Priest calls celibacy Church DNA as debate over married clergy grows

Celibacy is not linked to sexual abuse by priests, while the Catholic Church’s long history shows that the current requirement is neither as old nor as self-evident as it may seem, LRT reported. The debate has resurfaced as Western churches face a shortage of priests and consider whether married men should be ordained.

Celibacy is often viewed as inseparable from Roman Catholic priesthood. However, recent public discussion has focused on whether ending the requirement could reduce sexual abuse and whether the Church is moving closer to allowing priests to marry.

Darius Chmieliauskas, a deacon and editor of the magazine Artuma, said celibacy among clergy or religious servants was known before Christianity. In the early Christian period, priests had families but were expected to observe ritual purity and abstain from marital relations before services.

“The idea that priests could not have families from the very beginning does not correspond to history,” Chmieliauskas said, adding that there was never a clear and universal rule that all priests could not have families or sexual relations.

The question of clerical abstinence became more prominent in the third and fourth centuries. For a long time, the discussion focused less on whether priests could be married than on when and how they should abstain from sexual relations.

The current system in the Latin Church was ultimately established through medieval reforms. The issue was linked not only to morality but also to property and inheritance. According to Chmieliauskas, some wealthy priests owned churches, and their children could inherit them. The Gregorian reforms therefore initially addressed a legal issue rather than a moral one, he said.

Rūta Tumėnaitė, editor of LRT Radio’s programme Mažoji studija, said there was no basis for claiming that abolishing celibacy would end sexual abuse by priests.

“Celibacy and paedophilia are absolutely unrelated,” Tumėnaitė said. She argued that the issue was more closely connected with double standards and living dishonestly. Ending celibacy, she said, would not resolve paedophilia because the two issues have different causes.

The shortage of priests has become another reason for raising the question of celibacy in Western churches. The debate is particularly intense in Belgium, where some bishops are considering the possibility of ordaining married men.

Tumėnaitė said the Belgian Church is ageing and has had to merge parishes. Many are led by older priests, while there are few priests under 50. Over the past 60 years, the number of priests has fallen by 90 percent, she said, adding that bringing in priests from abroad had not solved the problem.

In Belgium, the discussion is therefore focused not only on ending celibacy universally but also on giving local churches more freedom to address their own circumstances. Tumėnaitė said some were calling either for a solution or permission to ordain married men because they no longer had enough new vocations.

Priest Linas Braukyla questioned whether allowing married men to become priests would solve the shortage. There might be more priests in the short term, he said, but not in the long term.

“The Church is alive not through service or providing functions, as if it simply needed to find more people to serve. The true lifeblood of the Church is faith and the love of God,” Braukyla said.