Not long ago, an article was published in The Spire about the abuse scandals surrounding the Catholic Church which included some suggestions for reform within the Church. As with most of the suggestions from ignorant college students, most of them were discernible by any thinking Catholic as radical and intrinsically wrong (i.e women priests). That being said, there was one suggestion that continues to be controversial within the Church and can indeed be changed: the requirement of priestly celibacy. Various groups of Bishops have discussed this topic recently, and in the Byzantine rite, it is indeed allowed. However, just because something can be changed does not mean that it ought to be changed, and when it comes to question of marriage for secular priests, the answer ought to remain the ideal: priests should stay celibate. As Russell Kirk said, if we want to make real just change within society, we must look back to “custom, convention, constitution, and prescription.” We must examine the history of the Church on this issue and above all the reason for this particular custom, this tradition of our Church.
When it comes to the history of priestly celibacy, an objector to it is always inclined to point to the fact that some of the Apostles were married, and that in the early Church there were plenty of married clergy. One can skip over the question of the Apostles, as they can easily be viewed as an exception due to their being part of the establishment of the Church. In terms of the other married clergy, as the Vatican will tell you, “one has to desist, when faced with this incontrovertible fact, from assuming that this necessarily excluded the co-existence of an obligatory celibacy discipline.” In reality, the Church had clerical celibacy even in the patristic era. “The first legislative expression of this is found in the eastern councils of Ancyra (314), c. 10, and Neocaesarea (ca. 314-325), c. 1, for deacons and priests respectively.” The prohibition “is clearly expressed in the Apostolic Constitutions and Apostolic Canons of the late fourth century.” Furthermore, “Canon 14 of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451) likewise endorses this discipline...and it is found in other documents of the fifth and subsequent centuries which consider the practice to be an ancient and timeless tradition” (emphasis added). From these examples and countless more from the early Church, it is clear that, at least on paper, priestly celibacy was a recognized tradition of the Church. As recent times have shown us, while some priests may disobey laws of the Church, nevertheless the laws themselves remain valid.
Since a foundation has been established from the early Church for priestly celibacy, one must now look to see if the long held tradition is itself valid by examining the pros and cons. The main reason for priestly celibacy is the attachment that marriage brings at the expense of the type of spiritual life that a priest requires. This is because of the sexual, familial, and financial obligations of marriage. For the sexual component, as Saint Augustine writes, “Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of man downwards as the caress of a woman and that physical intercourse which is part of marriage.” This is of course not to suggest that sex in itself is inherently evil, or that married people cannot be highly devote. Marriage is a beautiful sacrament that shows the beauty of the Trinity through its love, but a married man cannot love and serve God with the same devotion that a celibate priest can, for he has a strong earthly attachment to his wife that a priest ought not to have to anything of this earth, but to God and the spiritual life alone. As for familial obligations, the priest is required to work incredibly long hours, including working on holidays, and is bound to have little time for his children or for his wife. To give an idea, the priest is required to say Mass everyday as well as attend the Sacrament, say the Divine Office, teach classes or run a parish, and do spiritual direction. For a married priest, there is bound to be strife between the priest’s hereditary children and his spiritual children, for a good priest is a father to many within his flock. Financially, a priest will find it extraordinarily difficult to support a family with his salary, especially considering that Catholic families tend to have a large families. With all of this in mind, it is likely that a married priest will be conflicted in his obligations to his wife and those to God, will have severe familial problems, and will struggle financially, all of which are bound to show in his preaching and in his saving of souls to the detriment of his flock.
In conclusion, there is much talk today about radical reforms within the Church that are meant to go against long standing tradition in favor of supposed “progress”. But change is not necessarily improvement, and is often a derailing perversion cloaked with the euphemism of “progress”, an eloquent wolf sneaking into the flock. To quote Henry Ford, “Change is not always progress...A fever of newness has everywhere been confused with the spirit of progress.” When one looks at most of the problems in the world today, one can usually find the answer to them from old traditions and thought, for our ancestors were far wiser than us. In line with that previously mentioned Spire writer, I will do my own suggestions for reform in the Church. The Church ought to return to its traditions and roots by proclaiming with more fervor and boldness its sacred doctrines, especially the ones that even many Catholics do not think about or practice. Specifically, the Church ought to focus on countering this perverted and sexually disordered society by proclaiming far and wide the Word of God, and clinging hard to the principles of Natural Law, as expressed by those such as the Angelic Doctor Saint Thomas Aquinas, for there are few greater sources than these. In any case, traditional Catholics need not worry about ridiculously radical reforms (i.e women priests), for as Christ said about His Church, “...the gates of Hell shall not prevail.”