Humans find deepest fulfillment in ‘participation in intimacy with God’

Posted: 05.22.09

G. K. Chesterton, a man who could turn a pithy phrase long before the “sound bite” was invented, once said: “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” The recent public fall from grace of Miami’s photogenic TV and radio celebrity, Padre Alberto (Father Alberto Cutié), as well as the recently published memoir of retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee has reignited in the secular media the tired debates about celibacy, which the Latin Church requires of those who would serve as priests. To those who excuse their own or other’s failures by blaming the Church, one is tempted to paraphrase Chesterton and respond, “Celibacy has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”

The Catholic Church honors and esteems both celibacy and marriage. Jesus himself was celibate, but he also raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament. Pope John Paul II wrote: “Virginity or celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of God not only does not contradict the dignity of marriage, but presupposes it and confirms it. Marriage and virginity or celibacy are two ways of expressing the one mystery of the covenant of God with his people” (“Familiaris Consortio,” 16). The celibacy which is freely embraced by the priest or the consecrated religious affirms and proclaims that all human intimacy finds its deepest meaning and fulfillment when experienced as a participation in intimacy with God himself. Celibacy, to be sure, is not easy; but then again neither is Christian marriage easy. St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, “But we hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us” (2 Cor 4:7).

Chastity, whose aim is the proper integration of our sexuality according to God’s design and will, is a virtue required of all Christians regardless of our particular state in life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls chastity “a school of the gift of the person” since one can give of oneself only to the extent that one is the master of oneself. “Self-mastery is a long and exacting work. One can never consider it acquired once and for all. It presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life” (CCC, No. 2342). Yet, at the same time, it is a gift from God, a grace – and, given the reality of our fallen human nature, we will not grow in chastity, or in any other of the moral virtues, without actively seeking this grace from God through prayer, participation in the sacraments and keeping the commandments.

A Church that continues to propose chastity as the path to true human freedom, a Church that insists that sexual intimacy only finds its true purpose and place within a permanent marriage between one man and one woman will seem to be, in the eyes of the world, “out of step” and irrelevant. Such a Church will often be regarded if not with scorn and ridicule, then with utter incomprehension. But as St. John writes, “The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him” (1 Jn 3:1).

As Pope Benedict told a group of deacons he was about to ordain priests last month: “We priests experience this: The ‘world’ does not understand the Christian, does not understand the ministers of the Gospel; somewhat because it does not know God, and somewhat because it does not want to know him. The world does not want to know God so as not to be disturbed by his will, and therefore it does not want to listen to his ministers. … Yet, by Christ’s design, we are ‘in’ the world for the life of the world. But, as the media reminded us yet again, God’s people – and its ministers – are always at risk of becoming ‘of’ the world, adopting its mentality, its way of thinking and living ‘that can pollute even the Church, that in fact does pollute her, thereby requiring constant vigilance and purification.’”

Despite our own failures – or those of others – to live our Christian faith coherently, we trust in God’s mercy and forgiveness, for in Christ we find the words of eternal life. To cite C.S. Lewis, a friend and contemporary of G.K. Chesterton, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

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