POPE Benedict XVI offered a spirited defense of clerical celibacy as the Year for Priests drew to a close at Vatican City.
Addressing a prayer vigil in St Peter’s Square on 10 June, he said the decision to forego marriage shows that priests are oriented toward a different life, “in which we are beyond matrimony.”
He contrasted the celibate priest with the modern man who avoids marriage out of fear of commitment. For the priest, the Holy Father said, celibacy is a very strong commitment: a witness to the faith that life in Christ is more important than life on earth.
That witness, he added, is puzzling to a secularised world that cannot look beyond this present life.
Pope Benedict’s remarks came in response to questions solicited from the priests who had come to Rome, in answer to his invitation, for the final days of the Year for Priests.
Answering a question about encouraging new priestly vocations, the Pope cautioned against an “activist” approach, saying that prayer is more important than recruitment programmes.
The danger to be avoided, he said, is the notion that the priesthood is “just another job.”
l Cardinal Claudio Hummes, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, urged the world’s priests to be missionaries who preach the Gospel to all, especially the poor.
“The mission ad gentes [to the nations] and the new missionary evangelisation in lands already evangelised are now increasingly urgent everywhere and need to be implemented with new missionary ardour, new methods, and new expressions,” he said at a 9 June Mass among the concluding celebrations of the Year for Priests.
“Our beloved Pope Benedict XVI, in speaking of missionary urgency, rightly said that ‘it is not enough to preserve the existing community, although this is important.’ This means that it is urgent to get up and go on mission. This is what the Holy Spirit, in this international meeting, wants to renew in us all.
“Today, there are still hundreds of millions of human beings who are forced to live in dire poverty and even misery and hunger.
“They are marginalised and excluded from the table of material, social, and cultural goods and often from the table of spiritual goods.
“They are the first who have the right to receive the good news that God is a Father who loves them unconditionally and that He does not approve the inhuman conditions in which the poor are maintained.”