Jubilee of the Poor

 The Jubilee event dedicated to the poor is to be celebrated from the evening of 14th November 2025, concluding on the World Day of the Poor on Sunday 16th November 2025. It is reported that, after his election to the See of St Peter, Pope Francis was prompted to take the name Francis after a remark from one of his fellow cardinals to the effect that he should not forget the poor. Similarly, Pope Leo XIV's first major document has been dedicated to the Catholic Church's particular mission towards the poor:

...  in continuity with the Encyclical Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis was preparing in the last months of his life an Apostolic Exhortation on the Church’s care for the poor, to which he gave the title Dilexi Te, as if Christ speaks those words to each of them, saying: “You have but little power,” yet “I have loved you” ( Rev 3:9). I am happy to make this document my own — adding some reflections — and to issue it at the beginning of my own pontificate, since I share the desire of my beloved predecessor that all Christians come to appreciate the close connection between Christ’s love and his summons to care for the poor. I too consider it essential to insist on this path to holiness, for “in this call to recognize him in the poor and the suffering, we see revealed the very heart of Christ, his deepest feelings and choices, which every saint seeks to imitate.” 

The person who is poor is likely to lack shelter, to be without access to clean water for drinking or for washing, to lack regular access to wholesome food, to lack clothing suitable to the weather, to have no habitation that they can call their own with any permanence, to lack the company of family or friends, to be disregarded by those who pass by; they might be anywhere in the world, not just in those places that are less developed than our own. The person who is poor lacks the material things that are the framework for a life lived with the dignity that is due to a human person; being poor, they lack the agency  that gives them the opportunity to choose a way in life. 

It is this lack of agency in their being poor that distinguishes their poverty from that of the life of the evangelical counsels. At first sight, the Church appears to contradict itself in advocating for poverty as one of the evangelical counsels freely chosen by those in religious life and working to alleviate poverty among those who do not have the agency to choose other than their poverty. Though the two poverties are quite different in nature from each other, there is a common ground for both of them. The life of the evangelical counsels represents a choice for a style of life lived in close imitation of that lived by Christ himself, and so is an attempt to identify a life with the life of Christ. Then, as Pope Leo XIV has pointed out, in a kind of reciprocity we are called to recognise Christ in those who are involuntarily poor and suffering.

There is a story of St Benedict Joseph Labre, who lived the last part of his life as a poor vagrant in the city of Rome in the 18th century, that captures the essential dignity that belongs to the person who is poor. On one occasion, he was picked out from the vagrants around the Spanish Steps to pose as a model by a painter. It took a bit of persuasion before St Benedict Joseph agreed, and he then posed for the figure of Christ, having at first shuddered at the prospect. Given the intinerant nature of his life, St Benedict Joseph (see here and here) is an appropriate figure to whom we can turn in a Jubilee Year.

Pope Francis expressed his wish that hope be granted to the poor in the Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee Year, citing his Encyclical Letter Laudato Si' n.49:

I ask with all my heart that hope be granted to the billions of the poor, who often lack the essentials of life. Before the constant tide of new forms of impoverishment, we can easily grow inured and resigned. Yet we must not close our eyes to the dramatic situations that we now encounter all around us, not only in certain parts of the world. Each day we meet people who are poor or impoverished; they may even be our next-door neighbours. Often they are homeless or lack sufficient food for the day. They suffer from exclusion and indifference on the part of many. It is scandalous that in a world possessed of immense resources, destined largely to producing weapons, the poor continue to be “the majority of the planet’s population, billions of people. These days they are mentioned in international political and economic discussions, but one often has the impression that their problems are brought up as an afterthought, a question which gets added almost out of duty or in a tangential way, if not treated merely as collateral damage. Indeed, when all is said and done, they frequently remain at the bottom of the pile”. Let us not forget: the poor are almost always the victims, not the ones to blame.

Jubilee of Consecrated Life

 The Jubilee of Consecrated Life is being marked in the days 8th-9th October 2025. The invitation being extended on the Jubilee 2025 website indicates a range of charisms that express different ways of living a life very particularly dedicated to God:

All consecrated men and women from all forms of religious life are invited to this jubilee event: men and women religious, monks and contemplatives, members of secular institutes, members of the Ordo virginum, hermits, and members of "new institutes."

 The Catechism of the Catholic Church (n.915), citing the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, presents the evangelical counsels (chastity, poverty, obedience) as characteristics of the consecrated life:

Christ proposes the evangelical counsels, in their great variety, to every disciple. The perfection of charity, to which all the faithful are called, entails for those who freely follow the call to consecrated life the obligation of practicing chastity in celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom, poverty and obedience. It is the profession of these counsels, within a permanent state of life recognized by the Church, that characterizes the life consecrated to God.

 The word "consecrated" in the expression "Consecrated Life" is worthy of examination. The word can be used in different contexts - the consecration of a Church, the Marian consecrations of St Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort or Maximilimian Kolbe, for example. While these contexts have some analogous comparison to the consecration of a person that is effected by profession of the evangelical counsels, there is a decisiveness in the profession of those counsels that differentiates it from them. Reflecting on the idea of consecration can suggest something of the way of life to which those professing the evangelical counsels are called.

In his extensive study The Meaning of Consecration Today, Fr Rene Laurentin suggests the following as an account of the essence of consecration (italics in the original):

Consecration properly so called is nothing else but divinization: the transformation of human life into divine life by the communication of the latter, offered to our participating liberty. This process is not a passage or crossing in the material sense from earth into heaven. Rather, it is a transformation, or transfinalization, or transfiguration of human life - a life penetrated, elevated and supernaturalized from within by the gift of divine life, that is to say, by the love of God: his agape. It is given to us by means of consecration to know and love God as God, that is to say, by God's love, not by our own love.

After explaining how God brings about this divinization by means of his grace (and note that this action of grace is not the ex opere action of the sacraments), Fr Laurentin writes:

By grace we pass beyond the order of natural and scientific knowledge in order to arrive [at] a connatural and existential knowledge of God, comprising a special wisdom, intuition, and union. At the same time, eros (egoistic love) will be transformed into agape, that is, divine love, capable of loving quite gratuitously, as God knows how to love, in giving more than in desiring ...

The radical dedication expressed in the life of the evangelical counsels has an eschatological dimension, offering a particular witness in this world to the joys of the world to come. In the words of Pope Francis' Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee Year:

... by virtue of the hope in which we were saved, [we] can view the passage of time with the certainty that the history of humanity and our own individual history are not doomed to a dead end or a dark abyss, but directed to an encounter with the Lord of glory. As a result, we live our lives in expectation of his return and in the hope of living forever in him. In this spirit, we make our own the heartfelt prayer of the first Christians with which sacred Scripture ends: “Come, Lord Jesus!” ( Rev 22:20). 

