THE FREEDOM OF THE GIFT: Priestly Celibacy and Authentic Sexual
Liberation
Christopher West
Institute for Priestly Formation 6th Annual Symposium
St. Vincent DePaul Seminary, Miami, FL
March 16, 2007
Many people
believe that those who choose to remain celibate for the sake of
the kingdom of heaven condemn themselves to a life of hopeless
sexual repression. In this paper I will seek to demonstrate that
celibacy for the kingdom – and, for our purposes, we are dealing
primarily with priestly celibacy – when accepted according to
the invitation of Christ can only be properly understood and
lived as a path of authentic sexual liberation.
Our world talks a big line about sexual liberation or sexual
“freedom.” By this the culture means license to indulge one’s
sexual compulsions without hindrance. Is this freedom? If one
cannot say no to his sexual compulsions, is he free? Is an
alcoholic who cannot say no to his urge to drink free? Authentic
sexual liberation is not the freedom to indulge one’s
compulsions. Rather, it is freedom from the compulsion to
indulge. Only to the degree that a person is free from the
tyranny of lustful impulses is he capable of being a true gift
to others. Man is not an animal ruled by instinct. He is a
rational animal who, to live in accord with his own dignity,
must act freely. John Paul II observed that the “application of
the concept of ‘sexual instinct’ to man... greatly limits and in
some sense ‘diminishes’ what... masculinity-femininity is in the
personal dimension of human subjectivity.... To express [human
sexuality] appropriately and adequately, one must also use an
analysis different from the naturalistic one. ...The truth about
the spousal meaning of the human body in its masculinity and
femininity, deduced from the first chapters of Genesis...seems
to be...the only appropriate and adequate concept.”2
In this paper, with the help of John Paul II’s theology of the
body (TOB), I will explore how the concept of the “spousal
meaning of the body” leads to an authentic understanding of
sexual freedom – the freedom, that is, to be a gift to others,
whether in marriage or in a celibate gift of self for “the sake
of the kingdom.” As John Paul II affirmed, “At the basis of
Christ’s call to continence [for the kingdom] there stands...
the awareness of the freedom of the gift, which is organically
connected with the deep and mature consciousness of the spousal
meaning of the body.”3 This key text will form the foundation of
my argument.
What is the Theology of the Body?
“Theology of the body” is the working title which John Paul II
gave to the first major teaching project of his pontificate – a
collection of 129 Wednesday audience addresses offering an
in-depth biblical reflection on the meaning of human embodiment,
particularly as it concerns our creation as male and female. The
TOB is most often cast as an extended catechesis on marriage and
sexual love. It certainly is that, but it is also much more.
Through the mystery of the incarnate person and the biblical
analogy of spousal love, John Paul II’s catechesis illumines the
entirety of God’s plan for human life from origin to eschaton
with a splendid supernatural light. The TOB is not only a
response to the sexual revolution, it is a response to the
Enlightenment. It is a response to modern rationalism, Cartesian
dualism, “spiritualism,” and all the dis-embodied anthropologies
infecting the modern world. In short, the TOB is one of the
Catholic Church’s most critical efforts in modern times to help
the world become more “conscious of the mystery and reality of
the Incarnation”4 – and, through that, to become conscious of
the humanum, of the very purpose and meaning of human life.5
The invisible God has revealed his mystery through the Word made
flesh – theology of the body. This phrase is not only the title
of John Paul II’s catechesis. It represents the very “logic” of
Christianity. In its course, John Paul II’s catechesis on the
body plunges us head first into “the perspective of the whole
gospel, of the whole teaching, even more, of the whole mission
of Christ.”6 The TOB, then, is nothing but an extended
proclamation of and commentary on the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
the Gospel of the Incarnate Word – the “Gospel of the body.”
“The richest source for knowledge of the body is the Word made
flesh.”7 Thus, from start to finish, John Paul’s catechesis
calls us to encounter the living, Incarnate Christ and to ponder
how his body reveals the meaning of our bodies. Vatican II put
it succinctly: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the
incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam,
the first man, was a figure of him who was to come, namely
Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of
the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to
himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”8 The TOB is
nothing but an extended commentary on this fundamental truth:
Christ fully reveals man to himself through the revelation – in
his body – of the mystery of the Father and his love.
