Religious have ‘total dedication’ to a life of celibacy

"Privileged" call to live celibate and chaste lives brings ordained joys & challenges

Published: June 2, 2022

By Aprille Hanson Spivey
Associate Editor

Aprille Hanson Spivey

Seminarian Quinton Thomas, 22, prepares students to prayerfully meditate at the start of his religion class at Catholic High School in Little Rock May 13. Thomas said his call to celibacy frees him to pour his entire self into various ministries, including teaching.

Aprille Hanson Spivey

How is chastity different from celibacy?

While those following a call to religious life make a promise or vow of celibacy, everyone is called to a life of chastity.

Chastity is refraining from “all unlawful sexual activity and intercourse,” instructing the single person to abstain, but also the married person to make sure one’s fidelity is to their spouse in body, mind and heart, staying away from pornograpy, masterbation, contraception and sexual fantizing, according to a 2015 Our Sunday Visitor article.

More than that, Father Jeff Hebert, diocesan vocations director, said “chastity is the virtue of giving yourself to another person.”

For religious or priests, chastity is a call to “love as many people as possible as deeply as possible,” Father James Martin, SJ, wrote in his 2012 book, “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life.” He goes on to explain: “Chastity is also a reminder that it is possible to love well without being in an exclusive relationship and without being sexually active. In this way, the chaste person can serve as a signpost in our hypersexualized culture, where loving someone may be confused with hopping into bed. Thus chastity can help us to refocus our priorities: the goal of life, whether single, married or religious, is to love.”

Priests and religious are called to live both a celibate and chaste life. Father Hebert said the way a religious person lives out their call to chastity is giving of themselves in ministry.

“I give my entire self, and that includes my body, but I don't give my body sexually. But I still give my body; I pour myself out. … Priests are called to be wore out and offer that physical exertion for the sake of the Gospel,” Father Hebert said. “And so it's one way in which you kind of give your body, even though you're worn out. That's part of priestly celibate chastity is just giving everything you have to the people, but in the way that is appropriate to that relationship. So chastity being the fullness of self-gift, and that's determined by your state in life.”

How does celibacy apply to married priests?

Celibacy is not a “divine law” in the Church and priests who are married do not have a “second-class priesthood,” Jesuit Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a canon lawyer, explained during a Vatican conference on the priesthood Feb. 19, according to Catholic News Service.

Marriage is allowed for priests, not bishops, in the Eastern Church. In the Latin Rite, through a special provision, married men who have served as ordained pastors in other Christian denominations and convert, can request acceptance to the priesthood from the Vatican.

The Diocese of Little Rock has three married priests who were previously ministers in other Christian faiths: Charismatic Episcopal, Anglican and Freewill Baptist. They are Father George Sanders, pastor of St. John Church in Hot Springs and chaplain at CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs, and his wife Brenda; Father Norman McFall, pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Charleston and sacramental minister at St. Anthony in Ratcliff, and his wife Laura; and retired priest Father Alan Rosenau and his wife Joanne. Each has children and grandchildren.

Father Jeff Hebert, diocesan vocations director, said celibacy is continually important as both a witness of the joy of the Gospel and the heavenly life to come but also in a practical sense of availability that priests have for their parishes.

He said the diocese’s married priests “are excellent priests.”

“They are witnesses that priesthood is not exclusive to celibacy,” Father Hebert said. “It's not impossible to be a married person and to be a priest.”

Father Sanders said at his ordination, he did make a promise of celibacy in that if his wife should die before him, he cannot remarry.

“A priest is married to Christ, so he cannot be married again. Because I was married before I was ordained, my marriage was retained,” he said. “In the process my wife had to write a letter to the pope to say that she understood that if something happened to her I would not be remarried,” which could be a concern for a priest with young children. Father Sanders’ two sons were adults when he was ordained in 2013. “My wife said she was glad to do that. … She thought that was a good idea,” he laughed.

In his ministry, being a married father and priestly father has allowed him to counsel his flock from a first-hand perspective, knowing what it’s like to navigate many laity experiences.

“Being a good father has informed everything as a priest. It’s a different charism for me than other priests,” he said.

But Father Sanders explained celibacy is “normal for our Church.” Unlike other priests, he does not have the freedom to participate in as many parish activities, as he has “another covenant, I have a wife.”

