{"id":684,"date":"2011-02-02T00:13:25","date_gmt":"2011-02-01T23:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/?p=684"},"modified":"2011-03-04T09:36:02","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T08:36:02","slug":"ratzinger-et-al-called-for-reexamination-of-clerical-celibacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/ratzinger-et-al-called-for-reexamination-of-clerical-celibacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Ratzinger et al. called for reexamination of clerical celibacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve translated the 1970 <a title=\"Memorandum regarding the discussion of celibacy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/ratzinger-rahner-et-al-on-celibacy-1970\/\">letter<\/a> of Ratzinger and eight other theologians to the German bishops, which was republished in <em>Pipeline<\/em> 2\/2010, under the title &#8220;<em>A reminder to the signatories<\/em>&#8221; (<em>Den Unterfertigten zur Erinnerung<\/em>), and which has been in a number of newspapers in the past few days.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the parts of the letter that the newspapers for some reason or other aren&#8217;t citing&#8230; :<\/p>\n<p>I. &#8230; We are convinced that the freely chosen state of remaining unmarried in  the sense of Matthew 19 not only presents a meaningful possibility of  christian existence, one which is at all times indispensable for the  Church as a sign of its eschatological character, but that there are  also good theological grounds for the connection of the freely chosen  unmarried state and the priestly office, since this office brings the  officeholder definitively and completely into the service of Christ and  his Church. In this sense we affirm what was recently said in the  \u201cLetter of the German Bishops on the Priestly Office\u201d (See n. 45, par 4;  n. 53, par 2). And in this sense we are also convinced that whatever  the outcome of the discussion, the unmarried priesthood will remain an <em>essential<\/em> form of the priesthood in the Latin Church.<\/p>\n<p>V&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Such a <em>positive<\/em> stocktaking and working through of the problem  must also occur because the reality of celibacy itself in the conditions  of present-day publicity and society must be presented in an  understandable and meaningful manner\u2014so far as possible\u2014granting all  knowledge of very clear limits of this endeavor. It will remain a  \u201cscandal\u201d, but this does not excuse one from promoting and recommending  it with the best reasons, in the event that an examination is seriously  undertaken and can arrive at positive results (see above, section 1). If  we know that celibacy is primarily a fruit of spiritual experience, we  must still, as representatives of the science of theology, draw  attention to this <em>positive<\/em>, clarifying, and unavoidable function of an examination.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Ratzinger and others on Celibacy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/ratzinger-rahner-et-al-on-celibacy-1970\/\">Read the whole letter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have translated the 1970 letter of Ratzinger that has been in the news a lot recently. The media tends not to cite those parts of the letter where the abiding value of celibacy is mentioned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[31,60,62],"class_list":["post-684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-states-of-life","tag-celibacy","tag-priesthood","tag-ratzinger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":688,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions\/688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pathsoflove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}