This is the meaning of the body revealed by Christ: it is meant
to express divine love. “On the basis of this meaning, [Christ
allows] us to understand and bring about the mature freedom of
the gift, which expresses itself in one way in indissoluble
marriage and in another by abstaining from marriage for the
kingdom of God. In these different ways, Christ ‘fully reveals
man to man himself and makes his supreme vocation clear.’”9
The Great Spousal Analogy
Scripture uses many images to describe the mystery of God’s
relationship with humanity: father and son, bridegroom and
bride, king and subjects, shepherd and sheep, vine and branches,
head and body. Christ even compares himself to a mother hen
caring for his chicks. Each of these images has value. But one
stands out among the others. One has influenced the whole
history of Christian thought like no other. This image, in fact,
is not merely an image, but a sacrament which efficaciously
communicates the mystery it signifies: the relationship of
bridegroom and bride.10 The Scriptures employ this image more
than any other. The greatest mystics also favor it. John Paul,
deeply imbued with Carmelite mysticism, shares this same
preference. In keeping with the Carmelite tradition, John Paul
uses the “great spousal analogy” as a lens through which to view
the entirety of God’s plan of salvation.11
We can observe that from beginning to end, the Bible tells a
story about marriage.12 It begins with the creation of man and
woman and their call to become “one flesh.” Throughout the Old
Testament the prophets speak of God’s love for his people as the
love of a husband for his bride. The Song of Songs – that great
biblical ode to erotic love at the pinnacle of the Old Testament
– has given countless saints a language for describing their own
mystical experiences of union with God. In the New Testament,
Christ literally embodies the love of the eternal Bridegroom,
becoming “one flesh” with all humanity through the Incarnation.
Skip to the end of the Bible and the book of Revelation
describes heaven as the Marriage of the Lamb.
The whole of biblical revelation unfolds between the marriage of
the first Adam and Eve and the marriage of the final Adam and
Eve, Christ and the Church. In turn, spousal theology looks to
these nuptial “book ends” as a key for interpreting all that
lies between. From this perspective we see that God’s mysterious
and eternal plan is to espouse us to himself forever (see Hos
2:19)—to “marry” us. Respecting our freedom, the heavenly
Bridegroom proposes this marital plan and awaits our fiat.
One of the critical illuminations of the TOB is that this
eternal “marital plan” is not “out there” somewhere. It could
not be any closer to us. It is right here, mysteriously
recapitulated in our very being as male and female. The Gospel
mystery is inscribed sacramentally in the theology of our
bodies: “‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and
mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one
flesh.’ This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to
Christ and the church” (Eph 5:31–32). This is the key scriptural
text for understanding the body theologically. Here we see how
the body, and the spousal union of bodies, communicates profound
spiritual and divine mysteries. As John Paul II affirmed: “The
body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible
what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It has been
created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the
mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of
it.”13 This is the thesis statement of the TOB, the brush with
which John Paul paints his entire catechesis.
The Spousal Meaning of the Body
The experience of nakedness without shame in Genesis 2:25
“allows us to speak of revelation together with the discovery of
the ‘spousal’ meaning of the body in the mystery of creation.”14
The spousal meaning of the body is one of the most important and
synoptic concepts of the Pope’s entire TOB. But it is not simply
a “concept” or intellectual idea. The spousal meaning of the
body speaks of man and woman’s conscious experience of their
bodies as a gift and sign of God’s love – and, in turn, their
sharing this Love with one another in and through their bodies,
their masculinity and femininity.
This incarnate concept of love points to the original
integration and harmony of the interior and exterior dimensions
of the human person. Man experiences his call to love from
within. But the spousal meaning of the body also confirms this
exteriorly precisely because man is a unity of body and soul.
Based on this anthropological truth of body-soul integration,
speaking of the human person means simultaneously speaking of
the human body and sexuality. “This simultaneity is essential,”
the Pope says. For “if we dealt with sex without the person”—and
we could also say if we dealt with the person without sex—“this
would destroy the whole adequacy of the anthropology that we
find in Genesis.”15
The whole truth of the body and of sex, John Paul affirms, “is
the simple and pure truth of communion between persons.”16 This
communion is established through an integrated, incarnate love.