Because of their reality as ministers of the sacraments of healing, priests are hands-on and always on-call in ways that other religion’s ministers may not be, he explained.

“Something people don’t really think about very much is the sacrifices the wife has to make. … The wife must also have a calling,” Father Sanders said. “You may be trying to celebrate the birthday of your children, but you get a call to the hospital and you must go.”

Once a priest is ordained, the promise to celibacy remains unchanged for that man. However, “the discipline of only choosing men for priesthood from celibate men, that is definitely changeable,” Father Hebert explained as something that the Church could decide to change in the future.

“Looking back that would not have changed my decision to be celibate,” Father Hebert said if the Church had changed it’s teaching before his 2018 ordination. “I was in medical school, and I started seeing like, ‘I kind of want to just give myself entirely to this. And I'm open to living it just like with consecrated chastity, so that I can be more available to my patients.’ And so I experienced (celibacy) as a call from the Lord to live, to give myself more fully to people.”

At first, Quinton Thomas was not worried about the promise of celibacy when he entered seminary.

After about a year into his priestly studies, the “honeymoon” phase gave way to some fears, doubts and grief about the loss of the life he was possibly giving up. But today, he’s embraced the call to celibacy as it’s meant to be — a gift.

“I’ve discovered now it’s one of the things I'm most excited about being a priest,” Thomas said. “It affords you the opportunity for intimacy with God, unmediated intimacy with God. It’s a privileged call.”

In a sex-driven culture, clergy and religious share about their call to live celibate and chaste lives, along with the joys and challenges it brings.

A higher calling

“I’ve discovered now it’s one of the things I'm most excited about being a priest. It affords you the opportunity for intimacy with God, unmediated intimacy with God. It’s a privileged call.”

In the simplest of definitions, continence is abstaining from sex or sexual acts, and celibacy is the promise or vow to that life and more. For a person following a religious calling, it’s abstaining from an intimate, exclusive relationship with another person, replacing it with a supernatural connection with God.

In a Feb. 19 Catholic News Service article covering an international conference on the priesthood at the Vatican, it explained celibacy is not “intrinsic” to the Church, given the fact that during the first millennium of the Church, priests were often married. However, Jesuit Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda explained celibacy was favored, and there were requirements for married priests at the time not to have sex.

Diocesan priests make promises to celibacy when they are ordained to the diaconate, typically a year before their priestly ordination and renew that promise upon ordination. The rite states in “The Roman Pontifical,” in part: “Compelled by the sincere love of Christ the Lord and living this state with total dedication, you will cling to Christ more easily with an undivided heart. You will free yourself more completely for the service of God and man, and minister more effectively in the work of spiritual rebirth.”

Father Jeff Hebert, vocations director for the Diocese of Little Rock, said the Church looks to both the examples of Jesus and his mother Mary.

“Our society makes it seem that if you're not in a sexual relationship, you’re probably going to be miserable. And the Lord has shown us otherwise. He himself was celibate,” he said.

Misconceptions about the charism of celibacy can range from a repressed sexuality to “someone just wasn’t good looking enough” to find a partner, he explained.

“I think there has been a gradual loss in the Western society for the value of living celibacy, as a witness to the life to come,” Father Hebert said. “Because the Lord rose from the dead and several times he said, like at the resurrection, there's no marriage. No one's getting married (in heaven). And so celibacy or consecrated virginity and religious life, it's all a witness to the life that's coming.”

In reality, the calling to be celibate is separate than the calling to the priesthood.

“I think the biggest misunderstanding is that celibacy is a requirement to be a priest. So if you want to be a priest, you have to be celibate in order to get what you want. We actually don't allow guys to get ordained that have that understanding,” Father Hebert, 39, said. “So it is a calling, it's a supernatural call, just like priesthood is a call. And it's actually — there's theologians who disagree perhaps — the more fundamental calling. So the Church has decided that it will only call to the priesthood men who are already called to celibacy.”

Let’s talk about sex … and celibacy

According to a 2015 study by the Barna Group called “The Porn Phenomenon,” half of young adults come across porn at minimum once a week, whether they seek it out or not. Sex is also consistently depicted in TV shows, movies and advertisements.

It’s why Thomas, 22, explained that his generation may not be as obsessed with the idea of sex as many may think.

