so passionately. I am glad that the Vatican disagrees with her. Her heroic surrender to the will of God and the wisdom that came from it will help many souls (mine very much included) come closer to God. As she approached death and her sisters would say “Mother, don’t leave us. We can’t live without you.” She would reply “Don’t worry. Mother can do so much more for you when I am in heaven.” I am sure that meant that she would joyfully pray for the Church on earth, she also said:

If I ever become a Saint –I will surely be one of “darkness.” I will continually be absent from Heaven–to light the light of those in darkness on hearth– 

I suspect that in her humility, she would never have understood that her letters would form an important part of the work she would do after her death. I do know that no matter how she felt about having her letters published, that she would have submitted totally to her vow of religious obedience and accepted the ruling of Church authorities that these letters would be helpful to the faithful and should be published.

Besides Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light I highly recommend the following:

Praying in the Presence of Our Lord with Mother Teresa by Susan Conroy. I like this book because it has a good blend of background information as well as those wonderful bits of wisdom of Mother Teresa’s.

Works of Love are Works of Peace: Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the Missionaries of Charity by Michael Collopy. On the surface this book looks like just a coffee table book of pictures of Mother Teresa but tucked away in the back of the book is a copy of the Missionaries of Charity prayer book.

“Pray for me, that I not loosen my grip on the hand of Jesus”
Mother Teresa

ETA: I had more to say here.