Hence, John Paul defines the spousal meaning of the body as the
body’s “power to express love: precisely that love in which the
human person becomes a gift and – through this gift – fulfills
the very meaning of his being and existence.”17 Here John Paul
echoes that key text from the Second Vatican Council: “It
follows then, that if man is the only creature on earth that God
willed for its own sake, man can fully discover his true self
only in a sincere giving of himself.”18 John Paul demonstrates
that this teaching of the Council is rooted not only in the
spiritual aspect of man’s nature, but also in his body, in the
complementary difference of the sexes and their call to become
“one flesh.”
Of course, this does not mean that everyone is called to
marriage. Nor could it possibly mean that sexual union is
required in order to understand and live the meaning of life. It
does mean, however, that we are all called to some expression of
“spousal love” – to an incarnate self-giving. Everyone,
regardless of earthly vocation, finds the ultimate fulfillment
of the spousal meaning of the body in the “Marriage of the
Lamb,” that is, in union with Christ. And everyone’s journey
toward this heavenly reality, regardless of earthly vocation,
passes by way of the experience of sexual embodiment.
The Church recognizes two ways of living this vocation to love
in its fullness – marriage or celibacy for the kingdom.19 Both
vocations flow from the basic disposition of the human person
towards communion revealed in the spousal meaning of the body.
As John Paul states in his TOB: “On the basis of the same
disposition of the personal subject and on the basis of the same
spousal meaning of being, as a body, male and female, there can
be formed the love that commits man to marriage for the whole
duration of his life (see Mt 19:3-9), but there can be formed
also the love that commits man for his whole life to continence
‘for the kingdom of heaven’ (see Mt 19:11-12).”20
Christian celibacy, therefore, must never be understood as a
rejection of God’s plan for sexuality. Rather, it is a sign of
the ultimate purpose and meaning of human sexuality – the union
of Christ and the Church (see Eph 5:31-32). The celibate person
skips the sacrament of Christ’s union with the Church (the
marriage of Genesis) in order to devote himself entirely to the
reality of Christ’s union with the Church (the marriage of the
book of Revelation). As John Paul expressed it, “Continence
‘for’ the kingdom... is a charismatic sign... [that] points out
the eschatological ‘virginity’ of the risen man, in which... the
absolute and eternal spousal meaning of the glorified body will
be revealed in union with God himself.”21
John Paul insists that the call to voluntary celibacy only finds
its proper motivation in relation to the spousal meaning of
masculinity and femininity. If someone where to choose celibacy
based on a fear or rejection of the true wealth of sexuality, it
would not correspond to Christ’s invitation.22 The spousal
meaning of the body “constitutes the fundamental component of
human existence in the world.”23 Hence, we cannot reject or
forego the spousal meaning of our bodies without doing violence
to our humanity. John Paul II observed in Pastores Dabo Vobis
that celibacy for the kingdom “makes evident, even in the
renunciation of marriage, the ‘spousal meaning’ of the body
through...a personal gift to Jesus Christ and his Church which
prefigures the perfect and final communion of self-giving of the
world to come.... [It prefigures] also in a bodily way, the
eschatological marriage of Christ with the Church.”24
By virtue of the spousal meaning of his body, every man is
called in some way to be a husband and father. The priest, in
imitation of Christ, marries the Church, taking her as his
bride. And through this virile, celibate gift, he bears numerous
spiritual children. This is why calling a priest “father” is not
merely a title, but a recognition of his ontological identity.
