Often people ask why the Catholic Church still requires priests to remain celibate. Some question the discipline of priestly celibacy because it apparently exacerbates the burden of concupiscence. We usually respond that priests must imitate Christ in everything. Christ is our High Priest and a model for every priest that will ever be. Rarely anyone elaborates beyond that. Let’s see if we can dig a little further. Check the words of St Peter:
Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it?
But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should carefully imitate him. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. — 1 Peter 2:18-25.
You may notice that St Peter talks about the careful imitation of Christ. Some translations render that as “carefully following his steps.” Our first Pope also mentions the healing quality of Christ’s injuries. We all know about the five wounds of Christ but we rarely think about all the other things he sacrificed.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. — Philippians 2:5-11
He earned the right to adopt us as sons and daughters
First of all, Christ denied himself by becoming a man. He chose to be a lowly carpenter in a poor frontier town of the Roman Empire. While he was among us he did not take a wife, he gave up the pleasures of married life and the joys of raising children. How is this connected to our salvation? He explains:
The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” — John 10:17-18.
We hear that explanation in the context of the parable of the Good Shepherd. Christ voluntarily gives his life to save us. Included in that sacrifice is the fruitfulness of his own humanity. When he presents his perfect sacrifice to the Almighty Judge, Christ earns the legal right to redeem us by adopting us.
Because, according to the Law he is blameless, God the Father grants him the glory he had before becoming a mere man. Christ uses his sovereign right to fatherhood: He freely claims the sons and daughters of Adam as his own. He renounced to having a family on earth so he could adopt mankind as his family. By denying himself all the way to the Cross, Christ earned the right to own us, giving us the same kind of life he lives.
If you look carefully in Scripture, you will find that principle represented prophetically in many ways: in the story of Judah and Tamar, of Ruth and Boaz, and in many other places. According to the Law of Moses Christ has the right to raise the progeny of Adam. Christ’s perfect purity is instrumental to achieve that purpose.
Our priests must be like Christ in everything
The Church is Christ’s precious possession. Our priests received from Christ the sacred responsibility to dispense the Holy Sacrament to us. In every Mass, or every time we go to Confession, the priest is acting in persona Christi. He is standing there in lieu of Christ. When Popes, Bishops, and Priests teach the Doctrine of the Holy Apostles, they are spiritually seeding the Church with Christ’s words of life. Their words help create new life in us in the same manner that the Logos created all life by his Word. The teaching of the doctrine suffers when the priest does not imitate Christ faithfully, failing to hold on to perfect virginity. Spiritual fruitfulness consists in burying the impulses of the flesh to allow the growth of the spirit for the benefit of others. That is the very essence of fatherhood.
It is God’s will to choose virginal souls to reign over creation so they can be kings and priests along with Christ and dispense the generous benevolence of the Father to all living souls. Not surprisingly St John reveals that those kings are completely loyal to Christ, following him perfectly in everything, including his perfect virginity:
Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps. And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they remained virgins. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among mankind and offered as first fruits to God and the Lamb. No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless. — Revelation 14:1-5.
A parallel with human marriage
But what about those of us who are no longer virgins due to sin, weakness, or ignorance of God’s good laws? Can we ever imitate Christ perfectly? Even when we lose physical virginity, chastity can rebuild it spiritually through patient wait in chasteness. In the sacrament of matrimony, that final “Yes, I do” requires a previous pondering of the whole weight of our final commitment: “I love you forever; I will never look back; here is the whole inventory of my soul before you, for your inspection and possession. Before I even know you, I kept myself pure for you.” That is the precious sacrifice of chaste love.
Our priests and bishops should offer that same sacrifice when they spiritually “marry” the Church. Many of those who have lost their way in this long crisis of faithlessness, could return to spiritual virginity through penance and prayer. The Groom is worth waiting and sacrificing for his approval.
The Church first, our priests, and then the world, need to return to chastity and purity. If we want the grace of eternal life in this impure age, we all have to learn to be virgins anxiously waiting for the Divine Groom to arrive. All our bishops and priests should be men with the courage to be virgins until the last day. May God give us the grace of chastity and send us many chaste, saintly priests.
The priesthood as established by Christ for the kingdom of God, is a sign of contradiction to the world, and as such was apparently meant from the beginning to be celibate since the apostles left their nets and families in order to follow Christ. The Bible puts it thus: “And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets: and he called them. And they forthwith left their nets and father, and followed him. Matthew 4:18-22 (Also Mark 1:16-20 And Peter began to say unto Him: Behold, we have left all things, and have followed Thee, Jesus answering, said: Amen I say to you, there is no man who hath left house or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands, for My sake and for the gospel. Who shall not receive a hundred times as much, now in this time; houses, and brethren and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come life everlasting.” Mark 10:28-30
Also, according to the book, “The Prophecies and Revelations of Saint Bridget (Birgitta) of Sweden”, book 7 chapter 10, The Virgin Mary, speaking to Lady Bridget, says that in no way is it God’s will that clerics should have wives or be contaminated by carnal vice – prohibiting any pope from allowing this marriage of clerics to take place or be established in God’s Church. Our Lady’s words, “But that observance and ancient custom seemed very abominable and hateful to all the heavenly court and to me, who gave birth to his body: namely, because it was being thus observed by Christian priests who, with their hands, touch and handle this new and immaculate Sacrament of the most holy Body of my Son. For the Jews had, in the ancient law of the Old Testament, a shadow, i.e., a figure, of this Sacrament; but Christians now have the truth itself – namely, him who is true God an man – in that blessed and consecrated bread.
After those earlier Christian priests had observed these practices for a time, God himself, through the infusion of his Holy Spirit, put into the heart of the pope then guiding the Church another law more acceptable and pleasing to him in this matter: namely, by pouring this infusion into the heart of the pope so that he established a statute in the universal Church that Christian priests, who have so holy and so worthy an office, namely, of consecrating this precious Sacrament, should by no means live in the easily contaminated, carnal delight of marriage.”
So according to the Bible and to these revelations it would be very displeasing to Our Lord that a married man be ordained unless his wife would also agree to a life of celibacy. And children would need a means of support since a priest is not a wage-earner.
The celibate life of the priest and religious is a tremendous gift to the Church and to the world, and is especially important for today’s world.
But, if God our Father only “ordered” for unmarried men to be His priests in His Church, then was His choosing married Peter as the first Pope, and others of the Apostles who were married, as Paul notes, in error? God does not and cannot err.
Man set up the rule of unmarried men.
Also, having married men, not that all of God our Father’s priests would be, made the place by God our Father for women to be helpmates in the hierarchy of the Church.
Perhaps one reason as for Jesus not marrying, He is the new Adam, and the New Adam is wholly untouched in every way by Original Sin, which all of His creatures are subject to.
God bless, C-Marie