And in the words of the Jubilee Prayer:

May the grace of the Jubilee reawaken in us, Pilgrims of Hope, a yearning for the treasures of heaven. 

Appreciating Paul VI: part 6

Some things are the same now as they were at the time of the Second Vatican Council. In this case, I think of the reasons being advanced in favour of modifying the Church's discipline with regard to priestly celibacy. John O'Malley (What happened at Vatican II) gives less coverage to the content of the discussion at the time of the Council than does Ralph Wiltgen (The Rhine flows into the Tiber pp.96-99, in the context of debate on the restoration of the permanent diaconate, and pp.262-267, in the context of the debate on the schema relating to the ministry of priests). The arguments being proffered in favour of ending the discipline were much the same then as now: responding to the shortage of priests, the difficulties being experienced by priests in keeping their promise. According to Wiltgen, the acceptance of the idea of married men being ordained to the permanent diaconate was one factor in creating a media storm in favour of changing the Church's discipline. In the end Pope Paul VI removed the question from the competence of the Council just two days before the schema on the ministry of priests was to be discussed, indicating that the discipline was to be maintained and its practise encouraged.

If Wiltgen is correct, there really was very little sense among the Fathers of the Council themselves that the Church's discipline on priestly celibacy should be changed. It was something very much "taken as read". I have for some years been struck by something similar with regard to the new ecclesial movements. Despite the lay character of the charisms of many of these movements, they by and large also have sections of their membership who, wishing to live the charism more deeply, undertake to live the evangelical counsels (Focolare and Communion and Liberation are the most obvious, but by no means the only, examples). One wonders whether Pope Paul VI's intuition in favour of priestly celibacy was not in fact a better reading of the "signs of the times" than that of the advocates of its mitigation.

At the beginning of his Encyclical Letter on Priestly Celibacy, Paul VI wrote that he wished:

...to fulfill the promise We made to the Council Fathers. We told them that it was Our intention to give new luster and strength to priestly celibacy in the world of today. Since saying this We have, over a considerable period of time earnestly implored the enlightenment and assistance of the Holy Spirit and have examined before God opinions and petitions which have come to Us from all over the world, notably from many pastors of God's Church.

As well as a wide ranging discussion of reasons for and against the discipline of priestly celibacy, Pope Paul confirmed the discipline, with a qualification applicable to ministers of other Christian Churches and communities who are received into the Catholic Church: (Sacerdotalis coelibatus nn.14, 42):

We consider that the present law of celibacy should today continue to be linked to the ecclesiastical ministry. This law should support the minister in his exclusive, definitive and total choice of the unique and supreme love of Christ; it should uphold him in the entire dedication of himself to the public worship of God and to the service of the Church; it should distinguish his state of life both among the faithful and in the world at large......

In virtue of the fundamental norm of the government of the Catholic Church, to which We alluded above, while on the one hand, the law requiring a freely chosen and perpetual celibacy of those who are admitted to Holy Orders remains unchanged, on the other hand, a study may be allowed of the particular circumstances of married sacred ministers of Churches or other Christian communities separated from the Catholic communion, and of the possibility of admitting to priestly functions those who desire to adhere to the fullness of this communion and to continue to exercise the sacred ministry. The circumstances must be such, however, as not to prejudice the existing discipline regarding celibacy.

Despite all the contestation then and since, Pope Paul's encyclical represents the discipline of the Western Church; and, if one really looks at the sense of the Church's life rather than the efforts of the news media and activists, there has been no real sign of the discipline changing.

The Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, providing for the establishing of personal ordinariates for those being received into the Catholic Church from the Anglican Church, explicitly cites Sacerdotalis coelibatus (VI.1-2):

Those who ministered as Anglican deacons, priests, or bishops, and who fulfil the requisites established by canon law and are not impeded by irregularities or other impediments may be accepted by the Ordinary as candidates for Holy Orders in the Catholic Church.In the case of married ministers, the norms established in the Encyclical Letter of Pope Paul VI Sacerdotalis coelibatus, n. 42 and in the Statement In June are to be observed. Unmarried ministers must submit to the norm of clerical celibacy of CIC can. 277, §1.

The Ordinary, in full observance of the discipline of celibate clergy in the Latin Church, as a rule (pro regula) will admit only celibate men to the order of presbyter. He may also petition the Roman Pontiff, as a derogation from can. 277, §1, for the admission of married men to the order of presbyter on a case by case basis, according to objective criteria approved by the Holy See.

So far as I am aware, it is only under the first of these provisions that married men have been ordained to the priesthood, both in the Ordinariates and in cases of individual conversions (corrections in the comments box, please, if I am wrong). But I have wondered about the implementation of that provision more than once. My own personal anecdote in this connection refers to a meeting I was involved in several years ago, a meeting attended by myself and three priests. As it turned out, the only unmarried person at the meeting was me, my priest colleagues all being former Anglican clergy (this was before the days of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham). In some areas of the Church's life in England, the number of married priests is such that one can genuinely consider there to be, at the level of practical experience, a mixture of married and celibate clergy. There is clearly a balance to be struck between the consideration of the situations of individual cases, for which Paul VI's provision exists, and the impact more widely for the witness to the discipline of celibacy (and perhaps also, in a limited way, for a sense of justice towards those already in the Catholic Church who might feel that former Anglican clergy have access to a path to the ordained priesthood without the demand of celibacy that is not available to them). There is, I think, some value to be gained in sharing more widely how that balance is considered in decisions relating to the ordination of former Anglican clergy.

[As a somewhat personal reflection, I would find any change to the Church's discipline with regard to priestly celibacy a counter-witness to the ecclesial value of the evangelical counsels, counsels which are not "the" exclusive way of living the Christian life, but nevertheless do form a part of the whole that is ecclesial existence. They provide a "form" for all vocations, even those that do not involve embracing them in the fullest sense, and an ending of priestly celibacy would undermine witness to that "form".]

Pope Francis on the Evangelical Counsels

It even made the BBC Radio 4 Today programme at about 7.45 am this morning, in the form of an interview with the superior of the Company of Jesus! I have to say I was impressed by the positive way in which Sister presented Pope Francis' words yesterday.

In an address at the end of a meeting of the International Union of Superiors General in Rome, The Holy Father spoke about each of the counsels in turn. What caught the attention of the Today programme was the following phrase:

The consecrated are mothers: they must be mothers and not 'spinsters'!

