Rev. Ralph Wiltgen: The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II

[Stone]

THE FOURTH SESSION

September 14 to December 8, 1965

PRIESTLY CELIBACY

The sensational and unfounded news reports that the Council might decide to allow Catholic priests to marry caused large sections of the world to believe that the Council would in fact make such a decision. The press and the public apparently did not realize that the Council Fathers took celibacy so much for granted that they did not even intend to deal with the subject in any of their decrees. And precisely because the press sensationalized the matter and spread so much confusion about it, the Council found itself forced to come out more strongly on celibacy than ever before in the history of the Church. The Council stressed the importance, necessity and obligation of permanent celibacy for priests of the Latin rite, and exhorted the married Eastern-rite clergy to live model lives.

The episcopal conference of France was the first to react to the spreading confusion by issuing the following statement to the press on November 15, 1963: “Since some bishops are in favor of conferring the diaconate on married men, the public has been assured by fantastic stories that the Church is progressively moving toward a married priesthood. Realizing the confusion which such news can create in people’s minds, the French episcopate declares unanimously that these assertions are completely false.

Among the hundreds of interventions made at the Council, none has envisaged the possibility of any change whatsoever in the law of priestly celibacy as practiced in the Latin Church. In spite of unfortunate cases which might result, the Latin Church has no intention whatsoever of setting aside a law which, while having its origin in the Church, has its primary source in the Gospels and in the priest’s complete gift of himself to Christ and the Church.”

An even stronger reaction came between the second and third sessions from the bishops of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Scandinavia. At Innsbruck, in May 1964, they prepared their official comments on the propositions on priests. Since the propositions contained nothing on the law of celibacy, and since it was being called into question “by public opinion and by certain Catholics,” they decided that a sound explanation of its significance should be given in order to clarify the issue for the public, and they prepared an appropriate text. At the same meeting, these Council Fathers examined the propositions on seminary training.

The original schema on this subject had contained a paragraph on training for celibacy, but in the shortening process this paragraph had been dropped. The Innsbruck conference called attention to this omission and requested that the subject should be reintroduced in the form of a statement on the kind of training needed by those who were to bind themselves by the law of celibacy. This suggestion was acted upon.

The propositions on priests were on the agenda of the third session and were scheduled to come up on Tuesday, October 13,1964. Two days earlier, the following “Declaration” appeared in L'Osservatore Romano:

“Stories, interviews and fantastic comments regarding the law of ecclesiastical celibacy have lately been multiplying in the press.

“We are authorized to make the following clarifications: The law is to remain intact and in full force. As for cases where sacred ordinations and their resultant obligations have been declared null and void, or where dispensations have been granted, all this has been done in conformity with canonical practice and Church discipline. There exist regular established processes which the Church is accustomed to use in examining and judging such cases. The Church determines whether certain reasons exist which prove or disprove the validity of the obligations assumed by those who have approached Holy Orders. It also determines the obligations of validly ordained priests who have become unworthy to belong to the clergy.

“A judgment of nullity or an eventual dispensation from obligations, issued after rigorous examination of motives, far from weakening the law of sacred celibacy serves rather to guarantee its integrity and safeguard its prestige.”

Such a statement could not, of course, have appeared in the semiofficial Vatican newspaper at that time without the knowledge and approval of Pope Paul VI.

Archbishop Francois Marty of Rheims, France, presented the propositions on the priesthood to the general assembly on behalf of the Commission on the Discipline of the Clergy and Faithful. Explaining why the Council Fathers had received a revised text of the propositions, the Archbishop said: “Because so many confused voices are making themselves heard today in an attack upon sacred celibacy, it has seemed most opportune expressly to confirm celibacy and to explain its exalted significance in the life and ministry of a priest.”

Article 2 of the newly revised propositions exhorted “those who have promised to observe sacred celibacy, trusting in God’s grace,” to hold fast to it magnanimously and wholeheartedly. They should persevere faithfully in that state, rejoicing that through celibacy they were inseparably united to Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 7:32-34), and more free to render service to the family of God.

After discussion in the Council hall, the propositions were revised by the competent Commission and returned to the Council Fathers on November 20, the day before the third session ended. The ten lines on celibacy and “perfect chastity” had been expanded to eighty, and a spirituality proper to priests was gradually being developed around this section of the schema. This might never have happened had it not been for the great confusion spread by the press and by the anti-celibacy campaigns. Yet another revision was made between the third and fourth sessions, and the schema was now so changed that it had to be discussed all over again.

Although it was clear that the Council would not seriously consider allowing priests to marry, a new suggestion was now proposed that married men might be permitted to become priests. The advocates of this proposal drew their arguments from the circumstance that the Council, at the end of the third session, had decreed that the diaconate might be conferred, with the consent of the Roman Pontiff, “upon men of more mature age, even upon those living in the married state.” If married men of mature age might become deacons, they argued, why might they not also become priests?

One Council Father publicly took action in the matter early in the fourth session. He was Dutch-born Bishop Pedro Koop of Lins, Brazil, who gave wide distribution to an intervention on the subject which he planned to read in the Council hall. This intervention began: “If the Church is to be saved in our regions of Latin America, then there must be introduced among us as soon as possible a married clergy, formed from our best married men, but without introducing any change in the existing law of celibacy.”

