Editorial
Unsettled Celibacy
Uncertain Sounds for Ministry by S. M. Hutchens
In a March 10 New York Times article Jason Horowitz wrote,
Pope Francis this week signaled receptiveness to appeals from bishops in the remote and overwhelmed corners of the Roman Catholic Church to combat a deepening shortage of priests by ordaining married men who are already committed to the church. In an interview with a German newspaper, the pope made clear that he was not advocating an end to celibacy for current priests or those aspiring to join the clergy. But his seeming openness about the prospect of ordaining married men in places hardest hit by a dearth of priests was unusually explicit and brought the issue to the forefront.
The current pope has a disquieting gift for bringing issues to the forefront on which he is enigmatically "open but proposing no changes" in a volatile church environment where liberalized Catholics continually search for fissures through which to drive the wedge of un-Christian change—as in their taking full advantage of Pope Francis's liberalization-which-was-not-liberalization of the very biblical rule of not admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Communion.
I write as a Protestant who thinks he finds in the Scriptures places for chaste clergy both married and celibate—but a rather bad member of my tribe, perhaps, because it appears to me there are very good reasons for the existence of celibate clergy in significant numbers. Making adjustments to the Catholic celibacy discipline now, however, looks from here like another -peregrination of a pope already suspected of wanderlust. Not all Christians in favor of married clergy may be expected to cheer the prospect among Catholics just because the pope might be "going our way." There are always good reasons for bad policies, something for which (to put the best face on it) Pope Francis doesn't seem to have much of a feel. One senses a different spirit carrying the Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant support of married presbyters than the one I have seen among liberal Catholics, hopeful about the real views of Pope Francis, who want marriage discipline of all kinds relaxed. Here is the Zeitgeist creeping about in Catholic habiliments, bringing with it a package that includes the priesting of women and other sinistrisms, toward which openness of any kind is certainly and demonstrably the first step.
The creedal Catholics I know best, and this includes Touchstone's Catholic editors, hold to the whole Roman tradition as they have received it. This is the only kind of Catholic whose faith on undisputed matters I trust, and I am disinclined to pay much respectful attention to a pope who so often sounds as though he is uncomfortable with, or ashamed of, significant parts of his own tradition, and instead of explaining that tradition, frequently looks like he is trying to change it, so must himself be explained. Is the pope Catholic? It's getting harder to tell.
De Facto Requirement
Among Protestants, clergy who have dedicated themselves to remaining single for unimpeded Kingdom-labor are rare because they are unacceptable as such in the churches. Despite our Lord's and St. Paul's own examples and encouragements, marriage is de facto required of Protestant ministers to pretty much the same degree as clerical celibacy is among Catholics—which is to say, there are few exemptions to be had. Paul's observations in 1 Corinthians 7 are not seriously considered among many who consider themselves Bible Christians.
It is not difficult to find laments in conservative Protestant communions from young, unmarried clergy who will not be considered for call or advance from youth ministry until they find a wife, and who, if they remain single, face the presumption of occult homosexuality. Also, in these places ministerial celibacy for single-minded devotion to the Lord's work, even if the appropriate gift is professed, is likely to be viewed as a Catholic infection, and for that reason even more suspect. These things ought
not to be.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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32.1—January/February 2019
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31.6—November/December 2018
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