But I thought he spoke very beautifully about each of the three counsels, presenting them as a positive way of life and not just as a juridical provision (though they do have that aspect to them, the juridical provision in Canon Law and the statutes of institutes being an expression of a living meaning).

An English text of his words can be found at Vatican Radio's report: Pope meets with heads of women's religious communities. An Italian text is at the Vatican website: Discorso del Santo Padre Francesco ai participant all'Assemblea Plenaria dell'Unione Internatzionale delle Superiore Generali.

Obedience as listening to God's will, in the interior motion of the Holy Spirit authenticated by the Church, accepting that obedience also passes through human mediations. … Poverty, which teaches solidarity, sharing, and charity and which is also expressed in a soberness and joy of the essential, to put us on guard against the material idols that obscure the true meaning of life. Poverty, which is learned with the humble, the poor, the sick, and all those who are at the existential margins of life. Theoretical poverty doesn't do anything. Poverty is learned by touching the flesh of the poor Christ in the humble, the poor, the sick, and in children.  

And then chastity, as a precious charism, that enlarges the freedom of your gift to God and others with Christ's tenderness, mercy, and closeness. Chastity for the Kingdom of Heaven shows how affection has its place in mature freedom and becomes a sign of the future world, to make God's primacy shine forever. But, please, [make it] a 'fertile' chastity, which generates spiritual children in the Church. The consecrated are mothers: they must be mothers and not 'spinsters'! Forgive me if I talk like this but this maternity of consecrated life, this fruitfulness is important! May this joy of spiritual fruitfulness animate your existence. Be mothers, like the images of the Mother Mary and the Mother Church. You cannot understand Mary without her motherhood; you cannot understand the Church without her motherhood, and you are icons of Mary and of the Church.”

And a passage that has attracted less attention but has a significance for the situation of religious life in the Church today:

“Your vocation is a fundamental charism for the Church's journey and it isn't possible that a consecrated woman or man might 'feel' themselves not to be with the Church. A 'feeling' with the Church that has generated us in Baptism; a 'feeling' with the Church that finds its filial expression in fidelity to the Magisterium, in communion with the Bishops and the Successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, a visible sign of that unity,” the pontiff added, citing Paul VI: “It is an absurd dichotomy to think of living with Jesus but without the Church, of following Jesus outside of the Church, of loving Jesus without loving the Church. Feel the responsibility that you have of caring for the formation of your Institutes in sound Church doctrine, in love of the Church, and in an ecclesial spirit.” 

“The centrality of Christ and his Gospel, authority as a service of love, and 'feeling' in and with the Mother Church: [these are] three suggestions that I wish to leave you, to which I again add my gratitude for your work, which is not always easy. What would the Church be without you? She would be missing maternity, affection, tenderness! A Mother's intuition.”

Pope Francis: first impressions

I believe that it takes a little while - days and weeks - after the election of a Pope before we really get to know the new Successor of St Peter. As occurred with Pope Benedict, the holder of the office of Successor of St Peter is at once the same human individual who we might have known before his election (though I suspect that most of us outside of South America have not known Cardinal Bergoglio); but he is also someone "new" in that he is called to exercise a new office in the Church.

As a summary of the first impressions made by Pope Francis, an expression of Pope Paul VI comes to mind. I believe it is in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, and is his remark to the effect that the world will respond more to witnesses than to teachers when it comes to the task of evangelisation. There certainly has been a witness to simplicity in the first days of Pope Francis - his travelling in the minibus with the Cardinals who had just elected him, his use of a Vatican car and not the "SCV 1" limousine, the low key style of his visit to St Mary Major, and his calling in to collect his suitcases and pay his bill on the way home. One can also see a certain docility to the prompting of the Holy Spirit that can be seen in the ordinary (or perhaps not quite so ordinary!) events of life in the story that Pope Francis has subsequently told about why he chose the name Francis.

I took away two impressions of the appearance on the balcony of the Vatican basilica immediately after the election. There are times when St Peter's Square embraces, yes, an event of  significance for the universal Church, but at the same time an event that is specifically an event of the city of Rome itself. The penultimate Sunday Angelus of Benedict XVI was one such event. I felt more than anything else that, as Pope Francis introduced himself as the Bishop of Rome, it was this specifically Roman character of the occasion to which he was speaking, and his glance towards and reference to his collaborator the Cardinal Vicar for Rome (ie the bishop who actually runs the diocese of Rome) would appear to confirm this. It expressed the transfer of the kind of relationship that Cardinal Bergoglio had with the archdiocese of Buenos Aires to his new diocese (and, in the light of some of his later remarks, to the universal Church).

The second impression I took away was that the Cardinal's had elected a Marian Pope. Pope Francis' prayer for his predecessor included a request that Mary keep Pope emeritus Benedict in her care; and he also made reference to the pilgrimage to St Mary Major that he was to make the following day, though this pilgrimage does appear to have both a personal and a Jesuit significance for the new Pope. This has also been confirmed by his Marian references at the end of his addresses since, something that was also typical of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

To use an American phrase, Pope Francis' homily at the Mass concelebrated with the Cardinal electors the day after the end of the conclave left me "conflicted".  He spoke without a text according to the Vatican Information Service report; and the video extract that I watched on the BBC suggested that that was what he was doing.  And I found, because of its style of delivery, even that extract somewhat tedious to listen to. I am not a fan of ad lib homilies, believing that a priest (or bishop or Pope) owes it as an ordinary human courtesy to their congregation to decide properly what they are going to say and how they are going to say it before they get up to preach. However, the text of the homily as published on the Vatican website contains an elegant structure that speaks of preparation and gave a rather different impression.

One can see in the homily a certain vigour of expression with regard to the way in which even those holding office in the Church live the Christian life, and an interesting willingness to refer to the devil:

 ... we may become a charitable NGO, but not the Church ....

... When we do not profess Jesus Christ, we profess the worldliness of the devil, a demonic worldliness....

.....when we profess Christ without the Cross, we are not disciples of the Lord, we are worldly: we may be bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but not disciples of the Lord.

In trying to place this homily within the spectrum of the stages of evangelisation, my first reaction was to see it as being largely at the level of exhortation appropriate to primary proclamation, and without sufficienct "content" to reach the level of catechesis or ongoing formation in the faith that would conventionally be seen as the appropriate level for a homily. I particularly thought this with regard to the references to the Cross, which at first sight seem just "pious exhortation". However, it is not the case that the different stages of evangelisation can be always separated from each other (a Youth 2000 prayer festival, for example, manifests both primary proclamation and more systematic catechesis) and there is an increasing recognition that the practical situation of the faithful does require a homiletics that includes primary proclamation to prompt and renew the attitude of conversion to Christ. That Pope Francis addresses that primary proclamation even to the Cardinals of the Church is challenging.