We can thus recognize that the spousal meaning of the body is an
“indispensable theme” of man’s existence. “In fact, in the whole
perspective of his own ‘history,’ man will not fail to confer a
spousal meaning on his own body. Even if this meaning does
undergo and will undergo many distortions, it will always remain
[at] the deepest level... as a sign of the ‘image of God.’ Here
we also find the road that goes from the mystery of creation to
the ‘redemption of the body’ (see Rom 8).”25
Redemption of the Body/ Transformation of Sexual Desire
Due to sin, the “human body in its masculinity and femininity
has almost lost the power of expressing this love in which the
human person becomes a gift.” John Paul adds the adverb “almost”
because the “spousal meaning of the body has not become totally
foreign to that heart: it has not been totally suffocated in it
by concupiscence, but only habitually threatened. The ‘heart’
has become a battlefield between love and concupiscence. The
more concupiscence dominates the heart, the less the heart
experiences the spousal meaning of the body.”26
St. Paul vividly describes the interior battle we experience
between good and evil in Romans 7. But he also speaks of the
power of redemption at work within us which is able to do far
more than we ever think or imagine (see Eph 3:20). Balancing
these truths, we find both a real battle with lust and the
possibility of a real victory over it. Christ calls us precisely
to this victory in the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard the
commandment, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you
that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already
committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:27-28). Christ
demonstrates that merely following a commandment externally is
not enough. The problem is that fallen man is riddled with lust
in his heart. Jesus came not to enforce a code of ethics; he
came to transform the human ethos – that is, to transform the
desires of our hearts. “Christian ethos is characterized by a
transformation of the human person’s conscience and attitudes
...such as to express and realize the value of the body and sex
according to the Creator’s original plan.”27
We “groan inwardly,” St. Paul says, as we await this
transformation, this “redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23). But
the redemption of the body is not merely some distant hope. The
“‘redemption of the body’ ...expresses itself not only in the
resurrection as victory over death. It is present also in the
words of Christ addressed to ‘historical’ man [when] Christ
invites us to overcome concupiscence, even in the exclusively
inner movements of the human heart.”28
When lust “flairs up” in the human heart, most people think they
only have two choices: indulge or repress. If these are the only
two options, most Christians will choose repression, mistakenly
believing it the path to holiness. John Paul II demonstrates
that there is another way. Rather than repress lust by pushing
it into the subconscious, trying to ignore it, or otherwise
seeking to annihilate it, we must surrender our lusts to the
paschal mystery. As we do, “the Spirit of the Lord gives new
form to our desires.”29 In other words, as we allow lust to be
“crucified,” we also come to experience the “resurrection” of
God’s original plan for sexual desire. Not immediately, but
gradually, progressively, as we take up our cross every day and
follow, we come to experience sexual desire as the power to love
in God’s image. In other words, we come to reclaim the true
freedom of the gift connected to the spousal meaning of the
body.30
“It is necessary,” John Paul says, “continually to rediscover
the spousal meaning of the body and the true dignity of the gift
in what is ‘erotic.’ This is the task of the human spirit.... If
one does not assume this task, the very attraction of the senses
and the passion of the body can stop at mere concupiscence,
deprived of all ethical value.” If man stops here, he “does not
experience that fullness of ‘eros,’ which implies the upward
impulse of the human spirit toward what is true, good, and
beautiful, so that what is ‘erotic’ also becomes true, good, and
beautiful.”31
Eros, in other words, if it is to be fully itself, must open to
divine love, to agape.32 Eros, in its fullness, always implies
this “upward impulse” toward the Divine. However, an
“intoxicated and undisciplined eros...is not an ascent in
‘ecstasy’ towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man.
Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to
provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of
the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our
whole being yearns.”33 It is precisely this “beatitude for which
our whole being yearns” to which priestly celibacy bears
witness. But the celibate man can only bear an effective and
compelling witness to this beatitude to the degree that his
erotic inclinations are disciplined and purified.
Celibacy Flows from the Ethos of Redemption
It is precisely this purification that makes celibacy for the
kingdom a life of authentic sexual liberation, not sexual
repression. In the end, the celibate person has two choices:
redemption of eros or neurosis. The same holds true, of course,
for spouses – but their neuroses can be more easily hidden
within their sexually active relationship. Everyone, regardless
of vocation, is called to experience the redemption of eros.
This and this alone enables Christian celibacy and Christian
marriage to be an authentic witness to the Marriage of the Lamb.
So much confusion about the Church’s teaching – not just on sex,
but on the whole economy of salvation – stems from the tunnel
vision that results from normalizing concupiscence. For those
whose hearts are bound by lust, the idea of choosing a life of
total celibacy is absurd. But for those who are being liberated
from lust by the ethos of redemption, the idea of sacrificing
the genital expression of their sexuality “for the sake of the
kingdom of heaven” not only becomes a real possibility – it
becomes quite attractive, even desirable.
