CELIBACY
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CELIBACY
must come first and his flock second. In short, he
has a profession or trade, a Gewerbe, rather than a
vocation; he has to earn a livelihood. In almost all
Catholic congregations, a priest who married would
be ruined; all his influence would be gone. The
people are not at all ready for so fundamental a
change, and the circumstances of the clergy do not
admit of it. It is a fatal resolution. " (A. Plummer
in "The Expositor", December, 1S90, p. 470.) A
testimony given under such circumstances carries
more weight than long explanations would do.
Neither was it the only occasion on which the his-
torian so expressed himself. "When a priest", Dol-
linger wrote in a letter to one of his Old Catholic
friends in 1876, "can no longer point to the per-
sonal sacrifice which he makes for the good of
his people, then it is all over with him and the
cause which he represents. He sinks to the level
of men who make a trade of their work [Er
rangitrt dann mit den Gewerbetreibenden}." (See
Michael, Ignaz von Dollinger, ed. 1894, p. 249.)
Supposing always that the vow of celibacy is faith- fully kept, the power which this practical lesson in disinterestedness must lend to the priest's exhorta- tions when addressing his people is too obvious to need insisting upon. Numberless observers, Protes- tant and Agnostic as well as Catholic, have borne witness to the effect so produced. On the other side, the obstacles to really confidential relations and more especially to confession in the case of the married clergy — even if this difficulty is often quite unfairly exaggerated in the many current stories of Anglican clergymen sharing the secrets of the confessional with their wives — are certainly real enough. When the once famous Pere Hyacinthe (M. Loyson) left the Church and married, this was the first point which at once struck a free-thinker like George Sand. "Will Pere Hyacinthe still hear confessions?" she wrote. "That is the question. Is the secrecy of the confes- sional compatible with the mutual confidences of conjugal love? If I were a Catholic, I would say to my children: 'Have no secrets which cost too much in the telling and then you will have no cause to fear the gossip of the vicar's wife'."
Again, with regard to missionary work in bar- barous countries, the advantages which lie with a celibate clergy can hardly need insisting upon and are freely admitted both by indifferent ob- servers and by the non-Catholic missionaries them- selves. The testimonies which have been gath- ered in such a work as Marshall's "Christian Mis- sions" are calculated perhaps, from their juxtapo- sition, to give an exaggerated impression, while the editor's bantering tone will sometimes wound and repel; but the indictment is substantially accurate, and the materials for a continuation of this standard work, which have been collected from recent sources by the Rev. B. Wolferstan, S. J., in every respect bear out Marshall's main contention. Over and over again the admission is made by well-qualified ob- servers, who are themselves either indifferent or op- posed to the Catholic Faith, that whatever genuine work of conversion is done, is effected by the Catholic missionaries whose celibate condition permits them to live among the natives as one of themselves. See, fur example, to speak only of China, Stoddart, "Life of Isabella Bird" (1906), pp. 319-320; Arnot Reid, "Peking to Petersburgh" (1897), p. 73; Professor E. H. Parker, "China Past and Present" (1903), pp. 95-90.
The comparatively slight cost of the Catholic mis- sions with their unmarried clergy need not be dwelt upon. To take a single example, the late Anglican Bishop Bickersteth, the much-respected Bishop of South Tokio, Japan, describes in one of his published letters how he had "a good deal of talk" with a Cath- olic vicar Apostolic, who was on his way to China.
Whereupon Bickersteth remarks that "Roman Cath-
olics certainly can teach us much by their readiness
to bear hardships. This man and his priests are at
times subject to the most serious privations I should
fear. In Japan a Roman priest gets one-seventh of
what the Church Missionary Society and the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel allow to an unmar-
ried deacon. Of course they can only live on the food
of the countrv." (See "The Life and Letters of
Edward Bickersteth", 2nd ed., London, 1905, p. 214.)
With regard again to the effect upon a priest's work
the following candid testimony from a distinguished
married clergyman and professor of Trinity College,
Dublin, is very striking. "But from the point of
view of preaching", writes Professor Mahaffy, "there
can be little doubt that married life creates great diffi-
culties and hindrances. The distractions caused by
sickness and other human misfortunes increase neces-
sarily in proportion to the number of the household;
and as the clergy in all countries are likely to have
large families the time which might be spent in medi-
tation on their discourses is stolen from them by other
duties and other cares. The Catholic priest when his
daily round of outdoor duties is over, comes home to
a quiet study, where there is nothing to disturb his
thoughts. The family man is met at the door by
troops of children welcoming his return anil claiming
his interest in all their little affairs. Or else the dis-
agreements of the household demand him as an
umpire and his mind is disturbed by no mere specu-
lative contemplation of the faults and follies of man-
kind but by their actual invasion of his home."
(Mahaffy, The Decay of Modern Preaching, London,
1882, p. 42.)
To these general considerations various replies are urged. In the first place, it is asserted that celibacy is a mere specious device invented to ensure the sub- jection of the clergy to the central authority of the Roman See. Such writers as Heigl (Das Colibat, Berlin, 1902) contend that the deprivation of home and family ties tends to rob the priest of all national feeling and of standing in the country, and conse- quently to render him a willing tool in the hands of the spiritual autocracy of the popes. The historical summary which follows will help to do justice to this objection. But for the moment, we may note that St. Dunstan, who more than any other character in early English history is identified with the cause of a celibate clergy, was Archbishop of Canterbury from 960 to 988, a period during which the papacy was sub- jected to oppression and disorder of the worst kind. In fact the practice of celibacy was almost universally enjoined long before the resolute energy of Gregory V 1 1 (Hildebrand) built up what it has of late years been the fashion to call the papal monarchy. Again, the consistently nationalist tone of such a chronicler as Matthew Paris, not to speak of countless others, lets us see how mistaken it would be to suppose that celi- bates are devoid of patriotism or inclined to lay aside their racial sympathies in deference to the commands of the pope. And a similar lesson might be drawn from the Gallicanism of the French clergy in the seventeenth century, which seemingly was not incon- sistent with at least ordinary fidelity to their vows of continence.
Another objection which has been urged against sacerdotal celibacy is that the reproduction of the species is a primary function and law of man's nature, and therefore constitutes an inalienable right of which no man can deprive himself by any vow. In view of the fact that social conditions of every sort, as well as the moral law, necessitate celibacy on the part of millions of the race, no one takes this objection seriously. So far as any justification of this position has been at- tempted, it has been found in the analogy of tin' animal or vegetable kingdom, in which the reproduction of its own kind has been represented as the main object of its