What has interested me more than anything else, though, is the way in which Pope Francis has spoken about the Church since his election. One can perhaps take individual expressions in isolation (particularly his remark about wanting to see a Church that is poor for the poor), but I think we should put the different expressions together to make a whole.

In the homily just discussed, Pope Francis refers to "the Church, the Bride of the Lord" and he ended the homily in way that describes the Church implicitly as "Jesus Christ crucified". His words from the balcony of St Peter's just after his election indicate an understanding of the relationship of the bishop to his diocese (as walking together and mutual prayer of the one for the other), and a relationship of the Diocese of Rome to the dioceses of the universal Church. In his meeting with the full College of Cardinals, the Holy Father articulated the intense ecclesial sense that all have felt, the intense sense of communion (Pope Francis does use the word collegiality of it, and his fuller account provides a very worthwhile definition of that term) that has characterised the days of the General Congregations and then of the Conclave. His address also refers to the Church as the "Mystical Body of Christ" and the "vine of the Lord". There is a reference to Jesus Christ as truly present in the Church. He offers a quite exquisite account of the communion of the Church inspired by the Holy Spirit that can be usefully read alongside his remarks from the balcony about the Church of Rome presiding in charity over the other Churches (but note that, in context, the word "Churches" refers to dioceses of the Catholic Church):

And our acquaintance and mutual openness have helped us to be docile to the action of the Holy Spirit. He, the Paraclete, is the ultimate source of every initiative and manifestation of faith. It is a curious thing: it makes me think of this. The Paraclete creates all the differences among the Churches, almost as if he were an Apostle of Babel. But on the other hand, it is he who creates unity from these differences, not in “equality”, but in harmony. I remember the Father of the Church who described him thus: “Ipse harmonia est”. The Paraclete, who gives different charisms to each of us, unites us in this community of the Church, that worships the Father, the Son, and Him, the Holy Spirit.

In the meeting with journalists, during which he suggested that the media faced a particular challenge in covering events in the Church as those events do not fully conform to the expectations of other events in the world, Pope Francis speaks of the Church as the people of God in encounter with Jesus Christ:

The Church is certainly a human and historical institution with all that that entails, yet her nature is not essentially political but spiritual: the Church is the People of God, the Holy People of God making its way to encounter Jesus Christ.

And there is the testimony to poverty as being a characteristic of the Church, a testimony expressed in the Holy Father's choice of name and in his remark during his meeting with journalists:

For me, [St Francis] is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation; these days we do not have a very good relationship with creation, do we? He is the man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man … How I would like a Church which is poor and for the poor!  

As a kind of postscript: If I have understood the coverage correctly, Pope Francis gave his blessing to the gathered journalists at the end of the audience silently, or "in pectore", out of a courtesy to the possibility that many of those present would not have been believers. This offers an interesting insight for such situations as the "moment of reflection" that has replaced times of prayer in much of our public space.

Of German theologians, a Scottish Cardinal and what the next Pope might do

The time of waiting before a Conclave, with an intrinsic uncertainty as to who the new Pope will be, creates a media opportunity for those who would like to promote an agenda of their own and have it seen as a real possibility for the future of the Church.  It represents what one might call a "media Conclave" as opposed to the "real Conclave" that will take place behind sealed doors with a smoke signal as the only communication to the outside.

German speaking theologians have already held their Conclave. Their letter, which in many respects appears very plausible, represents a nuanced undermining of Catholic life:

We turn to all those who have not yet given up hope for a new beginning in the Church and who work for this. We build upon the signals of departure and dialogue which some bishops have given in recent months in speeches, homilies, and interviews. .... The faithful stay away when they are not trusted to share responsibility and to participate in democratic structures in the leadership of their communities. Church office must serve the life of communities – not the other way around. The Church also needs married priests and women in church ministry. .... The Church’s esteem for marriage and unmarried forms of life goes without saying. But this does not require that we exclude people who responsibly live out love, faithfulness, and mutual care in same-sex partnerships or in a remarriage after divorce.

As an agenda for the future of the Church, the theologians letter should not be given credence. It does not discern clearly between what is of the essence of Catholic life and belief and what is open to prudential pastoral decision.

Cardinal O'Brien's interview for the BBC is rather better in that he does clearly distinguish between what is of permanence and therefore unchangeable and what is open to prudential pastoral decision,  the law of celibacy for priests being the example of the latter that has caught the attention of the media. I do think Cardinal O'Brien is quite right to point out that there are areas of the Roman Catholic Church where there are married priests. In England this is feature that has resulted from the permission of married former Anglican clergy to be ordained as Catholic priests. My own view of the situation, and I recognise that it is a situation that varies from Diocese to Diocese, is that we have de facto in England and Wales a situation of mixed practice, with both celibate and married clergy. One can have some sympathy for those men bound to the rule of celibacy who see the ready ordination of other men not so bound. But we should be precise here - it is the ordination of men who are already married, and not the marriage of men who are already ordained that is allowed (and the Cardinal does not seem to have been quite clear about this, if he is quoted correctly on the BBC website). I also wonder whether there is a certain amount of "the grass appearing greener in vocations other than one's own" for those priests who find fidelity to the promise of celibacy challenging. Fidelity to the vows of marriage also has challenges, and it might well prove for the priests involved to be a case of swapping challenges rather than doing away with them.

What does this mean for what a future Pope might do? Juridically, the Catholic Church upholds the law of celibacy for priests - cf Code of Canon Law c.1037 and 277 (though subject to dispensation by the Apostolic See c.1047, a dispensation which appears to be practiced in favour of married former Anglican clergy, but could be practiced in favour of others as well). Of particular interest in this regard are the provisions for Ordinariates for former Anglicans, which are also expected to uphold the law of celibacy for priests - cf Anglicanorum Coetibus VI.2:

§2. The Ordinary, in full observance of the discipline of celibate clergy in the Latin Church, as a rule (pro regula) will admit only celibate men to the order of presbyter. He may also petition the Roman Pontiff, as a derogation from can. 277, §1, for the admission of married men to the order of presbyter on a case by case basis, according to objective criteria approved by the Holy See.

Though there might appear to be a demand for married priests - somewhat worryingly, a demand often associated with the quite different question of the ordination of women and therefore betraying a poor ecclesial sense - that might also need to be balanced against the not-so-visible valuing of the evangelical counsels among the new movements and communities, many of which recognise the fuller living of their charisms in community life lived under vows or promises of the counsels.

