Priests with an unwavering commitment to chastity make for stronger and holier marriages. Chastity — not celibacy per se — is the real issue.
Chastity is the virtue upon which a Culture of Life rests. Chaste love is self-sacrificing life-giving love. No one embodied this more than our celibate Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
Faithful celibate priests boldly stand out against the background of our sexually saturated culture. Their celibate lives unequivocally testify to chastity — the virtue that allows us to order our sexuality in accordance with God’s plan and to bear great fruit.
We are destined for a life beyond this earthly life. We are made for a love far greater than any human love. A celibate priesthood represents this truth in a way no other human relationship can.
Priests certainly experience a sense of loss in relinquishing the companionship and joys of marriage. Celibacy may be the most difficult form of chastity to practice. For this reason, faithfulness to celibacy provides priests with added authority to proclaim the truth that we are called to chastity.
It takes great perseverance to offer one’s sexuality to God for a greater spiritual good regardless of one’s vocation. For single individuals chastity requires sexual abstinence until marriage. Chastity for married couples is expressed through periodic abstinence or Natural Family Planning (NFP).
Many are surprised to learn that couples who embrace NFP actually experience a deeper intimacy with each other and God. This is why in contrast to our nation’s overall divorce rate of 50 percent, the divorce rate for NFP couples is only percent.
It is not easy to reject the lure of contraception in marriage. My pastor’s faithfulness to living out his vow of celibacy and his promoting chaste love from the pulpit strengthens my resolve to do the same within my marriage.
Although St. Paul reminds us that only unmarried celibate priests can serve God with an undivided heart, he also indicates that marriage and holy orders are not absolutely mutually exclusive. Chastity, however, always was and ever shall be required of all of God’s people.
Celibacy as the only expression of a chaste priesthood is a discipline open to change at the discretion of the Magisterium. Our late Pope John Paul II did not relax this discipline because he believed that the West in particular needs this dramatic example of selfless love.
As a wife, mother, physician and chastity educator, I wholeheartedly agree.
