Hans Urs von Balthasar: The Meaning of Celibacy

From the archives:

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Meaning of Celibacy. Communio 3 (pdf, 1976).

From the text:

Christian celibacy is often spoken of as “an eschatological sign.”  This is well and good, except for the article “an.” Actually it is “the” sign and as such it becomes indispensable. . . . . If celibacy is lived as it is meant to be lived, in Christian joy, poverty, self-giving, and openness to God and men, it comprehends all that is human. (We can see this plainly in the person of a good pastor or a good religious.)

Lastly, the celibate priest today has to be stronger than his predecessor. He is placed in a sexualized environment and, generally, is deprived of the external guards of the post-tridentine seminary and protected rectory. He is exposed, while the witness of his life is rejected or is met with indifference by non-Christians. He does not get anywhere with it, it does not communicate anything to the people around him. The mighty effort of his witness seems to vanish into emptiness. Hence, he feels frustrated.

But the history of Christian virginity does not begin with Trent. It begins in Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome, to mention only three of the most licentious cities of antiquity. Exactly there, where sin flowered most lushly – and the letters of the Apocalypse show us other telling examples – has Christian virginity its beginning. Not in cloisters, not in closed Christian communities, but in a diaspora where Christians lived scattered, often in pagan households. It had to be and it came to be.

Christian virgins did not live in closed communities, but like members of secular institutes today, they lived dispersed in households and families. It is there that they gave witness, and were perhaps a more fruitful leaven than the later, structured cenobitic communities of Pachomius and Benedict. They understood that their witness has a purpose in itself: it radiates love. It is not something useful, a means, even though it frees the unmarried for the Lord, to be “concerned about the things of the Lord” (I Cor 7: 34), and thus also frees him for diaconal and presbyterial tasks of the Church.

And if the virgins of earlier periods were respected while the celibates of today are ignored or scorned, let us once more point out that virginity and the cross, and hence disgrace, are closely related. . .

Read the full text.

Jose Granados: On The Baptism in the Jordan

José Granados (bio). The Ages of the Life of Jesus: The Mystery of the Baptism in the Jordan (pdf). From the Spring, 2005 Communio.

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See the series on The Mysteries of the Life of Jesus here.

More by José Granados, dcjm:

Love and the Organism: A Theological Contribution to the Study of Life. (2005) | ANT-OAR: Is Its Underlying Philosophy of Biology Sound? (2005) | Through Mary’s Memory to Jesus’ Mystery. (2006) | Toward a Theology of the Suffering Body. (2006) | The Word Springs From the Flesh. (2007) | Embodied Light, Incarnate Image: The Mystery of Jesus Transfigured. (2008) | The New Hosannah in the New Temple: Jesus’ Entry Into Jerusalem. (2009) |
Priesthood, a Sacrament of the Father. (2009) | The Suffering Body, Hope, and the Disclosure of the Future. (2009) | Risen Time: Easter as the Source of History (2010).

David S. Crawford on the Experience of Nature and Moral Experience

From the Summer 2010 issue on “Experience”:

David S. Crawford (bio). Experience of Nature, Moral Experience: Interpreting Veritatis Splendor’s “Perspective of the Acting Person” (pdf, 2010)

From the text:

My argument here will be that the dominant interpretation of the “perspective of the acting person” is questionable, both as an interpretation of John Paul’s encyclical and as an action theory. Of course, intention and choice are crucial ingredients of action. However, the dominant interpretation marginalizes the role of the physical structure of actions and, by implication, the status of moral agents as embodied, physical beings who neither stand over and against a world of “merely” material objects nor simply engage that world intentionally. Indeed, I will argue, the dominant interpretation reflects a modern and in the end reductive notion of nature.

Read the full text.

More by David S. Crawford:

Christian Community and the States of Life: A Reflection on the Anthropological Significance of Virginity and Marriage. (2002) | Consecration and Human Action: The Moral Life as Response. (2004) | Love, Action, and Vows as ‘Inner Form’ of the Moral Life. (2005)| Of Spouses, the Real World, and the ‘Where’ of Christian Marriage. (2006) | Conjugal Love, Condoms, and HIV/AIDS (2006) | Liberal Androgyny: ‘Gay Marriage’ and the Meaning of Sexuality for Our Time. (2006) | Recognizing the Roots of Society in the Family, Foundation of Justice. (2007) | Natural Law and the Body: Between Deductivism and Parallelism. (2008)