The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [98]
The Catholic Church believes that everyone—married, single, vowed, ordained, lay, or clergy—is called to this kind of chastity, where your physical relationships express the degree of personal commitment, where you make the proper use of your sexuality, and where your sexuality is guided by love and care for the other person. Most people would agree with those general ideas: love, commitment, honesty, and care in our sexual relationships.
Celibacy is different. Technically, it is the restriction against marriage for members of the Catholic clergy. For instance, Jesuits take a vow of chastity after their novitiate, but priests make a promise of celibacy at their ordination.
Celibacy is a canonical (church law) requirement that could, theoretically, be lifted by the Catholic Church. During the first half of church history, no restrictions existed against marriage, and many priests were married men. As the Rev. Donald Cozzens writes in Freeing Celibacy, not until the twelfth century did clerical celibacy become the norm for the entire Western, or Latin, church. We know, for example, that St. Peter was married, since the Gospel of Mark speaks of his mother-in-law (1:29–31). Today there are many married Catholic priests: priests of the Eastern rites, or branches, of the Catholic Church, and priests from other Christian denominations who convert to Catholicism but stay married. Even among Catholics, chastity and celibacy are confused, used improperly, and assumed to mean the same thing. Moreover, the spirituality surrounding both celibacy and chastity for priests and members of religious orders is similar. Sometimes people talk about “religious chastity,” to distinguish between the chastity that everyone is called to and the kind that religious orders live. Confusing, isn’t it?
So here’s what I’m going to do. Hereafter I’m going to talk about chastity in the way that most people understand it, that is, refraining from sex because of a religious commitment. More important, I’m going to describe what a life of religious chastity can teach you— even if you’re having sex every day.
LOVING CHASTITY
Back to the old stereotype of the cold, rigid, bitter, hateful priest or nun. The irony is that some of history’s most loving persons—those whom even nonbelievers admire—were chaste. Think of St. Francis of Assisi or Mother Teresa. Would anyone say they did not love? And by now you know that St. Ignatius Loyola was a compassionate, generous, and loving man.
Better yet, think of Jesus of Nazareth, who most serious Scripture scholars agree (for a variety of reasons) never married. Does anyone doubt that Jesus was a loving person?
Whenever I hear that stereotype of the cold priest, I always wish I could introduce people to all the loving priests, brothers, and sisters I’ve known, men and women who lead lives of loving chastity and who radiate love.
I wish you could meet my friend Bob, who, despite some chronic medical problems, worked for many years at a hardscrabble Native American reservation in South Dakota and now works as a spiritual director and art therapist in Boston. Few Jesuits are more loving or more beloved. Bob is small in stature with an outsized laugh: when you’re watching a funny movie in a theater with him, his booming laughter turns every head in the audience.
The Native Americans with whom he worked first named him “Little Man with Big Laugh.” “But that name didn’t take,” he explained once. “So they call me Holy Eagle with Gentle Voice instead.”
Bob is one of the best listeners I’ve ever met. People naturally feel comfortable talking with Bob, perhaps because they sense, through his physical limitations, that he understands what it means to suffer and still find joy in life. Several times when I’ve come up against a thorny personal problem, Bob has listened intently, completely focused on my words. This is a form of chaste love.
Or I wish I could introduce you to Tim. During our graduate theology studies, Bob, Tim, and I lived together in the same Jesuit house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tim is a