When authentically lived, the Christian call to life-long
celibacy witnesses dramatically to the freedom for which Christ
has set us free. Of course, a truly chaste marriage witnesses to
the same freedom. Contrary to the tunnel vision perspective
mentioned above, marriage does not provide a “legitimate outlet”
for indulging one’s lusts. Thus, whoever has an authentic
Christian understanding of marriage at the same time gains an
authentic Christian understanding of life-long celibacy. Such an
understanding comes from the ethos of redemption. As John Paul
says, behind the call to continence in Matthew 19 and the call
to overcome lust in Matthew 5 “one finds the same anthropology
and the same ethos.”34 In other words, both vocations (marriage
and celibacy) flow from the same vision of the human person and
the same call to experience the redemption of our bodies, which
includes the redemption of our sexual desires.
John Paul says that the invitation to celibacy for the kingdom
even “enlargers” the perspectives of the ethos of historical man
in light of the future anthropology of the resurrection. This
does not mean that the anthropology of the resurrection replaces
the anthropology of historical man. Men and women who choose
celibacy for the kingdom, just like those who choose marriage,
must contend with concupiscence. But historical man is also
redeemed man. “Redemption is a truth, a reality, in the name of
which man must feel himself called, and ‘called with
effectiveness.’”35 Only the man living this “effective
redemption” is properly prepared to embrace a life of celibacy
for the kingdom. Lest we fall into the trap of thinking marriage
legitimizes concupiscence, we must insist that living the
effectiveness of redemption is also required of those who
embrace marriage. The Holy Father expresses this when he says
that the person who chooses celibacy for the kingdom must submit
“the sinfulness of his own humanity to the powers that flow from
the mystery of the redemption of the body...just as every other
person does... whose way remains marriage. What is different,”
the Pope observes, “is only the kind of responsibility for the
chosen good, just as the kind of good chosen is different.”36
The difference between marriage and continence for the kingdom
must never be understood as the difference between having a
legitimate outlet for concupiscence on the one hand and having
to repress concupiscence on the other. Only upon experiencing a
true level of freedom in this regard do the Christian vocations
(celibacy and marriage) make sense. For both flow from the same
experience of the redemption of the body and of sexual desire.
Both flow from the same spousal meaning of the body and the call
to become a gift in and through masculinity and femininity.
Without experiencing the freedom of the gift for which Christ
has set us free, celibacy is seen as hopelessly repressive and
marriage as legitimately indulgent. How far from the Gospel
ethos these perspectives are!
In Conclusion
Paraphrasing a lengthy passage from John Paul II, he insists
that we must learn with perseverance and consistency the meaning
of our bodies, the meaning of our sexuality. We must learn this
not only in the abstract (although this, too, is necessary), but
above all in the interior reactions of our own “hearts.” This is
a “science,” he says, which cannot really be learned only from
books, because it is a question here of deep knowledge of our
interior life. Deep in the heart we learn to distinguish between
what, on the one hand, composes the great riches of sexuality
and sexual attraction, and what, on the other hand, bears only
the sign of lust. And although these internal movements of the
heart can sometimes be confused with each other, we have been
called by Christ to acquire a mature and complete evaluation
allowing us to distinguish and judge the various movements of
our hearts. “And it should be added that this task can be
carried out and that it is truly worthy of man.”37
As this task is carried out, man comes to experience the spousal
meaning of the body and the true freedom of the gift – a freedom
he can express through the genital gift of self in marriage or
through the celibate gift of self to Christ and his Church. In
this way one sees that the Church’s esteem for celibacy lies not
in a dualistic separation of “spiritual values” over those of
the body and sex. Rather, the Church’s esteem for celibacy lies
precisely in the fact that it points to the ultimate value of
the body and of sex. For the one flesh union is a “great
mystery” that refers to the union of Christ and the Church (see
Eph 5:31-32). The celibate priest, expressing an authentic
sexual liberation, foregoes the former to devote himself
entirely to the latter.
Bibliography
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition. Washington,
D.C.: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997.
Pope Benedict XVI. God is Love. Boston: Pauline, 2006.
Pope John Paul II. Familiaris Consortio. Boston: Pauline,
1981.
_____. Letter to Families. Boston: Pauline, 1994.
_____. Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body.
Boston: Pauline, 2006.
_____. Pastores Dabo Vobis. Boston: Pauline, 1992.
Vatican Council II. Gaudium et Spes. Boston: Pauline,
1965.
West, Christopher. Theology of the Body Explained, Second
Edition. Boston: Pauline, 2007.
Republished
with permission from:
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original article:
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