The present situation seems to enshrine one principle in law and then compromise it in a systemic way in practice. This seems to me unsustainable in the long run. It would be more coherent to have a common basis for dispensation from the law of celibacy that is applied to all men, and not just to convert Anglican clergy. But this is not quite the same as Cardinal O'Brien's suggestion that men should be able to consider whether or not they should or could get married and, at the same time, be priests.

Change? Unlikely, whoever the next Pope is. And I think it would be a mistake to see Cardinal O'Brien's remarks as having been made in any spirit of pressing for change. And, as for the German theologians .... the less said the better.

Consecrated celibacy/virginity (2): development of doctrine

In the first of this series of posts, Consecrated celibacy/virginity (1), it was noted that a well-known anathema of the Council of Trent attributes a "higher excellence" to the state of virginity/celibacy when it is compared to the state of marriage, and that the force of that teaching should be recognised in the life of the Church today.

The teaching of the Second Vatican Council does not discuss virginity/celibacy with a direct intention of comparing it as a state to the married state. In that sense, we can see the terms of its teaching as not being set by the same challenge that prompted the anathema of the Council of Trent. Instead, virginity/celibacy are presented in a relation to baptism, in relation to the idea of consecration and therefore of the evangelical counsels seen as a whole, and in relation to the appropriateness of celibacy to the life of the ordained priest. This post wants to suggest that, in presenting its teaching in these different contexts, the Council does nevertheless provide a development of, and an articulation of the essential substance, of the teaching about a "higher excellence" expressed in the earlier anathema.

The first text to turn to is the chapter in Vatican II's Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium dedicated to religious (nn.43-46). The teaching on the evangelical counsels is to be found by reading nn.43-44 in their entirety. I extract below only those parts that are relevant to the consideration of a "greater excellence" of the state of the counsels, and add the italics to draw this out:

The faithful of Christ bind themselves to the three aforesaid counsels either by vows, or by other sacred bonds, which are like vows in their purpose. By such a bond, a person is totally dedicated to God, loved beyond all things. In this way, that person is ordained to the honor and service of God under a new and special title. Indeed through Baptism a person dies to sin and is consecrated to God. However, in order that he may be capable of deriving more abundant fruit from this baptismal grace, he intends, by the profession of the evangelical counsels in the Church, to free himself from those obstacles, which might draw him away from the fervor of charity and the perfection of divine worship. By his profession of the evangelical counsels, then, he is more intimately consecrated to divine service. This consecration will be the more perfect, in as much as the indissoluble bond of the union of Christ and His bride, the Church, is represented by firm and more stable bonds.

The evangelical counsels which lead to charity  join their followers to the Church and its mystery in a special way.... Christ proposed to His disciples this form of life, which He, as the Son of God, accepted in entering this world to do the will of the Father. This same state of life is accurately exemplified and perpetually made present in the Church.

The second text to turn to is the Decree on the renewal of religious life, Perfectae Caritatis. Again, italics added and not present in the original text.

5. Members of each institute should recall first of all that by professing the evangelical counsels they responded to a divine call so that by being not only dead to sin (cf. Rom. 6:11) but also renouncing the world they may live for God alone. They have dedicated their entire lives to His service. This constitutes a special consecration, which is deeply rooted in that of baptism and expresses it more fully...

12. The chastity "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 19:12) which religious profess should be counted an outstanding gift of grace. It frees the heart of man in a unique fashion (cf. 1 Cor. 7:32-35) so that it may be more inflamed with love for God and for all men. Thus it not only symbolizes in a singular way the heavenly goods but also the most suitable means by which religious dedicate themselves with undivided heart to the service of God and the works of the apostolate. ...

The word translated from the Latin as "outstanding" here might also be translated as "priceless" or, as in the printed translation to which I have access, "exceptional".

The last text of the Council to consider is the Decree on the ministry and life of priests, Presbyterorum Ordinis. The question of celibacy in relation to the priesthood is treated in n.16. Italics added, as before.

Through virginity, then, or celibacy observed for the Kingdom of Heaven, priests are consecrated to Christ by a new and exceptional reason. They adhere to him more easily with an undivided heart, they dedicate themselves more freely in him and through him to the service of God and men ...(they) evoke the mysterious marriage established by Christ, and fully to be manifested in the future, in which the Church has Christ as her only Spouse. They give, moreover, a living sign of the world to come, by a faith and charity already made present, in which the children of the resurrection neither marry nor take wives.

 What can be taken from these several texts of the Council to form a synthesis of the content of the idea of a "higher excellence" of the life of the evangelical counsels, and, in particular, that of virginity/celibacy? I would suggest:

1. There is a clear witness to a specific excellence for the life of the counsels, and of virginity/celibacy.
2. The life of the counsels, and the life of virginity/celibacy, lived under vow has the character of a consecration; that is, the character of being a specific and definitive way of living out by an individual of the (universal) call to holiness received through baptism. In itself, though, this character may not represent an excellence unique to the life of virginity/celibacy. Christians who do not take these vows might well live a consecration of a different form, such as that represented by consecration to the Virgin Mary or by "baptism in the spirit" as it is understood in the Charismatic Renewal. It is noteworthy that both these movements see their consecrations as specific ways of living out the original consecration received in baptism. However, consecration as choice does inform point 3 below.
3. Consecrated virginity/celibacy represents a direct and immediate dedication to love of God, without any mediating form, a dedication to "love of God above all things" or a living for "God alone". This can, of course, only apply to a chosen and consecrated virginity/celibacy, and not to a virginity/celibacy that is an accidental outcome of just not having got married. One might suggest that the un-married person should seek some form of consecration in order to live this element of choice in their virginity/celibacy.
4. Growing out of point 3 is the idea of the consecrated life, and of virginity/celibacy, as being a living sign in this world of the world that is to come, a living sign of our supernatural destiny. It cannot be understood in the terms of earthly existence alone, but only in a relation to the life of the world to come.
5. The life of the evangelical counsels, and therefore of virginity/celibacy, is literally the form of life that Jesus himself lived during his earthly ministry, and this is part of what constitutes its excellence.
6. From points 3 and 5 arises a dedication to the Church, as the Body of Christ, so that there is a particular ecclesial form to the life of virginity/celibacy.
7. And finally, the life of the counsels is a very particular gift, a grace, that is given to the one called to consecrated life. The person who consecrates themselves in virginity/celibacy does so in response to a grace received; it is a state of life to which some are called, but not all.

