Celibacy

It's still a year and nine months before for my first vow of celibate chastity with the Capuchins. But the reality is that the postulants are already living, by God's grace, the charism of celibacy.

Today for morning instruction we had an introductory lecture on celibacy in consecrated life. It was nothing fancy -- it was not an academic recitation with deep philosophical or theological foundations. It was not a presentation of canons and norms. Juridical and magisterial concerns were set aside for now. For now we began with love, community, and a state of life given specially to some men and women.

From the beginning of the Church there have been men and women who followed Jesus in such a way that they drew followers of their own. They and their own followers formed distinctive communities within the larger institutional Church. These communities were obedient to the apostles and to the bishops and priests who came to inherit the apostles' authority and power, but they were also delightfully free and uniquely compelling in their witness to Jesus Christ and the reign of God he proclaimed. These autonomous but Christ-centered and Church-building communities have existed in every generation, taking on new forms when saintly men and women appeared on the scene. Thus in late antiquity and the dawn of the Middle Ages there were the great monastic communities inspired by Anthony of Egypt, Augustine, Benedict, and Scholastica. In the High Middle Ages the mendicant orders of itinerant preachers appeared under the guidance of Francis of Assisi (and Clare of Assisi) and Dominic. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation witnessed the rise of apostolic and missionary religious societies thanks to luminaries like Ignatius of Loyola and Vincent de Paul. Contemplative mystics like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila renewed and deepened religious life. In our day we have had spiritual geniuses like Thomas Merton and ascetic lay activists like Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day recast the ideals of consecrated life for modern society.

Across the ages, these holy men and women shared in common a life vowed to celibate chastity, poverty, and obedience. To this day, all women and men who enter religious life take at least these three vows. They saw the vows as God's shield behind which they could build a new world fit to receive the coming kingdom of heaven. I see them as a protection against idolatry. They are a means of resisting the lures of wealth, sex, and power -- the three greatest adult temptations! -- and, from a liberation theology point of view, the sins of classism, sexism, and imperialism/militarism/nationalism.

So for consecrated religious, these three vows remain: chastity, poverty, and obedience. But the distinguishing and originating mark of these saints' vocations, and the definitive characteristic of the life within the religious communities they led, is celibacy.

Celibacy is related to but different than chastity. Chastity is about a purified way of living according to one's state of life. In the sexual arena, chastity is about an ethic of loving that meets criteria of morality and ensures human well-being. Chastity is the virtue; celibacy is the state of life. All Christians, whether celibate, married, or single, are called to be chaste by their baptismal vow. Married Christians channel their sexual practices, particularly the genital behaviors, toward a just and fulfilling love of their partner. Single Christians restrain their genital sexual behaviors in order to grow in maturity and prepare for responsible loving. Celibate Christians abstain from all relationships that involve sexual intercourse and genital activity leading to sexual intercourse, for the sake of intimacy with God and neighbor.

Celibates abstain from sex, but not from their sexuality. Sexuality has to do with much more than what we do with our private parts. It has to do with the way we dispose ourselves to the people, situations, and things we find attractive and lovely. Where sexuality is concerned, in the Christian tradition, the love of God and neighbor leads some men and women to dispose themselves in such a way toward the world that it permanently precludes an exclusive commitment to only one other person. This renunciation of a deep, abiding, exclusive love for another individual is what celibacy is all about.

Celibates renounce the intimacy of a romantic relationship, but not intimacy itself. Intimacy grows out of love, but intimacy is not limited to the erotic love of committed couples. There is a love more restless and relentless, as my Capuchin brother David Couturier has written. This love seeks constantly to reach more and more people; it does not rest, cannot rest, with one person. It is, says Brother Dave, an intimacy "on the road." This is where the celibate person dwells.

The celibate's need for validation comes not from the acceptance of one exclusive soul-mate, but from all people -- from Christ through the community of faith. The celibate seeks love without consummation, for the celibate's love never reaches an end. 

The celibate practices an intimacy with risks of its own. It is extensive -- it is broad and wide but never general or vague. Sometimes the celibate can get overextended, giving love without receiving intimacy. The celibate is a sun that shines for all but can easily get burned out. The celibate can get hurt by others who misunderstand them. They mistake the celibate's affection toward them for a more exclusive kind of intimacy and feel betrayed when the celibate does not reciprocate their desires in the way they expect.

All people are called to love widely and generously -- to extensive love. Most people are called also to the special intimacy of intensive love, the love shared by a couple alone. The celibate of consecrated life is called apart from the rest of us to give up the goods of intensive love for the sake of radically extensive love in Christ. This is how my Capuchin brothers and I have chosen to integrate our sexuality into our discipleship. It will be a challenge, not because our state of life is greater or harder than marriage or singleness, but because living the virtue of chastity is the supreme difficulty of our day. To the matters of mature sexuality and healthy human development we will return later in the year.