Skip to content
The Catholic Leader
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
The Catholic Leader
No Result
View All Result
Home News

Celibacy is not ‘divine law’ for priests, but promotes holiness, speakers say

byCNS
21 February 2022
Reading Time: 3 mins read
AA
Celibacy is not ‘divine law’ for priests, but promotes holiness, speakers say

A priest and nun talk during an international symposium on the priesthood at the Vatican. Photo: CNS

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

THE requirement that most priests in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church be celibate has theological and spiritual foundations and not only practical motivations, according to speakers at an international conference on priesthood.

Jesus’ chastity, poverty and obedience were not “incidental or simply functional,” but expressed his total union with God and dedication to the salvation of humanity, Jesuit Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a well-known canon lawyer, said at the Vatican conference on February 19.

The church has never claimed that celibacy is “intrinsic” to the priesthood, he said, and, in fact, the Eastern Catholic churches have maintained the discipline of having both celibate and married clergy, and the Latin church has welcomed married priests coming from other denominations.

Jesuit Fr Gianfranco Ghirlanda speaks about the canonical and spiritual implications of poverty, chastity and obedience. (CNS screen grab/Vatican Media)

The status of married Eastern Catholic priests was raised in several of the questions posed to both Father Ghirlanda and Father Emilio Justo, a professor of theology at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, who also spoke at the conference.

Making greater claims about the relationship of celibacy to priesthood will not help Catholics understand its “profound spiritual and theological meaning,” Father Ghirlanda responded; celibacy “is not a divine law, because otherwise the discipline of the Eastern churches would not be possible, and it would not have been possible to have married priests in the early church, even if they were called to continence,” as Father Justo had said in his speech.

A married priesthood “is not a second-class priesthood,” Father Ghirlanda said, because married priests also proclaim the Gospel, lead the Christian people and celebrate the sacraments.

Celibacy or marriage “does not touch the priesthood in itself,” he said.

In his speech, Father Ghirlanda said that in the Code of Canon Law for the Latin church, celibacy is seen as a gift from God that enables priests “to adhere more easily to Christ with an undivided heart and dedicate themselves more easily to the service of God and his people.”

Catholic theology, spirituality and church law on priesthood, he said, aim to promote a “self-giving love,” one in which celibacy is not lived “in a repressive way as mortification and denial,” but as an expression of the biblical call to a “purity of heart” requiring a progressive “liberation from passions and the stripping away of earthly possessions.”

Father Justo, in his presentation on the history of celibacy, told participants that in the first millennium of the church, married priests were common, “but I believe there were predominant tendencies” favouring celibacy and requiring married priests to “live perfect continence,” that is, forgoing sexual relations with their wives.

Related Stories

Gwen has given 15,000 hours of cuddles to sick and premature babies

Helping stroke survivors earns Ozcare volunteer national recognition

Br Alan Moss remembered for a life of faith and learning

The requirement to live marriage in this “abnormal way” was primarily theological, he said, and was based on a priest’s role as mediator between God and the faithful, a role that required “purity.”

That purity, he said, often is seen as merely ritual, “but it is related to holiness” and conformity to Christ, who offered his whole self to God for the salvation of the world.

“Celibacy is not a call to loneliness but to communion,” Father Justo said.

“The church is the space where the ordained minister loves and is loved.”

Celibacy, he said, is a special way of being “configured to Christ” and responding to the call “to love like him and with him, to serve with him and like him in the way that Jesus historically loved, which was in a celibate way.”

ShareTweet
Previous Post

Francis urges: ‘Go Beyond Instinct, Go Beyond Hatred’

Next Post

Missionary priest Tim Norton ordained new auxiliary bishop for Brisbane

CNS

Related Posts

Gwen has given 15,000 hours of cuddles to sick and premature babies
QLD

Gwen has given 15,000 hours of cuddles to sick and premature babies

20 May 2022
Helping stroke survivors earns Ozcare volunteer national recognition
QLD

Helping stroke survivors earns Ozcare volunteer national recognition

20 May 2022
Br Alan Moss remembered for a life of faith and learning
QLD

Br Alan Moss remembered for a life of faith and learning

19 May 2022
Next Post
Missionary priest Tim Norton ordained new auxiliary bishop for Brisbane

Missionary priest Tim Norton ordained new auxiliary bishop for Brisbane

Military action: Ukrainian service members take part in tactical drills at a training ground in an unknown location in Ukraine. Photos: CNS

‘Storm Heaven with prayers’ – Australian Ukrainian Catholics fear for families in Putin’s warpath

Hope for peace: Pope Francis called on all believers and non-believers to combat the “diabolical insistence, the diabolical senselessness of violence” with prayer and fasting. Photo: CNS

Pope calls for day of prayer, fasting for peace in Ukraine on Ash Wednesday

Popular News

  • Catholic relationship advisers offer five tips to look after your mental health

    Nationwide rosary event happening for Australia’s patroness this Saturday

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Angel’s Kitchen serves hot meals to the hungry in Southport

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Queensland election: The pro-life political parties committed to abortion law reforms

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Here are the stories of 10 new saints being canonised this Sunday

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Br Alan Moss remembered for a life of faith and learning

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
Search our job finder
No Result
View All Result

Latest News

Gwen has given 15,000 hours of cuddles to sick and premature babies
QLD

Gwen has given 15,000 hours of cuddles to sick and premature babies

by Joe Higgins
20 May 2022
0

BRISBANE grandmother Gwendoline Grant has clocked up 15,000 hours cuddling and caring for sick and premature babies...

Helping stroke survivors earns Ozcare volunteer national recognition

Helping stroke survivors earns Ozcare volunteer national recognition

20 May 2022
Br Alan Moss remembered for a life of faith and learning

Br Alan Moss remembered for a life of faith and learning

19 May 2022
Catholic relationship advisers offer five tips to look after your mental health

Nationwide rosary event happening for Australia’s patroness this Saturday

19 May 2022
Francis offers advice on politics: Seek unity, don’t get lost in conflict

Francis offers advice on politics: Seek unity, don’t get lost in conflict

19 May 2022

Never miss a story. Sign up to the Weekly Round-Up
eNewsletter now to receive headlines directly in your email.

Sign up to eNews
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

The Catholic Leader is an Australian award-winning Catholic newspaper that has been published by the Archdiocese of Brisbane since 1929. Our journalism seeks to provide a full, accurate and balanced Catholic perspective of local, national and international news while upholding the dignity of the human person.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader
Accessibility Information | Privacy Policy | Archdiocese of Brisbane

The Catholic Leader acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Peoples of this country and especially acknowledge the traditional owners on whose lands we live and work throughout the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader

0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyChoose another Subscription
    Continue Shopping