There is a postscript to the teaching of the Council in Pope Paul VI's Apostolic Exhortation Evangelica Testificatio of 1971, where consecrated virginity/celibacy is incidentally considered in the light of the married state. In explicitly addressing the question of consecrated chastity (nn.13-15), Pope Paul writes (italics added to draw out some of the links to the synthesis above):

Only the love of God—it must be repeated—calls in a decisive way to religious chastity. This love moreover makes so uncompromising a demand for fraternal charity that the religious will live more profoundly with his contemporaries in the heart of Christ. On this condition, the gift of self, made to God and to others, will be the source of deep peace. Without in any way undervaluing human love and marriage—is not the latter, according to faith, the image and sharing of the union of love joining Christ and the Church?(22)—consecrated chastity evokes this union in a more immediate way and brings that surpassing excellence to which all human love should tend....Chastity is decisively positive, it witnesses to preferential love for the Lord and symbolizes in the most eminent and absolute way the mystery of the union of the Mystical Body with its Head, the union of the Bride with her eternal Bridegroom. Finally, it reaches, transforms and imbues with a mysterious likeness to Christ man's being in its most hidden depths...

... We are in fact dealing here with a precious gift which the Father imparts to certain people....

Consecrated celibacy/virginity (1): a better vocation?

My attention was caught, less by the citation of the anathema from the Council of Trent, than by the account of the dogmatic standing of the teaching expressed in the anathema:

If any one says, that the marriage state is to be placed above the state of virginity, or of celibacy, and that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity, or in celibacy, than to be united in matrimony; let him be anathema.  

(Remember that this is de fide teaching which we are bound to believe with the assent of faith. If we find it surprising today, it is our job to ponder how to reconcile our thinking with the teaching of the Church, not to adjust the teaching of the Church to our thinking.)

Fr Tim was actually making a different point, but picked this up in passing. Having a somewhat naive approach to anathema's, I assumed that this one represented in some way a summary answer to a question or discussion occuring earlier in the Council's Decree. If one clicks "previous" at this page of the IntraText copy of the Decree on Matrimony, to move from the anathemas to the preceding exposition, one finds instead that the anathema stands somewhat alone. So exactly what answer(s) does the anathema give, and to which question(s)?

Most immediately, it answers a question being set to the Catholic Church by the reformers at the time. Is it the challenge from the reformers which frames the question, and therefore the answer contained in the anathema, in terms of a comparison of the excellence of the married state to the excellence of the state of virginity/celibacy?

The anathema clearly asserts an excellence to virginity/celibacy that is higher than (the excellence of) marriage - and I am happy to include a reference to the excellence of marriage because of the reference to the way in which Christian marriage "excels in grace, through Christ, the ancient marriages" in the exposition of the Tridentine Decree. One cannot avoid, either, that the assertion of this higher excellence derives from a basis in Scripture and Tradition that preceded the Council - it being received teaching at the time - and a basis in Tradition which has continued since. Even if one quibbles with the dogmatic status of the anathema of the Council of Trent, the force of its assertion of a higher excellence for virginity/celibacy, as Fr Tim indicates, is not something that should be avoided in the life of the Church today.

The anathema is silent as to whether this higher excellence accrues to the person who lives virginity/celibacy simply by their being virgin/celibate in itself.  It does not say anything one way or the other about whether the person who is virgin/celibate is by definition more saintly than the person who is married. It compares instead the "state" of virginity/celibacy to the "state" of marriage, which retains a subtle play between the two as objective institutional states in the Church and as  "offices" (to use a Balthasarian phrase) fulfilled by individuals in the Church.

The anathema is almost totally, but in a most subtle way perhaps not so, about the state of virginity/celibacy as being a state taken up under vows or associated with ordination. Only by referring to the Council Decree On Regulars and Nuns of the next session can we recognise a background assumption that the present anathema might refer to virginity/celibacy lived under vows, or, in the context of the ordained priesthood. The historical context of the Council might well also justify assuming this reference in the intention of the anathema. The Latin verb "manere" translated in the anathema as "remain" has a subtle sense of "continuing to live in" - cf perhaps the sense of the same verb used by Pope John Paul II at the opening of his Apostolic Letter Mane Nobiscum Domine to refer indirectly to Christ's continuing presence with us in the Eucharist. Again, ever so subtly, we might detect an assumption of the state of virginity/celibacy as being a chosen state rather than one occuring accidently by way of absence of a marriage. Though at a first reading the anathema appears to suggest that the accidental virginity/celibacy of the person who simply has not married is better than the married state, it is possible to argue that the real comparison is made to a chosen and dedicated virginity/celibacy.

The anathema - but not attaching common sense and the received teaching of Scripture - is silent about whether or not all people are called to virginity/celibacy rather than to marriage. It is clearly a vocation for some but not for others. This makes acute the question of exactly how the state of virginity/celibacy has a higher excellence than that of marriage, and also raises a question for how vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life are promoted in the Church.

I do think that it is possible to trace in the teaching of the Church at Vatican II and since a development of the essential teaching of this anathema - that of a higher excellence to the vocation of virginity/celibacy - that does not reduce its force and, indeed, develops its essential substance.  [See Consecrated celibacy/virginity (2): development of doctrine - link when I have posted. Consecrated celibacy/virginity (3): theological synthesis, when it follows, is intended to explore how the married and virgin states of life orient one to another.]

But meanwhile, two passing thoughts. One of the quite fascinating things about many of the new movements, many essentially lay in their character, is the existence within them of a core of members living a consecrated life according to the evangelical counsels. Focolare and Communion and Liberation are examples. (Another, perhaps not accidentally, is the presence of a Marian character.) If one leaves aside a certain fashion, now appearing to have passed, for lay communities characterised by short term temporary commitment, there is an interesting witness to consecrated virginity/celibacy to be found among the new movements. The second thought is that a vocational initiative such as Invocation appears to represent a significant move away from presenting all vocations in the Church as of equal excellence (in the sense in which that term is used above). Invocation seems to have the confidence to suggest to young people that the different vocations to priestly and religious life (and in some cases lay life, but lay life characterised by the evangelical counsels and a particular charism) have a an excellence which, while not denying to marriage its own excellence, nevertheless makes a demand on all. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church n.915 suggests, while recognising that not all are called to the consecrated life:

Christ proposes the evangelical counsels, in their great variety, to every disciple.

A better vocation?

The second reading at Mass today (1 Cor. 7:32-35) seemed very apposite with the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord occurring on Thursday. That feast is kept in the Catholic Church as a day of prayer for consecrated life.

I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; 33 but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, 34 and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband. 35 I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

What this passage describes - and it should pehaps be read in the context of the account of married life that St Paul gives earlier in this same chapter of his letter - is a preferential love for the Lord of the one who is unmarried. I do not believe that this passage refers just to those who are single simply by circumstances of life; rather, in its reference to those who are "anxious about the affairs of the Lord", I think it refers to those who have consecrated themselves specifically to the Lord in the evangelical counsel of chastity/celibacy.

