The Tablet Letter on the sadness of celibacy

The Tablet, 6 July 2024
Sadness of celibacy
I was touched by Cathy Galvin’s article on priesthood (“Thank you, Father”, 22 June). But the emotion that stayed with me after reading it was one of sadness and melancholy.
There is a sadness brought on by mandatory celibacy – priests in the western Church cannot be ordained unless they take a vow not to marry. The result for many is a loneliness that nothing can assuage.
The priest she focused on at the start was lonely. He was gaunt, poorly clothed, did not eat enough and could not give up smoking: a man without a wife to look after him. Like many former priests, I left my practice as a priest because of celibacy.
But the celibacy ruling is based on faulty theology. For more than the first Christian millennium, priests, bishops and popes in the West married and had children.
It was Pope Innocent III who imposed celibacy as a condition for ordination in the twelfth century. He wrote: “Who does not know that conjugal intercourse is never committed without itching of the flesh and heat and foul concupiscence whence the conceived seeds are befouled and corrupted?”
Today, we have to ask if celibacy should remain mandatory, especially when we read these words in the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes: “The actions within marriage by which couples are united intimately and chastely are noble and worthy ones” – a complete reversal of the words of Pope Innocent.
Celibacy is a major reason for priests leaving the priesthood and for the dwindling number of priests. At least part of the remedy would be the ordination of married men.
Joseph Fitzpatrick
Ilkley, West Yorkshire