One of my favorite parts of blogging is that it brings me into many conversations with others that cause me to stretch my understanding of the Christian faith and to wrestle with topics that alone I would most likely not consider. One such recent conversation began with an invitation by my fellow blogger Rae at her home over at There Is No Wealth But Life. The question to her readers centers around the idea of a celibate marriage and why, though rare, this is not more widely accepted by Christians as being a legitimate practice. Her original post, Celibacy and Utilitarianism, calls Catholics to see our faith as something that goes beyond having simply a pragmatic purpose. In this thought, I am in complete agreement with Rae and believe that we desperately need to move away from simply seeing our faith in utilitarian terms. With regards to what is often referred to as a “Josephite Marriage”, meaning a marriage where both spouses agree to abstain from sexual intercourse from the very beginning of the marriage, I will admit to having some personal struggles in understanding those who choose to enter into a marriage of this type. It is certainly one of the grey areas of Church law, but since being challenged by Rae do some more exploration on the subject, I have to admit that it is something the Church allows while I am still not all that certain that it is something to which the Church would give widespread encouragement. I will agree, however, that there are many points within the debate over celibacy, or perhaps a better word would be abstinence, both in the context of marriage and outside of it that our modern culture would do well to explore with more seriousness.

I have hesitated in writing this post, as it is never my intent to foster uncharitable debates that so often surround topics such as this one. My experience of Rae, however, has always been one where civilized discourse and conversation are central. So while I expect and hope that she and others will respond to this post with comments of their own, I would remind those who wish to add their own thoughts to do so always in a spirit of charity.

Perhaps a good place to begin is with the definition of the word celibacy. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines celibacy this way:

Celibacy:

1: the state of not being married

2: a) abstention from sexual intercourse; b) abstention by vow from marriage

The English word has its origin from the Latin caelibatus which means “the state of being unmarried”. The reason I want to start with this definition is that there has been a long tradition in the Church, beginning with Christ that would encourage those who can to remain celibate, but also that this would almost universally be defined as remaining unmarried.

Let’s take a look at some of the points from canon law that were presented in Rae’s blogpost. Both Church law and Church tradition would show us that a couple is married when they have freely given their consent to one another. I always make a point to stress to couples that I am preparing for marriage that it is the couple themselves that administer the sacrament to each other and that I am simply there as an official witness. One of my best memories at a wedding was when the bride looked over at me after exchanging vows with her husband and whispered, “We’re married!” Rae is absolutely correct in pointing out that the Church does not claim a couple is not married until they have consummated their marriage. The church even gives two definitions for those who have entered into marriage.

A valid marriage between the baptized is called ratum tantum if it has not been consummated; it is called ratum et consummatum if the spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion a conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh.

One thing to note, however, in this canon is the implication that there would normally be a sexual union between spouses due to the fact that the very nature of marriage is ordered toward this end and that this is the traditional way by which “two become one flesh”. Certainly marital union is and should not be limited to the physical union, but I would argue that there is physical dimension to every sacrament that is necessary because of the Incarnation of Christ. But more on that later.

One thing that is clear to me after ten years of working with couples who are seeking an annulment is that the Church always presumes there is a valid marriage, unless proven otherwise. There is also another presumption that is stated in canon law this way:

After a marriage has been celebrated, if the spouses have lived together consummation is presumed until the contrary is proven.

This once again, seems to point to the fact that the Church understands the physical aspects of marriage to be at the heart of its definition of the sacrament.

One thing that should be noted with regards to canon law is that a marriage that has not been consummated is not able to be nullified, but rather it is dissolved. Dissolution implies that there really was a marriage, where an annulment means that there was something wrong with the consent at the time of marriage. This is a point that Rae has made very clear in her posts and it is entirely valid. My first experience of working with someone seeking to remarry in the Church ended with the granting of a dissolution of their marriage by the Petrine Privilege. This type of case involves someone who was married to a non-Christian and chooses to marry another Christian. In this case, the Church dissolves the first marriage in favor of granting a sacramental marriage to another Christian. The Church acknowledges that there was a natural marriage but gives “favoritism” to the Christian marriage. I wonder, and I should stress the word wonder,  if this might have a parallel in the case of marriages dissolved due to the fact that they were not consummated. Does this mean the Church favors those that follow the more common practice of marital relations? I don’t have a good answer to this.