This preferential love for the Lord represents a better vocation: not in the sense that those who live it should, by virtue of their consecrated life alone, be seen as more holy; but in the sense that the vocation itself is a higher vocation that therefore makes a higher demand on the consent and love of those who live it.

I sometimes wonder whether, in times and circumstances now past, a poorly understood sense of the higher nature of the vocation to religious life might not have created a social pressure or status that meant that some entered that state of life when not really called to it. This might well have been rightly balanced in more recent times by an increased awareness of the dignity of the lay state in the life of the Church.

But I do think that it is unfortunate that an anxiety not to undervalue the lay vocation in the Church  can all too readily lead us away from speaking of the vocation to consecrated life, that is, to a life characterised by the vows of the three evangelical counsels, as being a higher vocation in a proper sense.

Nuns

The Radio 4 programme Beyond Belief is one that I sometimes catch when I get home from school. It provides a more thoughtful reflection on questions of religion, and religious controversy.

Last night Zero phoned me as the programme was about to begin - to tip me off to a programme about nuns. As it happens, she could probably hear Radio 4 in the background ... There is a synopsis of the programme, and it can be listened to on the BBC i-player, from this page; a podcast can be downloaded from here.

I do think that this programme is worth listening to. There are one or two lively exchanges between Sr Myra Poole and Sr Roseanne Reddy, and, from the point of view of Catholic teaching, one can feel that some of Sr Myra's positions are not one's that are readily agreed with. A female Buddhist Lama also takes part in the programme, and it is interesting to see the dialogue between Catholicism and Buddhism. A range of issues relating to religious life in the Catholic Church are well debated in the programme, and the difference between the experience of the religious life before the Second Vatican Council and that after the Council is also well portrayed. Do listen to the whole programme, since my selective comments below are not going to give a complete picture of it.

I do think that Sr Myra gives a good witness to the place of prayer in the religious life, perhaps most markedly when she recognises that the younger sisters now joining her order do not benefit from the contemplative foundation that she was able to have. I think the question of obedience, raised by the programme presenter in the context of Sr Myra's advocacy for the ordination of women in the Catholic Church (the introduction to the programme gives the impression that this now constitutes Sr Myra' s work), could have an added element. The point is that Sr Myra's subjective sense that she is following the Holy Spirit in advocating women's ordination is, in obedience, subjected to an objective judgement by her religious superior, and that these two should not be in conflict.

Other questions - such as that of the place of celibacy/chastity in religious life, raised by the negative judgement on it offered by an inserted testimony by Marian Dante, who has left religious life, and then debated by Sr Roseanne - are well debated. What I did find interesting in Marian Dante's testimony was the account of the move from a Convent life with traditional style habit to life lived in small houses wearing a modern style habit that took place in the lady's religious order following the Second Vatican Council. Marian describes herself as moving from a "very institutionalised", isolated existence to one for which she was simply not prepared - deciding to leave as she found herself teaching alongside lay teachers in London with whom she seemed to have little in common. She talks about the "scaffolding of my life" falling away.

At a purely pragmatic level, one can ask whether it was really necessary for her order to so rapidly restructure the experience of its members in the interests of renewal. Might not the transition from Convent based to community based ministry have been more gradually introduced, perhaps with the younger generation leading the transition and the older generation being allowed to retain the previous form of life? But, at the level of principle and, admittedly with the benefit of hindsight, one can ask whether or not this movement "from the Convent" towards "the world" was the right "direction" for a religious order to be taking at all. The style of small community living to which it led is now typical of the communities of the new (lay) movements in the Church, for whom the "direction" it represents is the exact opposite. For these new movements, it represents a movement "from the world" towards "the Church". The styles of life resulting from these two quite opposite "directions" of movement may be very much the same in practical import; but which is the "direction" of movement that most authentically represents Christian living?

But do listen to the whole programme.

We should call dissent by its name

Two reports seen upon the ether in the last 24 hours have made for depressing reading. The first, and most alarming, is the report of a letter signed by one third of German speaking, Catholic professors of theology. Protect the Pope has perhaps the most pertinent comment on this. Laodicea's reaction - I am left speechless - probably reflects my own, though the comments to that post also make instructive reading.

One can perhaps see this as an example of crisis of faith as far as those engaged in the Catholic theological enterprise are concerned, a crisis of the faith of theologians. But, if the comments to Laodicea's post are an indication, and the likely support for the said theologicans that one would find if one conducted a straw poll in an average parish this weekend, then we also have a crisis of catechesis among the ordinary faithful.

The second report, which appears less alarming, is that of the call by priests in Ireland for their bishops to "delay by five years" (in real terms, stop) the implementation of the new English translation of the Roman Missal. A Catholic Herald report covers this, though the comments to it are not all helpful. What is worrying about this report is the grounds that it appears to give for opposing the new translation, grounds which seem to reflect the same sort of agenda that underlies the German memorandum. Worth noting on this second report, though, that the call by the said priests for the bishops to begin consultation passes over in silence the years of drafting and consultation that have gone in to preparing the new translation ...

I do not have exceptional political experience, though I do have some. And that experience leads me to recognise that letters with multiple signatures are not taken that seriously by politicians who receive them. When someone signs a letter that has been hawked round and put in front of them to sign, it does not always mean very much. Sometimes they haven't even read it before they have signed it (my political experience does include a rather spectacular example of this, though I suspect that university professors would have the intelligence to read something before signing it). Similarly, membership organisations might well adopt a policy on the basis of the views of their active membership without it necessarily representing the views of all their subscribing membership. So one should perhaps not give the two reports more weight than they really have.

The establishing of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in England, and the prospect of Ordinariate's in Australia and Canada, does, I think, contribute two useful contexts. The first is that it is the Catechism of the Catholic Church that is given as the measure, the rule of faith, for those members of the Church of England who join the Catholic Church in membership of an Ordinariate. This is, of course, a rule of faith that extends throughout the Catholic Church, and is presented precisely as such in the Apostolic Constituion Fidei Depositum that accompanied the publication of the Catechism. Used to judge the letter of the German theologians I expect that it will readily show that to be the dissent that it is.

The catechetical and theological crisis though arises because of the lack of the sense of the Catechism, or of similar teaching, as being authoritative for members of the Catholic Church. We need a restoration of the sense of a rule of faith handed down in the Church - not in an authoritative and fideistic manner, but after the manner of obedient acceptance in faith, hope and charity. The Ordinariate can highlight this for us.

But, if the Ordinariates do allow for married priests, albeit with qualification, and a slightly more synodical style of governance, I do think it is legitimate to ask the question: why cannot this also be allowed in the more common diocesan structures? Unfortunately, the German theologians have mixed this question with clear dissent.

