Celibacy and Other Things The Clergy Probably Shouldn't Be Doing For Us

In response to the sex scandal in the Roman Catholic church, a group of women have apparently written an open letter to the pope. The woman are Italian Catholics who have had affairs or relationships with priests. However, unlike the harsh criticisms that has characterized other such letters, these are letters in support of the priests and others who have been caught in a system that has some very real problems. Some have said that the letters will reopen the discussion about celibacy. While that remains to be seen, I do feel that the letter is an important document. Many people have sensed (myself included) that the cause of much of the pain and suffering that we have seen in the Church around the issue of sex is rooted in the strangely applied expectation of a celibate and unmarried priesthood.

The current Pope, along with many before him, has responded to questions of this kind by referencing that celibacy has been the historic practice and expectation of clergy for a very long time (though curiously not since the beginning of the Church). I think it is a bad idea to ask entire groups of people to refrain from sex on the basis of their loyalty to God and to the Church. But what I really think is a bad idea is doing this out of some kind of queer loyalty to values and faith positions that the Church does not promote.

What I mean by this is that the Church certainly does not believe that marriage is a bad thing. Moreover, despite the strange and mixed messages that we've heard from time to time, the Church does not believe that sex is dirty or evil. While there have been times when both Protestant and Catholic Christians have entertained such ideas, the Bible does not support it and as Christians we have largely gotten past our awkward feelings about sexuality. Indeed, in the more recent past, the Church has made it a point to proclaim that sex is a part of God's created order and therefore a good thing. Of course, we also believe that there are more and less appropriate ways of expressing this particular gift but there is no official position in the Church suggesting that sex is a bad thing. Herein lies the twofold problem.

First, by setting a unique standard for the priesthood, the Vatican is indirectly making a strange statement, both to the Church and to the larger world. By implying that marriage and sex are OK for lay people but not OK for Church leaders, the Vatican is suggesting these things are some kind of vice. The unspoken lesson here is that real Christians should not be interested in lesser things like marriage and sex.

Second, and this is the really sad part... The truth is, the Church doesn't believe this. It doesn't believe that sex is dirty. In fact, marriage is actually a sacrament in the Roman Catholic tradition--on the level of Baptism and Holy Communion. Why would you deny something that is upheld as good and desirable from leaders within the Church? Again, in the proper context... Or to put it in the darker context: could it be that we are seeing perversion of sexuality in these men precisely because they have not been allowed to enjoy healthy expressions of it?

This issue is actually just one of a number of double-standards that we have applied to clergy at one time or another. Of course, part of this is helpful; we want our servant leaders to serve as examples of the faith and holding them to a higher standard makes sense in this regard. However, sometimes there seems to be something else going on. Sometimes, we sort of imagine that we want the clergy to live out our faithfulness for us. It seems that we ask them to be pure or poor or nonviolent so we won't have to.

This, it seems to me, is a poor way to live out our faith together. By asking some to carry the disciplinary burden of all might sound attractive but like the Church's expectation of celibate priesthood, it not only sends a mixed message, it also paves the way for some rather bizarre side effects. I am thinking here especially of the Church's confused and compromised relation to war and nonviolence. Although Jesus himself was nonviolent and early Christian disciples were taught to avoid vocations in which there might be shedding blood, the Church today has moved far away from this expectation. Of course, clergy are expected to be peaceful in both personal and collective ways, that expectation is seldom applied to the faithful. Another example, of course, is money. The people in the pews feel that it is their God-given right to pursue and protect wealth to any and all degrees as long as our servant leaders remain nice and poor.

Interestingly, these two examples are somewhat different from the example of celibacy. Whereas the Bible clearly recognizes sex (at least within marriage) as a good and important part of life, violence and the pursuit of riches are generally not regarded as Godly behavior. So what's going on? Does the Church really want to continue to underwrite things like violence and greed while hypocritically judging something as natural as sex?