“I think people my age are probably more open (to celibacy) because if there was any doubt in our mind about what sexual liberation would be like, it would be gone by now because we’ve really tested all of the waters and all of the restrictions we used to embrace, at least outwardly, are gone, and I think we have seen how empty that feeling leaves us,” he said. “People of my generation are typically a little more open to that than previous ones because we’ve seen what society told us about sex is not true.”

Father Patrick Boland, OSB, a monk for 16 years and a priest for seven at Subiaco Abbey, made his solemn profession of vows, obedience, stability and conversatio morum or “fidelity to the monastic way of life,” which includes embracing celibacy. He was married from 1992 to 1997.

“If my wife and I were on the same page maybe with Natural Family Planning, I think we may have understood that bedroom to be the ultimate union, to be one in the flesh,” Father Boland said. “We weren’t emotionally or theologically (invested); it was just, for lack of a better word, sex.”

Though not in contact, he admits he loves his ex-wife better now because of the understanding and freedom of celibate love.

“Everybody has a need for affection, but there are different ways of receiving affection. And being single until I was 30, being married and then being single again, I have more experience being ‘alone,’” Father Boland, 59, said. “Therefore, I have learned where my affection comes from. We are to feel loved. There’s more ways than in the bedroom to feel loved.”

Mother Mary Clare Bezner, prioress at Holy Angels Convent in Jonesboro, had a front row seat to promiscuity while serving almost three years in the U.S. Air Force at just 19 years old.

“I’d still go out and party with them, but I wouldn’t end the night the way a lot of them ended the night,” she said, adding she took a personal vow of chastity. “I think it was like a challenge (for them). I was propositioned to have my chastity and celibate way of life taken away — specifically, flat out said those things to me.”

Mother Mary Clare explained they were “not bad people,” but wrapped up in the culture. She is still friends with some of them today.

“Maybe they saw there was something more authentic in the friendship because I wouldn’t allow it to go into that space,” she said.

A Benedictine sister for 15 years, Mother Mary Clare, 45, made vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but more specifically celibate chastity.

“Not everybody is called to it, and it is not meant for everybody,” she said of sex. “It is also something that is not ugly. It’s something that’s beautiful. … I am a sexual being, made by God in beauty and a feminine being that has a role because of that on this earth. Each one of us is unique in our role to live that out.”

It takes work

Celibacy takes work, as not all sexual desires stop or clergy and religious are suddenly OK with loneliness often accompanied with a vocation. In fact, Father Hebert said it’s a “red flag” when a man considering the priesthood has “no interest in relationships at all.”

“Christianity is all about relationships, principally with God, but also in communion with the whole body of Christ. So if someone is not interested in human relationships at all, that's a red flag. One, they're not fit for ministry, but also probably it's not a call to celibacy,” he said.

It is natural to feel sadness for the loss of an exclusive relationship with another person. Father Hebert said a crucial part of seminarian formation is the cultivation of “affective maturity,” in Church terms, typically referred to as emotional maturity. If they find a particular layperson attractive and realize they are more willing to meet with that person because of it, they can be honest and “aware of those movements in the soul” and bring it up with a spiritual director.

“The goal of priesthood and celibate life is not to try to ignore your sexuality or repress it or bottle it up. But instead, the psychological term would be ‘sublimating it,’ which is to say, redirecting it, because at its core, sexuality is a desire for intimacy. And it's a motivator for relationships and even service and self-gift. And so when you understand it in kind of the more abstract sense, it becomes a motivation for ministry,” Father Hebert said, adding it’s also about bringing those fears of loneliness to the Lord.

“If he's calling us to this life, it must mean that it's possible to live it out with joy,” he said.

Father Boland and Mother Mary Clare pointed to the truths in St. John Paul II’s famous compilation of addresses called the “Theology of the Body.” Mother Mary Clare said her heart strings have been pulled watching a mother with her child and wanting that for herself, but then she offers it to God.

“I just remember being so happy to hear that I was made for love. But that love would be greater than what the world saw love to be,” she said upon diving into “Theology of the Body.” “I just remember thinking it’s so much bigger than what they think it is. But then realizing it was sacrificial in nature and that’s what love is. That it was going to be something I was going to grapple with and struggle with my entire life. I don’t think it’s ever going to be something to say ‘Got that, check the box.’ It will be something that each stage of my life will bring a new challenge to.”