Some
Catholic priests from Germany have called for an end to celibacy in an
open letter, addressing the isolation many priests face, in review of
their years as clergy.
File photo (Image: dw.com)
A group of 11 retired high-ranking Catholic priests is causing a
stir across Germany with their request to abolish celibacy. The men are
part of a group of clerics who were ordained in 1967 in Cologne - a city
considered both a Catholic stronghold and one of Germany's most
progressive and gay-friendly cities.
Among the men is Franz Decker, a retired priest who for over a decade led the Catholic Relief Service in Cologne. "We
believe that requiring that every man who becomes a priest to remain
celibate is not acceptable. We think, every Catholic should be allowed
to choose if they would rather be celibate or not, regardless of whether
they want to work as priests or not - just like in the Protestant
Church or the Orthodox church, really, every church but the Catholic
Church," Decker told DW.
A high toll on many priests
Decker and his friends argue that while celibacy might make for a
good way of life for priests who live in communal monasteries, like many
clergy used to, most modern priests often live by themselves and have
little spiritual awakening to gain from church-imposed solitude and
often suffer from the seclusion.
The demand to abolish the century-old tradition is part of an open
letter published at the wake of the golden anniversary of Decker and his
colleagues as catholic priests. In the letter, they list a number of
suggestions on how the Catholic Church could modernize itself to combat
the fact that "questions of God are no longer relevant to many people in this country,"
including other demands seen as progressive bordering on radical by
many within the church, such as lifting the ban of women as priests.
'The experience of loneliness'
The 11 clergymen are hardly the first to call for an end to the
celibacy for Catholic priests, worldwide or in Germany. But the open
letter is unusually candid in the toll celibacy takes on priests
themselves:
"What moves us is the experience of loneliness: As elderly
people who are unmarried because our office required this from us, we
feel it vividly on some days after 50 years on the job… We agreed to
this clerical life because of our jobs, but we didn't choose it."
Celibacy - the requirement that a priest refrain from marriage and
any type of sexual relationship - has long been controversial in the
Catholic church. The ban on marriage for men of God was introduced in
the middle ages, arguably in part for practical reasons to assure that
priests would bequeath their belongings to the church, rather than a
male heir.
There are no passages in the bible that explicitly require celibacy
from priests, though there are both passages that encourage celibacy
above all else and passages that promote marriage as the ideal
lifestyle. In their letter, the 11 priests quote a passage from the
bible that says "a bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife."
Source: DW.com
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