Love is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive A Preparatory Catechesis for the World Meeting of Families by Archdiocese of Philadelphia & the Pontifical Council for the Family

Author:Archdiocese of Philadelphia & the Pontifical Council for the Family [Philadelphia, Archdiocese of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Our Sunday Visitor
Published: 2014-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

The rationale and possibilities of celibacy

96. Earlier in this catechesis, citing Saint Augustine, we saw that the purpose of having children was not merely to continue the species or build up civil society, but to fill the heavenly city with the joy of new life. This distinction — between the natural goal of procreation and the theological vocation to prepare for the Kingdom of God in full flower — enables the Church to make a further point: To fulfill their destiny as men and women, all persons can be fruitful, but not everyone need marry.

97. The Church offers marriage as a vocation, a possibility; it therefore cannot be a law or requirement for a flourishing Catholic life.93 It follows, then, that celibacy needs to exist in the Church’s social life in order for marriage to be a matter of freedom rather than compulsion. Celibacy is the alternative if there is indeed more than one way to order one’s sexual life, one’s maleness or femaleness, to heaven. “Family life is the vocation that God inscribed into the nature of man and woman, and there is another vocation which is complementary to marriage: the call to celibacy and virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the vocation that Jesus himself lived.”94

98. Celibacy and marriage do not compete with one another. Again, as Saint Ambrose taught: “We do not praise any one of them to the exclusion of others…. This is what makes for the richness of the discipline of the Church.”95 Celibacy and marriage are complementary vocations because they both proclaim that sexual intimacy cannot be an audition.96 Both celibates and married persons respect the structure of covenant love and avoid “trial” or conditional intimacy.97 Both celibacy and marriage reject sex in the context of what Pope Francis called the “throwaway culture.”98 Both celibacy and marriage reject sexual relationships premised merely on satisfying erotic desire.

99. Observing the disciplines of celibacy and marriage are the two ways for men and women to be in solidarity with one another without sexual exploitation. Celibacy and marriage are the only two ways of life which converge on the conclusion that marriage is the fully human form for procreative acts in light of God’s design which abides in us and shapes our lives. Celibacy — which includes not only priests and vowed religious, but all those who are chaste outside of marriage — is the way of life for people who are not married but who honor covenants.

100. Everything the Church has taught about being created for joy, about being created in the image of God, about needing to love and be loved, applies equally to celibate and married persons. Celibacy can be confirmed and permanent, as in vowed religious life, or someone unable to marry due to disability or circumstance, or only potentially permanent, as in a young person discerning a vocation. In all of these cases, celibacy follows in the footsteps of Jesus, flourishing by offering the self to God and

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