Priestly Celibacy Priestly Celibacy Theological Foundations = Gary Selin Foreword by J. Francis Cardinal Stafford The CaTholiC UniversiTy of ameriCa Press Washington, D.C. Copyright © 2016 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Selin, Gary, 1964– Title: Priestly celibacy : theological foundations / Gary Selin ; foreword by J. Francis Cardinal Stafford. Description: Washington, D.C. : The Catholic University of America Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015038132 | ISBN 9780813228419 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Celibacy—Catholic Church—History of doctrines. | Priesthood—Catholic Church. | Lord’s Supper—Catholic Church. | Catholic Church—Clergy—Sexual behavior. | Priests—Sexual behavior. Classification: LCC BX1912.85 .S45 2016 | DDC 253/.252—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038132 To the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Priests ConTenTs Foreword by J. Francis Cardinal Stafford ix = Introduction 1 1. The Development of Clerical Continence and Celibacy in the Latin Church 7 2. The Renewed Magisterial Teaching on Priestly Celibacy 57 3. The Threefold Dimension as a Source of Renewal of the Theology of Priestly Celibacy 105 4. The Eucharist and Priestly Celibacy 167 Conclusion 179 = Bibliography 185 Index of Biblical Citations 197 General Index 201 foreword The Author Fr. Gary B. Selin, a diocesan priest, has been engaged in a book-length “sacra conversatio” concerning the origin and theological development of clerical celibacy. This “holy conversation” brings forward persons from the beginning of the Church to the present. His work is as useful as the theme is timely. The author himself is a thoughtful, gentle, and scholarly man of God. “Silence and work” are as integral to the rhythm of his ministry as they were to St. John of the Cross in the formation of Carmelites.1 The author’s experience in the formation and education of seminarians is extensive. Selin’s theological method is guided by the principle that reality is intelligible and true. He understands priestly celibacy as a gift, es- sentially related to the Eucharist. By acting in the Person of Christ, the Head of the body (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 2), the priest hands himself over forever to the service of God and of the Bride of Christ, His Church. This “renunciation in the supernatural order”2 acts as a major musical key in the life of a priest, for it is given to the man as a free gift in perfect resonance with his own freedom. Because of the mutual freedoms, the gift received is a surpassing surprise from God, enabling the priest to act with holy simplicity in the Person of His Incarnate Son. God’s gift of celibacy makes “the silent music” more accessible. In four chapters together with an introduction and conclusion, Se- 1. Letter of St. John of the Cross to the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Beas, 1587, The Col- lected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriquez, OCD (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1964), 688. 2. Karl Rahner cited by David W. Fagerberg, On Liturgical Asceticism (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press), 2013, 80. ix x foreword lin recaptures the sacred character of the priesthood. After meditating upon the major texts of the Catholic tradition, he pulls together various elements of authoritative teaching. His contribution is substantial to the long-overdue development of a coherent and systematic theology on the significance of perfect continence in priestly life and ministry. The Content Selin’s presentation is rooted in the Bible and tradition. On exegetical and historical grounds, he insists that the origins of priestly celibacy com- menced with the New Testament and was supported by papal and episco- pal interventions. He reports on the June 16, 390, meeting of the Fathers of the Council of Carthage. They put into place a remarkable foundation for future theology. The prominence they gave to the liturgical context is particularly salient: “It is proper (decet) that the holy bishops and priests of God as well as the Levites, that is those who are in the service of the divine sacraments, observe perfect continence.” The bishops concluded the decree with a climatic liturgical and ascetical singularity “so that they may obtain in all simplicity what they are asking from God.” The more one meditates upon this text and acts upon it, the better one understands the “disciplined obedience”3 of the new man in Christ. The bishops gath- ered in ancient Carthage realized that its content was “what the apostles taught and what antiquity itself observed.” Selin points out an unsettling