www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West "Why I Don't Want Priests to Marry"-UGH!!!

But according to the fathers, marriage is a sacrament because God blessed the post-lapsarian reality of carnal desire and sexual intercourse for the propagation of the species, whereas celibacy is the natural state of man (i.e., most of the Fathers seemed to believe that there was no sexual intercourse before the fall). Celibacy requires no sacrament because it is how we are intended to be in the kingdom.

Wouldn't satisfying depraved desires be more likely within a marriage that uses contraceptives?

Celibacy in Eastern Christianity is viewed primarily as a form of asceticism . Asceticism means, in essence, to live at the same time on earth and in heaven. It means to understand that everything we see in this life, everything we touch, taste, think, and feel, is in some way a revelation of the life to come. This means far more than an understanding that this life will come to an end and be replaced by another one. It means that the life we live right now and the life we will live for eternity are in some mysterious way one and the same. “The darkness is passing away,” says St. John, “and the true light is already shining” (1 John 2:8).

For an ascetic, time reveals eternity. The ascetic thus wants to be freed from a merely human way of looking at time as a cycle of work and rest, life and death. Instead, the ascetic lives in time as though in the undying freedom of eternity. Therefore the ascetic prays. For an ascetic, food reveals the heavenly Feast. He is freed from a merely animal attraction to food and instead tastes only the spiritual promise that lies hidden inside earthly appetites. Therefore the ascetic fasts. For an ascetic, possessions reveal the many“mansioned Kingdom of Heaven. The ascetic is freed from the slavery to things by seeing in everything the Creator of all things. Therefore the ascetic gives alms.

It is the same with sexuality. For an ascetic, all human relationships”even the sexual act itself”reveal divine love. Hidden beneath the surface of all smaller loves lies the immeasurable abyss of God’s love. The ascetic realizes that what other people give him by way of love finds its true and deeper meaning in the One who is the source of all love. Celibacy is the practical recognition of the reality that lies behind the image, of the prototype behind the icon. Human love without celibacy is at best mere sentiment, at worst a form of idolatry.

In either case a merely human love is a closed system, like a river with no outlet to the sea. Face to face, two human beings in love become locked in an embrace of death. St. Gregory of Nyssa”himself a married man”writes of this in his treatise On Virginity :


[Who]then is called to be celibate? Simply put, every single Christian who is capable of love is called to discipline that love through the asceticism of celibacy. Just as every Christian is called to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, so also every Christian is called to be celibate. Seen in its true context of asceticism, celibacy ceases to be a legal requirement for a small section of the Christian faithful and is revealed instead as an aspect of the universal vocation of all believers.

What does this mean in practice? It means that we must no longer divide up the Church in our minds and separate the lay majority who are “allowed” to have sex under certain conditions and the clerical and religious minority who are “not allowed” to have sex at al[/i]l. The difference is nowhere near so stark. It is merely one of degree. For a legalistic mind, the division between celibate and non“celibate seems vast. [i]For an ascetical mind, however, the difference is negligible. Both the life of marriage and the life of celibacy are directed entirely toward God, and find a common meaning in Him.

It may come as a surprise that I speak of a universal call to celibacy . This word has largely juridical associations, especially for Latin Catholics. Chastity is the term used in the more general sense to speak of the obligation of all Christians to use the gift of their sexuality in accordance with the divine will. Sexuality is conditioned in the East according to the principles of asceticism and mysticism, not legalism. It is precisely because the East does not think in juridical terms that I have felt free to apply to celibacy a very general meaning, for in the East there is no other way it can be understood. In this area East and West think quite differently. We must be wary of a facile assumption that what works in one tradition will automatically do so in the other.

Looked at from the perspective of the Eastern Churches, celibacy has very little to do with the sacrament of Holy Orders. It has everything to do, however, with the sacrament of Holy Baptism. Through the latter we are born into a new kind of life, into citizenship in the Kingdom of God. We die to this world in Christ and rise again to eternal life. And in this resurrection we “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30).

Once again we see how it is that celibacy is part of the universal vocation of all Christians. Seen in the light of eternity, marriage is revealed as having no meaning in itself. Marriage is honorable not because it “joins two hearts as one,” nor because through it new life comes into the world, nor because it provides for a life of comfort and security. Marriage is worthy of reverence only because the two hearts fall into a sacramental embrace with a Third, only because the children born of the union are born again through baptism into a new life, only because together the couple apply to their comforts the balm of asceticism that gives their possessions true and sacramental meaning.

Christian celibacy is marriage baptized. Christian celibacy is the revelation of the presence of the Kingdom of God in every relationship. It is the refusal to see other people as things to be used, even for the sake of romantic love. Celibacy means the willingness to see in sexuality not something merely animal, or simply useful or enjoyable, but instead something mystical.

What then of those who commit themselves to radical celibacy? Herein lies the value of monasticism as a public vocation in the Church. Radical celibates present to all Christians flesh and blood tokens of the promise lying mystically beneath every authentic and holy relationship. Celibacy loses its value when it is seen as the preserve of an elite. It takes that value up again when it is seen as part of the common heritage of the entire Church, an asceticism shared by all the baptized.

Here we come to another important insight within the pastoral tradition of Eastern Christianity. Celibacy is not primarily an individual calling. In the first place it is a vocation for the whole Church. Only secondarily is this vocation realized in individual lives. It follows that celibacy cannot be authentic if it is attempted individually. Celibacy can only be lived in a real way if it is seen as a shared way of life. For the Christian East, celibacy is lived corporately and within the context of communal asceticism.

