Folia Canonica 4. (2001)
STUDIES - Pablo Gefaell: Clerical Celibacy
90 PABLO GEFAELL In this perspective, “if the Church did not always bind priest to a life of perfect chastity, this was a ‘concession’ made for ‘grave reason’ ,”39 The oriental discipline regarding celibate bishops, temporal continence and the matrimonial impediment of sacred Orders can be understood only under the light of the underlying theological basis of celibacy. In my opinion, more than a judgment based on historical proofs, we need to recognize the strength of those central questions which make us reconsider the whole matter of celibacy and which give a strong favorable assumption to the validity of the historical arguments offered here. Among these questions, one is — in my opinion - the most telling: Why did the matrimonial impediment of sacred Orders exist? The Tradition does not doubt its existence from the very beginning or its universality and absolute necessity, but... why? As we have said, if it is not assumed that the discipline of a married clergy who use marriage expresses only a mitigation of the primeval praxis of a married but continent clergy, then the matrimonial impediment of sacred Orders remains a mere historical tradition without theological sense: both in East and in West. This lost of theological sense finds a dramatic expression in the ample criterions recently established to grant the dispensation of the matrimonial impediment of sacred Orders for the permanent Latin deacons who become widowers and who want to remarry while remaining in their clerical role.40 However, this decision is clearly a dispensation from the general law, and therefore it has to be explained as an exceptional mitigation of the law. If it were not seen in this way - that is, as a simply permissive measure - it would open the way to the total suppression of the impediment of sacred Orders. The ordained celibates could not be married only because they had made a promise of celibacy before the ordination. But in this way every justification for the Church to claim this requisite would disappear. In fact, if it were so - that is, if it were the same to be married or celibate - why demand this condition for conferring Holy Orders? 39 Cholij, Clerical Celibacy (nt. 14), 202. This does not mean a permission given by Rome, but by the competent Synodal authority (Rome only recognized the decisions legitimately made by those Synods). That is why I do not fully agree with Cholij when in a posterior writing he changes his mind, arguing that it is not a permissive law but a legitimate Synodal decision (cf. R. CHOLIJ, Celibacy, Married Clergy, and the Oriental Code, in A. Al-Ahmar - A. Khalife — D. Le Tourneau (eds.), Acta Symposii Internationalis circa Codicem Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium, Kaslik, 24-29 április 1995, Kaslik (Liban) 1996, 197-202 [here 192-193], In fact, it is clear that a Synod can legitimately enact a permissive law. 40 Congregazione per il Culto Divino e la Disciplina dei Sacramenti, Dispensa dagli obblighi sacerdotali e diaconali, 6 giugno 1997, in II Regno - Documenti 17/1997, 526-527. As a forerunner of this decision cf. R. Cholij, Observaciones criticas acerca de los cánones que tratan sobre el celibato en el Código de Derecho Canónico de 1983, in Ius Canonicum 31 (1991)291-305.