historical reality. Over the past twenty- one centuries, with rare exceptions such as Johann Adam Möhler and Matthias Joseph Scheeben, the Church has not offered systematic reflec- tion on the topic of priestly celibacy per se. In some centuries, especially more recent ones, Catholics stumbled badly over its origins and fumbled about its nature. What the author accomplishes builds upon the break- through of Pope Blessed Paul VI in his 1967 Encyclical Letter, Sacerdota- lis Caelibatus. The pope, drawing upon the Vatican II Council, endorses three theological factors justifying priestly celibacy: the Christological factor represents the chief motive for the Church to hold fast to priestly celibacy modeled on the celibate life of Jesus; the ecclesiological factor enhances priestly pastoral charity; and the eschatological factor bears 3. Ibid., 26. foreword xi witness to the resurrection of the body. Selin highlights qualities that are easily overlooked—the comparative adverbs by which the Vatican II Council extols celibacy’s “manifest suitability” to serve the “new human- ity.” The four are the following: facilius (more readily), liberius (more freely), expeditius (less encumbered), and aptiores (better fitted).4 In reviewing Jane Austen’s Emma, Sir Walter Scott coined what Ad- ela Pinch called a “conceit” in describing a typical reader of the novel: a “wandering traveler” who has no chance of having “his head turned.” Pinch elaborated on Scott’s insight. Scott was illustrating the motive of Austen’s incorporating only the “ordinary” and “normal” of everyday life to illustrate the “new style of novel.” By employing exclusively “or- dinary details” to interpret the new epoch unfolding in post-Napoleonic, consumer-oriented England, Scott stated his perception of Austen’s in- tentions: “The youthful wanderer may return from his promenade to the ordinary business of life without any chance of having his head turned by the recollection of the scene through which he had been wandering.”5 But Pinch’s final interpretation of Austin as nihilistic is mistaken. A different, revolutionary vision unfolded in the ancient Church that brings us closer to Alasdair MacIntyre’s accurate judgment about Jane Austen’s Christian identity. That vision continues in today’s Catho- lic commitment to evangelization. Whenever Blessed Paul VI referred to the eschatological characteristics of priestly celibacy, he indicated that priestly celibacy was a perennial “head-turner” because in New Testa- ment terminology, “the world has been turned upside down” (see Acts of Apostles 17:6) by Jesus’s proclamation of the Kingdom of heaven.6 What his encyclical pointed out was that the eschatological mystery 4. Vatican Council II, Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 16. 5. Aptly cited by Adela Pinch in Emma by Jane Austen, ed. James Kinsley with an intro- duction by Adela Pinch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, reissued 2008), ix–x. Pinch calls attention to Scott’s use of “a whole revolution of turns” found in Emma. Eschatology, of course, was not the point of reference of Scott, Pinch, or Austen; however, Scott’s “wandering traveler” turning his head is an excellent metaphor for illuminating the Christian eschatological land- scape. In contrast to Scott, Catholics have had the capacity also to underline the kairos (in the sense of “the extraordinariness”) of the ordinary in light of the sacramentality of the world and of human beings created as male and female. 6. See biblical theme of C. Kavin Rowe, World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Greco- Roman Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). xii foreword vitalizing priestly celibacy has been given to the Church to “turn the head” of every “wandering traveler” in this land of unlikeness. A celi- bate priest has always been a divine exclamation point among ordinary and everyday things: “Acknowledge that you are strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb 11:13). Priestly celibacy carries forward and explicates the central mysteries: Trinity, Incarnation, and Redemption. A superb integrator, Selin uses the reality of lived celibacy to build bridges to other conciliar themes: pas- toral charity, created and redeemed body, sacrament of marriage, poor church for the poor, eschatology, and so forth. The author highlights the ancient genealogy of nuptiality as a fountainhead of a Christian anthro- pology rooted in the Bible. This theological patrimony was later enriched by Origen, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, and others. The crucial theological motive of the bishops of the 390 Council when reiterating the necessity of clerical celibacy was the