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Celibacy

© Yeshe Chodon

The current crisis in the Catholic Church puts focus on the ancient tradition of priestly celibacy. What are the origins of this tradition? I suspect the original reasons for it have been distorted over time. I present here various sources for information on the subject from various traditions, but with an emphasis on the Buddhist. I welcome any insights or more carefully garnered information from correspondents.

By the way, thank all of you who have joined Discussions. I just visited those pages for the first time in a while and as ever was delighted and surprised by the wealth of responses from so many spiritual, concerned and articulate people. I will answer each this week.

In an article published in the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, Volume 2, Feb. 6, 1999, http://www.ejhs.org/volume2/walsh/walsh1... Harry A. Walsh, Ed.D. presents an excellent, thorough, scholarly historial perspective on the topic. This is from the Catholic viewpoint, but will serve as an excellent introduction to concepts and terminology:

Celibacy is the state of being unmarried. Chastity is the avoidance of all sexual activity outside the married state. ...One common misunderstanding (evidenced by the way people speak, e.g. "He broke his vow and married") is that celibacy is a vow taken by ordained priests of the Latin Church. Celibacy is not a vow. In Roman Catholic theology, a vow is a promise made directly to God. Celibacy is an obligation imposed by the institutional Church.

So we see here a conceptual difference between celibacy and chastity as they are defined by this author. I will use these definitions in this article. The article is so well researched and written that I highly recommend it. But I will resist the temptation to quote Walsh further as it takes us too far afield from historical roots of the celibate tradition, especially in the East.

On a visit to a Buddhist nunnery in Dharamsala, I was surprised by the youth of the nuns, and I asked the abbess did they never long for boy friends, husbands, marriage? I told her those topics obsessed girls their age in our country.

Limited as we both were by language, her answer was necessarily brief. But it resonated with me. "Different culture." is all she said.

I recalled a documentary shown to us by visiting monks from Drepung Loseling Institute http://www.drepung.org/ several years ago. Chinese invaders forced Tibetan nuns to marry; this was a cruel punishment for them. Of course that example is clouded by the whole political issue, but the striking fact for me was the nuns'dedication to their celibacy.