Celibacy in Context
Since I'm talking about my friend Fr. Maximos, I should mention an article he wrote for First Things some time ago. It is a searching examination of celibacy and its rootedness in one's baptismal vocation. He reminds us that a renewal of priestly celibacy will not come about without the support of an overall ecclesial culture of asceticism. In a paragraph that may sound strangely un-CatherineofSienaInstitute-ish, he says:
There is therefore something deeply tragic in the way the contemporary Church has gradually stripped itself of much of its traditional asceticism, leaving only a few craggy remnants of this vanished culture silhouetted against the sky. Of these lonely remains, surely the most incongruous is clerical celibacy. Until the Church restores the supporting superstructure of her ascetical tradition, clerical celibacy will remain a fundamentally meaningless and even dangerous relic of a past long gone...In short, the laity cannot justly complain that their priests do not keep the law of celibacy while at the same time demanding that they themselves be subject to no ascetic discipline. Until the laity begins to accept the need to fast, to be mindful of what we wear, how we speak, how we relate to each other-in short, until the laity accepts its baptismal vocation in all its radical other-worldliness-there is no hope that the clergy will find the strength to do so. Only a Church of mystics can realistically expect their clergy to be saints.
Again, to those familiar with the work of the Institute, the other-worldly vocation of the laity may sound like a misnomer. However, just as I think the Eastern Churches can benefit from examining the West's theology of the laity, the East can gently remind us, with its heavenly liturgy and demanding ascetism, that while the earthly city is the primary place of the laity's apostolic labors, the heavenly city is their final abode (domus).
posted by Br. Matthew Augustine, OP @ 12:01 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Br. Matthew:
Fr. Maximos's comments raise a number of interesting questions for me. These are true questions, I don't have answers but I think they are important.
1) I've had two lengthy conversations lately with Orthodox priests specifically about the subject of their tradition's understanding of the laity. (I knew nothing so just had to ask questions in order to be of any use).
They both indicated that within Orthodoxy there was no "theology or spirituality of the laity" as we know it and no equivalent of the secular mission with its valuing of secondary causes and attention to the creation and secondary causes.
In Orthodoxy, they told me, all spirituality is monastic with lay people simply called to a lesser version.
This, I think, must be huge in understanding the role of the ascetism in the baptized. I do think there is much built-in ascetism in lay life that has never been formally recognized as such because it is not monastic - the endless sacrifices and self-abnegation and self-giving necessary to support and successfully raise children, for instance. Or to run a business and be just to one's employees or prudently and successfully stand for life in the world of politics.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't pray or fast or do any of the traditional penances but even traditional religious orders have understood penance differently.
Dominicans focused upon the ascetism that is an intrinsic part of mendicancy and preparing to preach and preaching itself.
The Visitation Sisters's focus was upon the internal self-mastery of gentleness, compassion, and serenity as they intentionally welcomed women whose health made them incapable of the traditional physical austerities.
In order words, penance was understood in light of their mission and unique overall call. Of course, all this does presume serious intentional discipleship and the discernment of vocation - two platforms that are not in place for the vast majority of our people.
But there is a broader variety of recognized spiritual traditions in the west and with them comes a different understanding of what constitutes appropriate asceticism in different vocations.
It is a serious issue and I don't pretend to have answers but I do think that a traditional monastic understanding cannot be simply imported wholesale into a very different spiritual path.
"In Orthodoxy, they told me, all spirituality is monastic with lay people simply called to a lesser version."
I've heard it described the other way around: that the monastic vocation is a deepening of the lay vocation. The austerity practiced by the early Christians was remarkably monastic. The flight to the desert, in that regard, was an attempt to return to the norm. I think the West's theology of the laity is the peculiar (and blessed) product of our history. Congar talks about this somewhere- how Western Christendom slowly gained appreciation for temporal realities, for example as the monasteries became so large as to require large scale agriculture. Anyway, my sense is that the two positions are not incommesurable, and that they have alot to offer eachother.
Yes, monasticism arose as a largely "lay" (in the sense of not ordained) movement - the "green martyrdom", etc. Congar points out that the wide-spread conflation of ordination and monasticism was a later, medieval development.
I do think that one casualty of the recognition of the mission and spirituality of the laity has been the distinctness of non-ordained religious life. Since it had been de facto defined *against* ordination, (lay = "not ordained) religious life not unnaturally occupied the space that belonged in fact to the laity.
So one need is the rediscovery of non-ordained religious life in its own uniqueness. And a deepening of our understanding of diocesan priesthood for its own sake - not simply as a sort of watered down monasticism.
But monasticism is not (and has never been) "lay" or "secular" in the sense that Lumen Gentium describes - that is, a call to be an apostle to and become holy in the context of engagement with the secular. It is a different call.
And there has long been a western distinction between the "via negativa" ( the setting aside of earthly things to focus directly upon the divine) and the "affirmative way" (to seek God *through* encounter with human beings and temporal realities.)
There are really three different but inter-related paths that we are discussing here. And asceticism takes quite different forms in each. We don't have a clear, strong tradition of a truly secular asceticism outside what is emerging in some of the lay movements.
You happen to be embarked on a historic way to combine two of them - religious life and priesthood. But they are distinct and can easily exist independently.
I believe that one of the answers can be found in the writings of the Servant of God, Catherine de Hueck Doherty. Especially her work on the Poustinia. The chapter on Poustinia in the Marketplace is very much a call for a spirituality that is very much rooted in prayer, fasting, and penance; all done in the context of the secular world, with one consecrating to God the temporal order and seeking to engage the culture and structors of society as an apostle. The idea of the Poustinia is an excellent blending of the east and west and the role of the laity and monasticism.
Bobby
Post a Comment
<< Home