Where Rae and I are in total agreement is her point regarding utilitarianism. Richard Sipe once wrote, “Religious celibacy is a love affair, or it is nothing”.  I couldn’t agree more. In the best sense that it is lived out, celibacy has little to do with the pragmatic dimension that it frees a priest or religious to be more available for ministry. What I hear Rae to be saying is that while marriage is ordered toward procreation and unity between spouses, the deeper meaning contains much more than simply the pragmatic goal of giving birth to and raising children. The sacrament of marriage is the embodiment of the marriage between Christ and His Church. It represents the love that exists between God and His people.

I would still like to get back to the Incarnation as the central part of our Christian faith. There are two core beliefs of the Christian faith that have to guide us in all that we do. Our faith can be summed up in the Incarnation and the Trinity. I’m not going to comment on the Trinity in this post in order to keep an already long post from becoming longer. Perhaps there could be a future post that looks at that aspect of our faith as it applies to marriage. I am a strong believer in the fact that every sacrament has its origin in the Incarnation of Christ. This means we can’t separate the physical from the spiritual as they are one. Just as Christ is both human and divine, but is one person, we too share in this reality as we have been created in the image and likeness of God. There is a reason that the Church acknowledges the benefit of spiritual communion when one cannot physically receive the Body and Blood of Christ during Mass due to the effects of sin, but the Church would always have as its goal that we frequently receive the Eucharist. In every sacrament there is a physical element and this is not accidental. This is one of the main things that troubles me personally with the idea of a marriage where the physical union is absent. Much of our tradition speaks of the marriage bed as the altar of the sacrament of marriage. In my opinion, it would be only in rare cases that one would exclude this aspect of the married life.

But what about the connection between abstinence and asceticism? Here is a topic that I would like to explore further. There is a clear connection between the discipline of celibacy and other ascetic practices in the Church. I am a firm believer that the reason behind the lack of understanding of celibacy lies in a lack of understanding, appreciation and embrace of fasting and asceticism in the modern Christian understanding of things. Celibacy is an ascetic practice that can only be understood and supported when the entire Christian community is engaged in asceticism. But perhaps this subject is better saved for another day.

This post is unusual both in its subject matter and in its length. I hope that the readers of this blog will take some time to reflect upon it and as always to post your opinions in the comments section. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

One of the things that might surprise Catholics who have not read the documents of Vatican II, is that they do not call for a complete abolishing of Latin in the mass. Two paragraphs which I find very instructive on this topic are as follows:

The use of the Latin language, with due respect to particular law, is to be preserved in the Latin rites. But since the use of the vernacular, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or in other parts of the liturgy, may frequently be of great advantage to the people, a wider use may be made of it, especially in readings, directives and in some prayers and chants. (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 36)

and

A suitable place may be allotted to the vernacular in Masses which are celebrated with the people, especially in the readings and “the common prayer,” and also, as local conditions may warrant, in those parts which pertain to the people…Nevertheless care must be taken to ensure the faithful may also be able to say or sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them. (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 54)

While I am almost certain that the council fathers did have the intention that in certain instances there would be a shift to allow a large portion of the prayers at mass being prayed in the vernacular, I don’t believe any of them would have anticipated the almost complete shift around the world from a Church who prayed exclusively in Latin to one where it became close to non-existent. Since I have no experience of the Mass celebrated before the council, the only thing that I can possibly compare it to is when I have participated in the liturgy in another language of which I am not familiar. In these cases I am aware of what we are doing, but it is much more difficult to understand what is being conveyed in the prayers and it is certainly harder to stay connected to what is going on. Having grown up experiencing the Mass in English allowed me to more easily enter into it. I can also recall as a child having a complete understanding of the reverence necessary during the Eucharist. The building itself, with stained glass, statues of holy men and women, the altar and sanctuary, the priest and altar servers with their distinctive clothing, the smell of incense, all of those things communicated whether in Latin or English that something holy was happening here.

