“Each has his own gift from God”: Of Celibacy and Marriage

I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another (1 Corinthians 7.7).

My friend Thomas has been thinking about vows and becoming a Benedictine oblate. I especially appreciate his point that the triadic formulation of obedience, poverty and chastity which most Catholics associate with the consecrated life is not (and has never been) the only one around. For example, there is the very ancient Benedictine vow-triad of stability, conversion and obedience as well.

In my opinion, failure to remember these historical developments has led to an unfortunate narrowing in the understanding of consecrated life and monasticism in the Church. For most Catholics, consecrated and monastic life often tends to be reduced to one primary or even “central” aspect—celibacy (including its variant formulations, virginity and chastity)—which, I’d like to note, is not featured in the Benedictine formulation at all. This is not to say that Benedictines don’t value chastity—far be it!—only that it seems to be more assumed than asserted in their vision of monastic life.

The excessive focus on chastity as some kind of “hinge” on which the other two vows (poverty and obedience) hang has resulted in the view, common especially in the West, that celibate men and women are somehow “spiritually espoused” to Christ. As a consecrated layman, I cannot for the life of me understand what this actually means, since I don’t think that a man can or ought to be “spiritually espoused” to Christ, who is another man. If I were to concede that this “espousal” is only on the level of the soul/spirit, not involving a man’s physical body, as some argue, then how am I to live out this “spiritual espousal” in my body, which is that of a—believe me—male? In other words, for a man, the view that chastity/celibacy is a kind of “espousal” to Christ cannot be accepted unless one is willing to say that the man’s body is somehow not integral to his identity. This kind of detachment of the body from the identity of the human person seems utterly contradictory not only to traditional Judeo-Christian anthropology, but also to the very doctrine of the Incarnation.

The heart of consecrated life, in my opinion, is not celibacy per se but rather a particular way of imitating Christ, of which chastity/celibacy, poverty and obedience, as well as stability and conversion, are aspects. I say “a particular way” because married people are also called to imitate Christ—but in another particular way. As Paul says, “each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another” (1 Corinthians 7.7).

The most basic distinction between these two ways is of course that one group of people is married while the other is not. But this difference does not mean that, while the married person is espoused to another human being, the celibate is “espoused” to Christ. (According to Ephesians 5.25-32, it is the Church that is collectively espoused to Christ by baptism; I cannot think of an instance where this spousal imagery is applied on the level of the individual Christian.) Rather, the difference lies in the manner in which the disciple relates to a particular Christian community. The married Christian is called to love and imitate Christ primarily within a community forged by marital bonds, i.e. the domestic family. The consecrated man or woman is called to love and imitate Christ within another kind of community—one that is forged by intentional devotion to a common way of life, mission and spiritual practice (for example, a monastery). But both kinds of communities are families of human love; it is not that the married person is called to a family but the consecrated person is not. Both kinds of communities are called to interact, commune and enrich one another within an even larger community—the community to which both groups belong by virtue of their baptism, which is the Church. Separated from this larger context of the Church, both ways of imitating Christ will turn in on themselves, betray themselves, become stunted. In other words, they will each cease to be Christian.

I write all this for many reasons. One is that I am deeply disturbed by the prevalent view that consecrated men and women in the Christian community, by virtue of their “spiritual espousal” to Christ, have somehow transcended their need for human love and replaced that need with “divine love”. Seen from this perspective, consecrated men and women are a sort of superhuman class who can go about loving and serving everybody in the Church but don’t really need anyone to love them in return. In addition to being untrue, that is just downright pathetic.

Another reason I’m writing this is that, among Catholics today, no matter what kind of homage or lip-service we give to the vocation of marriage, there is still the persistent delusion that married people can’t follow Christ as closely as celibate people can. (Someday, when I get the chance, I’ll write a post on the whole divided/undivided heart passage in 1 Corinthians 7 which is often the source of this misunderstanding, perhaps.) Recently, I read an interview with a seminarian in which he said, “I believe celibacy is necessary if I am to devote my life entirely to Christ.” Did he mean that , although married people can love Christ and follow him, they cannot devote their life entirely to Christ precisely because they are married? If so, I wish he were alone in thinking this. But I’m afraid he’s not. In the minds of most Catholics, married people are somehow second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God whose lives are encumbered with the earthly business of sex, child-rearing and bill-paying. Celibate men and women, on the other hand, soar unhindered in their prayer, study and ecstatic religious experiences of their “spiritual espousal”.

I see no basis whatsoever for this two-tiered discipleship, either in Scripture or in Tradition. What I see are two paths, each with its own opportunities and challenges, each struggling to express in their own way the words of Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2.20).