Celibacy – breaking the monopoly

The sexual minority which is the non-marrying, single-sex religious community is known in cultures throughout the world and throughout history. The importance of the western tradition’s celebration of this sexual minority should not be underestimated, as it breaks the moral monopoly of heterosexual marriage, and does so with absolute confidence. The tradition even celebrates multiple varieties of this sexual minority: male and female; in community or in isolation; with the primary focus on prayer or with the primary focus on good works; instead of marriage or in widowhood; under vows permanent or temporary, or with no vows at all.³⁴³ ‘Accepted with a joyous heart, celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God’.³⁴⁴

It is accepted that celibacy is not every individual’s vocation. For some, chosen celibacy removes a stumbling block to personal growth, while for the majority, sexuality is entirely compatible with their charity and integrity.³⁴⁵ The largest voluntary membership organisation on earth – the billion-strong Roman Catholic Church – is led exclusively by celibates: its 3,500 bishops and 400,000 priests are all formally professed as celibates,³⁴⁶ alongside a further 50,000 lay men and 750,000 lay women living as formally professed and recognised celibates in various religious communities,³⁴⁷ that their devotion – their eros – may be exclusively for God and the wider community. It is maintained, nevertheless, that when compared to each other, marriage and celibacy (‘celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven’) are equal in virtue and equal in glory.³⁴⁸

Protestantism has never had such a confident affirmation of the vocation to celibacy, indeed its most significant founding document, the Augsburg Confession of 1530, launches a broadside against it, arguing that marriage is directly commanded by God, condemning the useless, self-righteous vanity of those who presume to hide away from the world rather than engage with it, and granting only the most grudging exception for those who might voluntarily associate together for a time for a particular purpose such as education.³⁴⁹ Protestantism proper has never recovered: even the catholic-protestant mix which is Anglicanism took three hundred years to resume the recognition of celibacy as a vocation with the nineteenth century post-reformation re-establishment of religious communities. Heterosexual marriage retains its monopolising grip on the culture of protestantism, despite Saint Paul’s confident commendation of celibacy as a positive option,³⁵⁰ Jesus’s assertion that there is no marriage in heaven where we shall instead be ‘like the angels’,³⁵¹ and of course the example of the unmarried Jesus himself.

Having come to understand marriage and celibacy as distinct vocations for distinct categories of individuals, the catholic tradition should be in a position to recognise additional categories of individuals and their vocations – those categories we have recognised as LGBTIQ, who are symbolically baptised by Saint Philip in the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch, and to whom, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, God will grant a place better than that of sons and daughters. This process of recognition has even begun: while Anglican archbishops in Africa continue to deny the existence of homosexuality in their own cultures, and protestants in the west seek and fail to cure homosexuals of their affliction and make them straight,³⁵² the Roman Catholic church recognises homosexuals as a category, and argues in their defence. ‘Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.’³⁵³ The next step is the recognition of their perfectly healthy eros as a vocation, then the recognition of the other categories of the LGBTIQ alliance with their distinct vocations, and ultimately the acceptance that healthy eros can emerge from its plural and indiscriminate phase in many forms.

345 Poverty is given a similar role: wealth is a stumbling block for some, but not for all. Poverty and celibacy together are confusingly called ‘the evangelical counsels’, evangelical here meaning no more and no less than ‘in the gospels’, and ‘counsel’ meaning a piece of advice as distinct from a commandment. The ‘counsel’ to celibacy is the saying about eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, in its context (Matthew 19:1-12); the ‘counsel’ to poverty is in the story of the rich young ruler immediately following (Matthew 19:16-30, Mark 10:17-31, Luke 18:18-30). The catechism’s main discussion of the ‘consecrated life’, lived under the evangelical counsels, is at items 914 to 933. The explicit statement that the counsels may help some but are not for all is at items 1973 and 1974. ‘The aim of the counsels is to remove whatever might hinder the development of charity, even if it is not contrary to charity’; in other words, for some people, in some circumstances, wealth and sexuality can hinder the development of charity, but neither wealth nor sexuality is necessarily of itself contrary to charity. ‘God does not want each person to keep all the counsels, but only those appropriate to the diversity of persons, times, opportunities, and strengths, as charity requires.’

346 The only exceptions are a handful of former Anglican priests.

347 All these figures are for the year 2000, in Global Catholicism, Bryan Froehle and Mary Gautier, Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University, Orbis Books 2003, ISBN 157075375X

349 The full text of the Augsburg Confession (in English translation) is available online at http://www.ctsfw.edu/etext/boc/ac/. The broadside against celibacy is in article 23.

351 In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven – Matthew 22:30, Mark 12:25, Luke 20:35-36.

352 The cult-like ex-gay movement can be found inter alia at exodus-international.org, narth.com, and lovewonout.com. The lies and scandals are exposed inter alia at www.anythingbutstraight.com/learn/eghistory.html, truthwinsout.com, and exgaywatch.com.