This being said, I do believe that many of our Roman Catholic clergy did the Church as disservice following the council, not by what they did in establishing vernacular in the liturgy, but rather by what they did not do through omission. It is clear to me in the Constitution on the Liturgy that there was never the intent by the Church of abandoning our heritage of the Latin language. I am looking at this in retrospect, but it seems that perhaps the easiest way to have preserved the faithful’s knowledge of Latin would be to continue to use it from time to time in our celebration of the Eucharist. I arrived at the seminary 16 years ago with no knowledge of the Latin parts of the mass and learned them quickly simply through our occasional use at our Sunday and daily mass.

One of the things I have learned in my time of understanding how to pray the Mass in Spanish is how the prayers change when prayed in a different language. Many Saturday nights at St. Thomas I have back to back celebrations of the Eucharist. The first is in English, the second in Spanish. The change in language many times brings subtle and sometimes not so subtle changes in meaning and tone which is due to language alone. One of the things we have lost in our infrequent use of the common language of the Church is the meaning that comes about due to the Latin language itself. This is significant, as it is a loss of one of the largest unifying cultural tools at the disposal of the Church. I am certainly not an advocate for a return to how we celebrated the Eucharist before Vatican II, but I am very much in favor of a greater use of our “mother tongue”, as many would refer to it, in addition to our continued use of the vernacular.

There is something else that I think we sometimes miss in our pursuit of all things modern that relates to our continuing debate about language in the Church and that is the fact that in many ways language is not all that important for our worship. I came across a beautiful description of what I mean by this in Anne Rice’s book, Called Out of Darkness:

The hymns we sang before the Blessed Sacrament every Tuesday night have left perhaps the most indelible impression on me of any music I ever heard before or since. It’s this way with many Catholics of my generation. There is a particular love of those two hymns.

Both were in Latin. The first was the most solemn in tone:

O Salutaris Hostia,
Quae caeli pandis ostium,
Bella premunt hostilia,
Da robur, fer auxilium.

This was sung out with a tender tone of appeal, and again a sense of gratitude, a sense of trust. This was Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, this was a special moment of adoration, and one gave oneself to it with one’s entire heart.

I don’t recall caring much about the English meaning of this hymn. The meaning was in the tone and the sound….Let me stress again: a translation of the hymn wasn’t necessary. In fact, we had the translation handy on cards that were given out in the church.  What mattered was that through the singing itself we were connecting with the divine.

True worship can transcend language. When our actions as a community in prayer bring us into communion with God, we are brought into communion necessarily with one another. Though Anne Rice has recently left the Church, I know she has this one right. When entered into with the proper understanding of where we are standing, whom we are singing to, and in whose presence we are, it is not so much the language that matters or even the words. It is the communion itself that matters and it must be incarnate in the same way that our Savior was when he became flesh and made His home with us.

One of the phrases heard often when speaking of the post conciliar liturgy is the call to “full, active and conscious participation”. The council fathers in the document on the liturgy put it in these words,

Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy. Such participation by the Christian people as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people (1 Pet. 2:9; cf. 2:4-5), is their right and duty by reason of their baptism.

In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit; and therefore pastors of souls must zealously strive to achieve it, by means of the necessary instruction, in all their pastoral work.

Recently at St. Thomas I embarked upon a series of homilies meant to remind our parish of what this full, active and conscious participation might look like.

First, I challenged the parish that full participation means that one must be present for the entire liturgy, meaning that one arrives early enough to prepare for mass and stays through the singing of the closing hymn. Growing up it seems to me that too much emphasis was put on what was the minimum amount of time one could be at mass for it to “count”. This seems overly legalistic to me and tends to promote the idea that we are somehow earning points with God by coming to mass rather than our worship expressing our thanks for the salvation he has freely given to us.

Second, I encouraged them to actively participate by engaging in all parts of the liturgy while looking for the message God was sending to each one of us every time we step into the church for mass. This outward participation is not only for ourselves, but by doing all we can to participate we share the work of the liturgy and help each other to actively pray.

Third, I suggested that not only is it the outward signs of our participation that are important, but that we are conscious of what it is we are doing when we gather to pray. It is not enough to simply say the words of the prayers, to participate in the singing, to make the sign of the cross, etc. if there is not something deeper happening within each one of us. This process of transformation must be ever deepening each week when we attend the liturgy together.

My hope is that by beginning with these three simple practices we can begin to deepen our prayer together and participate fully, actively and consciously each time we gather for the celebration of the Eucharist.

In our latest Faith Seeking Understanding podcast we discuss the subject of iconography. You can listen to it here.