Priestly Celibacy a Radical Love for God and People

By Oskar Wermter SJ

Much of it remains below the surface, but here and there it breaks through – the debate about priestly celibacy in Africa. In Kenya and Zambia some priests who have married and their supporters have broken away from the Catholic Church. A public stance has been taken, so there is a public reaction.

Celibacy is a provocation and has often been called into question, in different cultures and countries, at different times and in various situations.

Some of the African contributors to the debate link it with Inculturation. They doubt its suitability for Africa for reasons of culture.

They seem to say, ‘Western people don’t value family life very much, so they don’t mind celibacy, but Africa being a culture of the family regards it as foreign.’

There may be good reasons, based on the pastoral needs of the people, to propose new forms of the priesthood to complement the current celibate priesthood. But the quoted cultural reason is based on a common misunderstanding.

 Humanity is one. We share one human nature as men and women made for one another. That is universal. The option of celibacy is hard to live for all of us, from whatever culture or country.

Celibacy (or consecrated virginity) can only be lived by men and women who have a passionate love of God, even greater than the love between man and woman. You need to have a special calling for such a life of loving God exclusively, faithful and lifelong like marriage. It is a falling in love for which there is no explanation. The Church expects her priests, who have to give a public witness to the faith in a loving God, to have this calling and this passion.

The African love of family is not suppressed. It is transformed into love of the family of God, the Church. This is not an abstract ideal. It becomes real in the daily pastoral care for individuals and for families, in visiting the sick and praying with them, feeling their suffering as if it were one’s own, in being concerned about marriages and families, and going with them through their crises, troubles and tribulations, in struggling to express the word of God in the language of the people for their spiritual growth, and in feeding the people of God with the Body of Christ in the Eucharist.

Most missionaries came from large families. Growing up with brothers and sisters has always been a good preparation for life in a religious community. They did not accept their vocation because they were cold and indifferent about marriage and family. They loved their parents and their brothers and sisters dearly. The love they had learnt at home they now brought to a new family in the country of their mission.

The family thrives where the exclusive love of God and His family, the Church, thrives among priests and religious. These are just different callings and different ways to live a life of love, despite our weaknesses and failures. The Church as family (Africa Synod 1994) needs both.

The young priest is not given this love of God and His people in full measure at his ordination. It is a lifelong struggle to develop this further, especially by being faithful in prayer and in dedicated service of the people. Like the missionary of old he has to leave his own family so as to be able to build a new one, the family of the children of God, elsewhere.

Maybe priestly formation has to emphasize this still more, and the people of God have to respond more warmly to the love they get from their priests: it is not status and power, but prayer and constant loving attention well received by the people that sustain them in their vocation.

[Fr Oskar Wermter SJ is the director of Jesuit Communications Zimbabwe.