Pope Benedict XVI's homily for the Feast of the Presentation 2011

ZENIT have published the full text of Pope Benedict's homily for yesterday's Feast, and for the World Day for Consecrated Life.

I would like to propose three brief thoughts for reflection on this feast. The first: the evangelical icon of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple contains the essential symbol of light; the light that, coming from Christ, shines on Mary and Joseph, on Simeon and Anna and, through them, on everyone. The Fathers of the Church linked this radiation to the spiritual journey. Consecrated life expresses this journey, in a special way as "philocalia," love of divine beauty, reflection of the goodness of God (cf. ibid., No. 19). Resplendent on Christ's face is this beauty.. "....a singular experience of the light that emanates from the Word incarnate are certainly those called to the consecrated life. In fact, the profession of the evangelical counsels places them as sign and prophecy for the community of brothers and for the world" (postsynodal apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata No. 15).


In the second place, the evangelical icon manifests the prophecy, gift of the Holy Spirit. Simeon and Anna, contemplating the Child Jesus, perceive his destiny of death and resurrection for the salvation of all peoples and proclaim this mystery as universal salvation. Consecrated life is called to this prophetic witness, linked to its twofold attitude, contemplative and active. Given to consecrated men and women, in fact, is to manifest the primacy of God, passion for the Gospel practiced as a way of life and proclaimed to the poor and to the last of the earth. ..... consecrated life, in its daily living on the paths of humanity, manifests the Gospel and the Kingdom already present and operative.

In the third place, the evangelical icon of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple manifests the wisdom of Simeon and Anna, the wisdom of a life dedicated totally to the search of the face of God, of his signs, of his will; a life dedicated to listening and to proclaiming his Word.

The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord: Day for Consecrated Life

The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord is kept in the Church as a Day for Consecrated Life. Speaking to religious on this day in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI said the following (my italics added):

...the sacrifice of the Son of God symbolized by his presentation in the Temple is the model for every man and woman who consecrates their life totally to the Lord. The purpose of this Day is threefold: first of all to praise and thank the Lord for the gift of consecrated life; secondly to promote knowledge and appreciation of it among the whole People of God and lastly to invite all those who have dedicated their life totally to the cause of the Gospel to celebrate the marvels that the Lord has worked in them....

... it is precisely and only on the basis of this faith, on this profession of faith in Jesus Christ, the only and definitive Mediator, that consecrated life, a life consecrated to God through Christ, has meaning in the Church. It has meaning only if he is truly the mediator between God and us; otherwise it would merely be a form of sublimation or of escape. If Christ were not truly God and at the same time fully man, the foundation of Christian life as such would be lacking as, in quite a significant way, would the foundation of every Christian consecration of man and woman. The consecrated life, in fact, "powerfully" witnesses and expresses the reciprocal seeking of God and man, the love that attracts them to each other. The very fact of being consecrated makes the consecrated person, as it were, a "bridge" to God for all who encounter him or her, a reminder, a reference point. And this is all by virtue of the mediation of Jesus Christ, the Consecrated One of the Father. He is the foundation! He who shared our weaknesses so that we might participate in his divine nature.

Hans Urs von Balthasar: The Meaning of Celibacy

The last section of a 1972 essay by Hans Urs von Balthasar, on priestly celibacy and posted at Communio -International Catholic Review, has a very contemporary resonance in 2011!

... the celibate priest today has to be stronger than his predecessor. He is placed in a sexualised environment and, generally, is deprived of the external guards of the post-tridentine seminary and protected rectory. He is exposed, while the witness of his life is rejected or is met with indifference by non-Christians. He does not get anywhere with it, it does not communicate anything to the people around him. The mighty effort of his witness seems to vanish into emptiness. Hence, he feels frustrated.

But the history of Christian virginity does not begin with Trent. It begins in Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome, to mention only three of the most licentious cities of antiquity. Exactly there, where sin flowered most lushly - and the letters of the Apocalypse show us other telling examples - has Christian virginity its beginning. Not in cloisters, not in closed Christian communities, but in a diaspora where Christians lived scattered, often in pagan households. It had to be and it came to be.

Christian virgins did not live in closed communities, but like members of secular institutes today, they lived dispersed in households and families. It is there that they gave witness, and were perhaps a more fruitful leaven than the later, structured cenobitic communities of Pachomius and Benedict. They understood that their witness has a purpose in itself: it radiates love. It is not something useful, a means, even though it frees the unmarried for the Lord, to be "concerned about the things of the Lord" (1 Cor. 7:34), and thus also frees him for diaconal and presbyteral tasks of the Church.

And if the virgins of earlier periods were respected while the celibates of today are ignored or scorned, let us once more point out that virginity and the cross, and hence disgrace, are closely related. In the Old Testament barrenness was a humiliating disgrace, and rightly so both from a natural and supernatural, theological viewpoint. The barren woman did not contribute to the messianic future. Under the sign of disgrace stood also Mary, pregnant and silent, when Joseph thought of abandoning her.

New Testament virginity should be highly and specially valued by Christians because of this implicit disgrace, and precisely because of disgrace in the eyes of the world. But when Christians themselves do not see this hidden value, because they follow unchristian ideologies, then virginity must again recede into the obscurity of the original disgrace. The darkness of the apparent waste, which is the radical sign of Christ's cross, the dimness of ever-increasing, seemingly meaningless, toil and vexation - be it the plight of keeping house without a competent housekeeper, or living with other priests in a poorly functioning community, or some other burdensome inconvenience - makes us wish to give up this incompetent experiment that seems to be of no benefit to anyone.

Perhaps in a church of the future celibate priests will be in a minority. It could be so. But it also might happen that through the example of the few a new certainty of the rightness and indispensability of this life is kindled in the Church. We might have to go through a period of hunger and thirst, but this very deprivation might call forth new vocations or, rather, might inspire a new generosity, so that the call that is always with us will be answered.

We can trust the instinct of the Christian people. Despite superficial and poor training, the faithful usually manage to distinguish between "progressivist" small talk and truly inspired preaching and catechesis. And even if this instinct would become blinded - and I do not believe it will - the Lord, the true witness of our witnessing, remains with us. Because none of us priests "lives as his own master and none of us dies as his own master ... both in life and in death we are the Lord's" (Rom 14:7ff).

Poverty, Chastity and Obedience

A lovely post on this theme at Bridges and Tangents. I was particularly struck by the observations about the angel, and the way in which the Virgin Mary does meet the angel again, in the representation by Pier Paolo Pasolini, at the tomb.