Free to pursue if you want. . .

In Roman Catholic understanding, celibacy is considered higher than marriage in part because it allows individuals the freedom to dedicate themselves fully to the Lord and His service without the distractions and responsibilities that come with marriage and family.  Lutherans say something similar in our own Confessions.  Celibacy is the higher gift.   It undeniably is the teaching of the Lutheran Symbols that virginity is a higher state than matrimony.  Both can be and are pleasing to God when lived in chastely (though chaste here obviously means something different for the celibate than for the married).  This is one reason why I cannot endorse the change from chaste to sexually pure in the most current version of our Catechism.  That said, it might seem that Rome and Wittenberg are on the same page here but it is quite clear they are not.  By the way, this is not merely about the requirement of celibacy for the priest but about the esteem we hold both the gift of celibacy and the gift marriage.

How this plays out is the issue.  A friend sent me a link to a Roman Catholic post entitled:  Celibacy is better than marriage—don’t be threatened by this truth!  Pope Pius XII: “Virginity is preferable to marriage then, as We have said, above all else because it has a higher aim: that is to say, it is a very efficacious means for devoting oneself wholly to the service of God, while the heart of married persons will remain more or less ‘divided.’” The author continues:  It is of course better, subjectively, to live the life one is called to. Yet it is not enough to say that celibacy is better for some while marriage is better for others. Celibacy is better than marriage, absolutely speaking. In fact, in the long run, we are all called to celibacy.  While the author goes on to suggest that no one should be upset by the promotion of a higher good over lesser goods and insists we will all be celibate in heaven, the point here mistakes the reality of God's creative order as mere utility rather than gift.  You are free to pursue marriage if you want but it is not itself a vocation.  Really?

Celibacy certainly is a charism, that is, gift from God.  Luther's and the Lutheran's point is that the gift cannot be required of those who serve since it is a gift from God and not simply personal or churchly discipline.  Rome admits that celibacy is a discipline of obedience for priestly service.  While Rome has centuries of tradition on its side, Lutherans have the Scriptures and a clear attestation that both priests and bishops were married (at least according to no less an authority than St. Paul).  In defending his own decision to marry, perhaps Luther went off the rails by going to the opposite extreme and saying that celibacy is contrary to nature.  It is certainly true that in the time before the Reformation, marriage and family were discouraged and even denigrated -- not in the sense of telling people they could do what they wanted but in the sense of saying that only the celibate had a vocation and implying only the celibate had the blessing of God upon their estate.  All of this while at the same time proclaiming marriage a sacrament!  How odd!

What this has become, however, is a toleration of marriage and family more so than the promotion of both as having God's plan and blessing attached to them.  In reality, we have gotten down to the point where marriage and family are merely options along the way and the single life (not celibate) is the pursuit of self with the presumption that this is the highest good (at least for the individual).  The reality remains that the gift of celibacy is a gift which is not enjoyed by many nor has it ever been.  St. Paul admits this and insists that the gift is not meant as a life lived in the torment of the desire of the flesh burning inside.  To this St. Paul advises marriage and not as something to be tolerated but as the answer to this longing.  To be sure those with the gift of celibacy will have moments of burning or tortured desire for another and yet they are able to live contentedly within the grace of God without being consumed by this desire.  God bless them.  The single estate today hardly accords with such a picture.  Instead it is the unbridled pursuit of self with the agreement that marriage and family constrain this desire and are therefore not good.

Rome's problem is in saying that God wants us all to be celibate.  Luther's problem is in saying that God wants all of us to be married.  In this, it is probably more accurate to agree with Luther's exaggeration than Rome's.  After all God made man for woman and woman for man.  Marriage was not an afterthought for the constraint of passion but God's intent from the beginning.  Living singly is often the result of a sinful world in which our wants and desires even for good and salutary things are left unmet and we bear the burden of that disappointment.  Living as the celibate is not simply being unable to find a wife or husband along the way but the gift realized and lived out by grace through faith for the glory of God.  Both are to be lived chastely and no one gets a pass from this.  That said, our kids have heard from us and learned that marriage and family are messy and put a damper on your self-indulgence and therefore might and perhaps should be avoided.  This is people doing what they think is right in their own eyes.  It is sin as bad as and even worse than forcing celibacy upon those without the gift or marriage upon those who do have it.  Let's be honest.  There are some who might have the gift or charism of celibacy but the ordinary shape of all our lives is marriage and family -- not as a good less than virginity but as a different good and, perhaps, one requiring a greater surrender to the will and purpose of the Lord and so higher in that sense.  

For Rome, admitting that marriage is an equally lofty path to holiness as celibacy means glorifying sex.  I am not sure how you end up with this.  Sex is not what is being glorified in marriage but God's good creation and our entrance into that creative order.  The world is saying it is all good -- whatever you want.  Marriage and family are not saying that.  Perhaps the preponderance of birth control and the prevalence of abortion have tried to make it about the sex and, if the churches have followed this path, then we have corrupted God's purpose as well by suggesting it.  You cannot read God's creation without also reading how God in His will and purpose made them male and female, ordered their life together, blessed them with children, and intended this till death us do part.  God was not tolerating this but commending this as good and by its goodness insisting that we live in it the holy, upright, and godly lives we are called to live.  Forgiveness makes this possible and our righteousness never commends our salvation but that does not mean this is not good, right, or salutary.  The shape of our human lives is ordinarily marriage and family and this lens is what we have failed to impart to our children and grandchildren so that even Christian people today view it as merely one among many choices.  That is not how Scripture says it.