This is the real meaning behind the combined tradition of married clergy and celibate monastics in the Eastern Churches. The proper place for radical celibacy is a life of radical asceticism within that tradition of mutual support provided within the monastic milieu. For parish clergy, such radicalism is seen as out of place”neither improper nor impossible, but immensely difficult. This assessment in no way makes the life of the parish priest somehow inferior to that of the monk. Both are called to the same ascetical program, but in different degrees. The tradition simply recognizes that each must put this program into effect in the real world he inhabits. Each must rely on the other to supply that kind of holiness in the other’s own life that he cannot produce in his own. The Church needs both the holiness of marriage and the holiness of radical celibacy in equal measure.

To underline this, the canonical tradition of the Eastern Churches even encourages married couples to regulate their sexual appetites by fasting from conjugal relations before Holy Communion, for example, and during Lent. This makes it clear in the most practical way imaginable that both monk and married person are engaged together in the same ascetical labor.

For various historical reasons the insights of the Eastern Christian experience have been mostly ignored in the Western Church (and, consequently, by the Eastern Catholic Churches who have found themselves in the West). Celibacy in the West is not seen as related primarily to monasticism, but rather to priesthood in general. Nevertheless, it is possible for the West to draw some useful lessons from the Eastern viewpoint.

Unless all Christians accept their vocation to live the asceticism of celibacy within their own lives it is pointless to expect a small group of “elite” Christians to live up to this ideal. Not only is it psychologically difficult to expect one group of men to do this, it is also extremely bad theology. Celibacy is a common calling, expressing the faith of the Church in the coming Kingdom. It will only be possible for this faith to be lived in its most radical way if this life is deeply understood and valued by the wider community.

To be blunt: it is both psychologically dangerous and theologically illiterate for a Christian community that values sexual “freedom,” including sex outside of marriage, adultery, abortion, and the contraceptive mentality, to then demand an entirely different sexual standard from its priests. Priests do not become celibate merely because they feel a personal call to a life of sacrifice”at least, they ought not. Priests accept celibacy because they lead a community that is as a whole committed to the ascetic discipline necessary to transfigure human sexuality into an experience of the divine. Celibacy is healthy when it is regarded as a common labor in which each Christian has a share.

I think that both marriage and monasticism are holy mysteries, and so I see no reason to denigrate one or the other (not that you are advocating doing that). After all, both are holy callings, each in its own way. That said, the monastic life does afford one the greater possibility of controlling the passions through the practice of prayer and ascesis and this no doubt is a great spiritual gift, but married life has its own rewards and it also requires a type of maturity and control through self-renunciation that is ordered to one's spouse and children. Both are sacred callings if they are lived for God.

The assumptions that marriage was instituted after the fall and that carnal desire is also postlapsarian are entirely gratuitous as they are perniciously false. In addition, you confuse celibacy (not marrying) with monasticism: two entirely different things!

Men who are carnal and given to pleasure belittle virginity and offer by way of testimony the saying, 'Cursed be every man who raiseth not up seed in Israel.' But we, made confident by the fact that God the Word took flesh of a virgin, declare that virginity is from above and was implanted in men's nature from the beginning. Thus, man was formed from the virgin earth. Eve was created from Adam alone. Virginity was practiced in paradise. Indeed, sacred Scripture says that 'they were naked, to wit, Adam and Eve: and were not ashamed.' However, once they had fallen, they knew that they were naked and being ashamed they sewed together aprons for themselves. After the fall, when Adam heart 'Dust thou art, and unto dust return,' and death entered into the word through transgression, then 'Adam knew Eve his wife: who conceived and brought forth.' And so to keep the race from dwindling and by being destroyed by death marriage was devised, so that by the begetting of children the race of men might be preserved.

But they may ask: What, then, does 'male and female' mean, and 'increase and multiply'? To which we shall reply that the 'increase and multiply' does not mean increasing by the marriage union exclusively, because, if they had kept the commandment unbroken forever, God could have increased the race by some other means. But, since God, who knows all things before they come to be, saw by His foreknowledge how they were to fall and be condemned to death, He made provision beforehand by creating them male and female and commanding them to increase and multiply.

St. John of Damascus elegantly summarizes the patristic teaching up to that point in time in this passage from On the Orthodox Faith 4.24 . . .

The assumptions that marriage was instituted after the fall and that carnal desire is also postlapsarian are entirely gratuitous as they are perniciously false. In addition, you confuse celibacy (not marrying) with monasticism: two entirely different things!

Sorry, but after last evening's Great Canon I am more convinced than ever that I must spend the rest of my life in peace and repentance rather than sparring with bloggers about the lives of first-created Adam and Eve in Paradise! I am called to live my life in this sinful world and do so (as a miserable failure) with the aid of the seven Holy Mysteries, none of which is counterindicated by another! By the way, in St. Gregory of Nyssa's treatise on virginity he mentions that he himself did not preserve his: he bestowed it on his lady wife, St. Theosebeia!

As far as the holy mysteries are concerned, having read through the prayers of the Great Book of Needs it is clear to me that the rite for entering monastic life is a holy mystery (i.e., a sacrament), and so I do not accept the notion that marriage is a sacrament while monastic life is not. To put it another way: why should I hold to the late medieval Western notion that there are only seven sacraments when the prayers of the Church make it clear that there are many more holy mysteries?