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Let’s not damn celibacy with faint praise

SIR – JG McCann (Letter, March 9) is “convinced that compulsory celibacy is a huge barrier to dynamic leadership in the Church”; that although “being married and raising a family is also an immense commitment”, the “difference is that marriage is a completely free choice”. One can only imagine the shock experienced by thousands of newly ordained priests on discovering that they are forced to be celibate; whereas, of course, they are well aware that embracing celibacy is inseparable from embracing the priestly vocation. Married priests coming from other denominations have also made a sacrifice, which is to be highly valued, but it is far different from allowing ordained priests to marry as a simplistic solution to the decline in vocations. Mr McCann admits there would be “massive pastoral implications”, but: “The way forward would be to replace the benign dictatorship of the clergy, and seriously involve the laity in pastoral teams with real power and responsibility.” How smoothly we go from the Pope ending this “massive suffering endured by the clergy … with a simple stroke of a pen” to replacing the clergy with the “dictatorship” of an empowered laity that might not be so benign. In the Bible, sexual continence was not unknown even among married men on a sacred mission; when King David, anxious to cover up his adulterous affair with the pregnant Bathsheba, ordered her husband to return to his house, Uriah refused, reminding David that he was still on a military campaign, which meant refraining from marital relations (2 Samuel 11: 5-27). We are now in the “end times” – the final battle for mankind – and we all need to redouble our efforts to defend the faith as opposition to it increases. Our priests need to be “battle-ready” so they can prioritise God’s calling. Even if they do not need literally to give their lives for the faith, we can at least value their commitment to giving up every day of their lives to God; to leave celibacy as some optional “add-on” is to damn it with faint praise. The answer to the vocations decline, as with the problem of lapsation, is not to relax the rule on celibacy but to preach the Gospel. In fact, it is the answer to everything. Ann Farmer Woodford Green, Essex