The Christian Century
20th March 1996
Celibacy is a curiously political subject. Conservative catholics often regard it as an idealised, angelic state, while feminist theologians, such as Uta Ranke-Heinemann, view it as synonymous with hatred of women. Practised properly, celibacy is not about hatred of sex; but it may help us address the sexual idolatry of our culture.
For the past ten years I have been affiliated with the Benedictines as an oblate. This has allowed me to observe celibacy that works, practised by people who are fully aware of themselves as sexual beings, but who express their sexuality in a celibate way. That is, they sublimate their sexual energies toward another purpose than sexual intercourse and procreation. Are their lives stunted? I doubt it. I've seen too many wise old monks and nuns whose celibate practice has allowed them to incarnate hospitality in the deepest sense. In them, the constraints of celibacy have somehow been transformed into an openness. They exude a sense of freedom.
The younger celibates are more edgy. Still contending with what one friend calls "the raging orchestra of my hormones," they are more obviously struggling to contain their desire for intimacy and physical touch within the bounds of celibacy. Often they find their loneliness intensified by the incomprehension of others.
Americans are tone deaf when it comes to the expression of sexuality. The jiggle of tits and ass, penis and pectorals assaults us everywhere-billboards, magazines, television, movies. But celibate people have taught me something both about the nature of friendship and what it means to be married. Like many people who came into adulthood during the sexually permissive 1960s, I've tended to equate sublimation with repression. But my celibate friends have made me see the light; accepting sublimation as a normal part of adulthood makes me more realistic about human sexual capacities and expression. It has increased my respect for the bonds and boundaries of marriage.
Any marriage has times of separation, ill health, or just plain crankiness in which sexual intercourse is ill-advised. And it is precisely the skills of celibate friendship-fostering intimacy through letters, conversation, performing mundane tasks together (thus rendering them pleasurable), savouring the holy simplicity of a shared meal or a walk together at dusk-that help a marriage survive the rough spots. When you cannot make love physically, you figure out other ways to do it.
Monastic people are celibate for a very practical reason: the kind of community life to which they aspire cannot be sustained if people are pairing off. But it is not easy. Monastic novices may be carried along for a time on the swells of communal spirit, but when that blissful period inevitably comes to an end the loneliness is profound. One gregarious monk in his early 30s told me that just as he thought he'd settled into the monastery, he woke up in a panic one morning, wondering if he'd wake up lonely for the rest of his life.
Another monk I know regards celibacy as the expression of an essential human loneliness, a perspective that helps him as a hospital chaplain when he is called upon to minister to the dying. I knew him when he was still resisting his celibate call. The resistance usually comes out as anger directed towards his abbot and community, more rarely as misogyny. I was fascinated to observe the process by which he came to accept the sacrifices that a celibate, monastic life requires. He is easier to be with now; he is a better friend. In learning to be faithful to his vow of celibacy, the monk developed his talent for relationships. It's a common story.
Celibates tend to value friendship very highly. And my friendships with celibate men, both gay and straight, give me some hope that men and women do not live in alternate universes. In 1990s America, this sometimes feels like a countercultural perspective.
Ideally, in giving up the sexual pursuit of women (whether as demons or as idealised vessels of purity), the male celibate learns to relate to them as human beings. For when men have truly given up the idea of possessing women, a healing thing occurs. I once met a woman in a monastery who had come there because she was pulling herself together after being raped, and she needed to feel safe around men again. I've seen young monks astonish an obese and homely college student by listening to her with as much interest and respect as to her pretty roommate.
In talking to someone who is practising celibacy well, we may sense that we are being listened to in a refreshingly deep way. And this is the purpose of celibacy, not to attain some impossibly cerebral goal mistakenly conceived as "holiness," but to make oneself available to others, body and soul. Celibacy, simply put, is a form of ministry-not an achievement one can put on a r?sum? but a subtle form of service. In theological terms, one dedicates one's sexuality to God through Jesus Christ, a concept and a terminology I find extremely hard to grasp. All I can do is catch a glimpse of people who are doing it, incarnating celibacy in a mysterious, pleasing and gracious way.