To show the need for priests, he used the same statistical argument as Bishop Kemerer of Posadas, Argentina, had used during the second session in connection with a married diaconate. He also said that the Church was obliged by divine command to evangelize and sanctify the world, and that the People of God had “a strict right to receive the Gospel and to lead a sacramental life. This is a true right, which no human law can obliterate. The Church in justice must respect it.” In conclusion, he made the dire prophecy that the Church in Latin America would collapse if the Council did not “throw open the door to the possibility of conferring the sacred priesthood upon suitable laymen who have been married for at least five years.”

There were recent precedents, of a sort, for the proposal, since Pope Pius XII had allowed married German Lutheran pastors who became Catholics to become priests and retain the use of their marriage rights. This practice had been continued by Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI.

A group of eighty-one professional men and women from around the world lent indirect support to the proposal by circulating among the Council Fathers a letter strongly advocating that married men should be allowed to become priests, and that priests should be allowed to marry. Their reasons against celibacy were: the shortage of priests, their own dissatisfaction with “the manner in which priests are coming to terms with their vow of celibacy,” and their claim that “priests are finding it increasingly difficult to radiate the new glory of the Church in a state of celibacy.”

On October n, two days before the new schema on the priesthood was to come up for discussion, the Secretary General interrupted the proceedings to announce that he had a special letter from Pope Paul to Cardinal Tisserant, to be read to the Council Fathers. The Pope said, in his letter, that it had come to his attention that some Council Fathers intended to bring up the question of the celibacy of the clergy of the Latin rite for discussion on the Council floor, and that he therefore wished to make known his own views in the matter, without at all limiting thereby the freedom of the individual Council Fathers.

To treat the subject in the Council hall, wrote the Pope, was equivalent to treating it in full view of the general public. This, he felt, was inexpedient, since celibacy called for such delicacy of treatment and was of such far-reaching importance for the Church. He personally was resolved that celibacy should not only be preserved in the Latin Church, but that its observance should be reinforced, since through it “priests can consecrate all their love to Christ alone and dedicate themselves totally and generously to the service of the Church and the care of souls.” Here the Council Fathers interrupted the reading with warm and prolonged applause.

The Pope concluded by requesting any Council Fathers who had something special to say on the subject to do so in writing, and to submit their views to the Council Presidency. These observations would then be forwarded to him, and he promised “to examine them attentively before God.” Once again there was a burst of applause throughout the Council hall.

After more discussion on the Council floor, the schema on the priesthood was referred back to the appropriate commission for revision. The voting took place on November 12 and 13. The sections on celibacy, humility, and obedience were accepted by a vote of 2005 to 65. On the twelfth ballot, when qualified affirmative votes on this section were permitted, 123 Council Fathers asked for a modification of the text in Article 16 where the schema stated that the present Council “again approves and confirms” the law of celibacy for priests. They wanted the document to be changed to read that the Council “makes no change” in the law. Their argument was that altered conditions might prompt a future Pope to abolish celibacy. If, therefore, the Second Vatican Council reinforced the law, such a decision would have to go counter to the present Council.

This qualification might well have been prepared by Father Stanislaus Lyonnet, S.J., Dean of the faculty of the Biblical Institute in Rome, who five months earlier had issued a six-page study warning that the wording of the schema would “forever close the door” to a married priesthood. His study had included all the arguments contained in the qualification, which were much like those used by Bishop Koop as well.

The Commission’s reply to this qualification was very blunt: to alter the wording as requested would be “a substantial alteration of a text already approved by the Council”; moreover, it said, the reasons given in favor of such an amendment were not valid.

The Commission did, however, accept two other qualifications prepared by the Bishops’ Secretariat and submitted by 332 and 289 Council Fathers respectively. According to these Council Fathers, the schema implied that “the sole or principal theological reason for celibacy” was its value as a symbol and a witness. They called this a contradiction of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church and of the Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life, both of which had already been approved and promulgated. According to these two documents, they argued, the more basic reason for the observance of celibacy was that it made possible a more intimate consecration to Christ. The “symbolism” theory advanced by Cardinals Dopfner and Suenens, which had already been demoted in the scale of values set forth in those two documents as a result of previous campaigns by the Bishops’ Secretariat, was also demoted in the schema on the life of priests as a result of this campaign. The Commission admitted the contradiction, and modified the text.

In its final form, the schema on the ministry and life of priests stated that “through virginity or celibacy observed for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, priests . . . profess before men that they desire to dedicate themselves in an undivided way to the task assigned to them . . The schema said further that “many men today call perfect continence impossible. The more they do so, the more humbly and perseveringly priests should join with the Church in praying for the grace of fidelity. It is never denied to those who ask. . . . This most holy Synod beseeches not only priests, but all the faithful to have at heart this precious gift of priestly celibacy. Let all beg of God that he may always lavish this gift on his Church abundantly.”

On December 2, the Council approved the manner in which the Commission had handled the qualifications by 2243 votes to n. On the final ballot in the presence of Pope Paul, at the public meeting of December 7, the result was 2390 votes to 4. Pope Paul then promulgated the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests.