On the way to the altar Both those for and against the requirement of priestly celibacy have something in common: poor arguments
Jr, David R Carlin
DAVID R. CARLIN, JR.
ON THE WAY TO THE ALTAR
Should priests be allowed to say 'I do'?
I admit to having no very decided convictions on the burning question of whether the Catholic church should...
...The oddest thing of all about the promarriage party is that it seems to have little sense that the Catholic priesthood is a sacral institution trying to survive in a largely desacralized world...
...On the other hand, the promarriage folks astonish by the triviality of their argument, which largely boils down to this: The problem of the priest shortage in the United States-a shortage, they add, that will grow steadily worse over the next generation or two-will be solved by having married priests...
...But enchanted plants cannot grow in disenchanted soil...
...Qnce the first wave of enthusiasm has passed and Catholic priests become indistinguishable from, say, Presbyterian ministers, will a life in the priesthood continue to prove attractive...
...And so they do, at least in the long run...
...The promarriage party is correct in having an acute sense that there is a fundamental incongruity between the celibate priesthood and contemporary culture...
...It is a pity this heritage is so little drawn on in the present controversy...
...Ideas govern the world," said Auguste Comte...
...Neither alternative seems likely at the moment...
...For a thousand years mandatory celibacy for priests has been a pivotal characteristic of the Catholic church...
...If the procelibacy folks don't rouse themselves and offer a spirited and persuasive public defense of their position, they will eventually lose the game by default...
...Fifth, what about the law of unintended consequences...
...Can any organization drop an institution that has played so critical a role in its history without provoking revolutionary transformations, perhaps even dissolution...
...In an earlier age this may have been realistic, but not today...
...Once Catholic lay opinion accepts the idea-as today it largely does in Europe, Canada, and the United States-that a married priesthood makes sense, it will not be long before the hierarchy swings round to the same view...
...If we speak of a "shortage," there must be some "right number" we have in mind...
...What is the correct ratio between laypersons and priests...
...And isn't a desacralized priesthood a contradiction in terms...
...ON THE WAY TO THE ALTAR Should priests be allowed to say 'I do...
...Fourth, while the married-priest solution will no doubt increase the number of priests in the short run, how will it work out in the long run, say, over the next century...
...Still, from time to time I tune into the marriage-celibacy controversy, and both sides in the debate astonish me by the weakness of their cases...
...It just takes a little longer for customers to prevail in the church...
...First, if married men are ordained priests while women are still excluded from the priesthood, won't this exacerbate the church's already troubled relations with women...
...Instead the promarriage party says silly things like, "This will solve the priest shortage," while the procelibacy party acts as though it had taken a vow of silence as well as a vow of celibacy.s a vow of celibacy...
...It would like to eliminate this incongruity by allowing priests to marry...
...Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in the mid-1950s...
...If the downward trend in mile records for the past forty years continues for the next four hundred years, by the year 2400 some human will run the mile in less than two minutes...
...To pretend otherwise is folly...
...It is a prudent thing to let sleeping dogs lie...
...But won't this produce a desacralized priesthood...
...For the most part its attitude seems to be this: "We are in possession, and possession is nine points of the law...
...But this particular hound has been wide awake for some time now, and is barking like the devil...
...So why waste time with arguments...
...Absent an answer to this question, the concept of a "priest shortage" makes no linguistic sense...
...But don't bet on it...
...If the Catholic priesthood is to flourish, one of two things must happen: either the larger society must be resacralized, or Catholics must create a sacralized enclave for themselves within the larger society...
...Third, predictions that there will be small numbers of priests a half-century from now are based on the assumption that current trends will continue...
...That's why we call them "trends" and not "laws...
...Remember Gorbachev, who had no intention of destroying the Soviet Union when he deto-talitarianized it...
...True, they may hold onto key power positions for another generation or so, but with time these will slip away...
...At least this is the situation that prevails in the United States, Canada, and Europe...
...But what is this standard...
...Even in the Catholic church the rule holds that the customer is always right...
...Silence is no longer golden...
...We occupy all the powerful positions in the church...
...But there's this funny thing about trends: they always come to an end...
...The celibacy of the clergy is a solidly established fact, and solidly established facts don't need to be defended with good reasons...
...which is to say, by bringing the priesthood in line with contemporary culture...
...The procelibacy side astonishes by its reluctance to argue at all...
...They are their own good reasons...
...And in the millennium before that, priestly celibacy, though not required, was clearly the ideal- from which the mandatory celibacy of the second millennium was a quite logical deduction...
...Second, how do we know there is a shortage of priests...
...But this assertion raises a number of critical questions which the promarriage people rarely or never address...
...The Catholic church has a rich intellectual heritage...
...I admit to having no very decided convictions on the burning question of whether the Catholic church should create a class of married priests-either by permitting priests to marry or by ordaining married men...
Vol. 122 • October 1995 • No. 18
