{"id":10827,"date":"2018-08-30T12:48:20","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T18:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=10827"},"modified":"2018-08-30T12:52:49","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T18:52:49","slug":"what-does-fr-martin-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/08\/what-does-fr-martin-believe.html","title":{"rendered":"What does Fr. Martin believe?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

Fr. James Martin, as many readers will know, is a Jesuit priest best known for promoting acceptance of, as he would say it, the LGBT community.\u00a0 He\u2019s always been coy about what he believes specifically, and whenever Facebook-friends would share his posts on his Facebook page, I noticed that many of them tended to be links to controversial statements in which Martin would comment cryptically, never quite saying anything that would clearly contradict Catholic moral teaching, never quite affirming it, either.<\/p>\n

But the article he has in America<\/em> today bothered me enough to merit writing about.\u00a0 It\u2019s called \u201cThe witch hunt for gay priests<\/a>\u201d and is the same sort of demand that Catholic priests with a homosexual orientation be able to speak openly about their present situation, past experiences, and the like, so as to combat erroneous beliefs that all such men are child abusers, that is his ongoing theme.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s very careful with his language.\u00a0 He says:<\/p>\n

What I mean by \u201cgay priests\u201d is ordained priests with a homosexual orientation who are living their promises of celibacy (and in religious orders, their vows of chastity).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and later repeats this distinction:<\/p>\n

the example of the many hardworking, healthy and celibate gay priests (and chaste members of religious orders)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and again:<\/p>\n

More to the point, I know hundreds of gay priests, and I can say with honesty that all of them strive to keep their promises of celibacy and vows of chastity, none of them conspire with other gay priests, and yet many of them are demoralized by this increasingly hate-fueled witch hunt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But this wordplay is a bit too clever.<\/p>\n

What is celibacy?\u00a0 Here\u2019s the definition at the National Catholic Register<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Celibacy is the state of not being married.<\/p>\n

People associate it with the priesthood because, in the Latin rite of the Church, the norm is for priests to be unmarried\u2014to be celibate.<\/p>\n

However, properly speaking, anyone who is unmarried can also be said to be celibate.<\/p>\n

It comes from the Latin word caelibatus, which simply means \u201cthe state of being unmarried.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And chastity?\u00a0 That\u2019s the virtue of sexual purity.\u00a0 A single person lives out the virtue of chastity by not having sexual intercourse or other inappropriate sexual activity.\u00a0 A married person lives out the virtue of chastity by such actions as avoiding contraception.<\/p>\n

And, as the Register points out, \u201cdiocesan clergy are obliged to observe celibacy and continence [refraining from sexual activity], but it is not the product of a vow the way it is for those in the consecrated life.\u201d<\/p>\n

So why is Martin making this distinction between celibacy and chastity?\u00a0 Perhaps he\u2019s simply striving for precision.\u00a0 But it also means that he is carefully avoiding making the statement that his gay priest friends are avoiding sex<\/em>.\u00a0 What does he think about the claims that there are significant numbers of gay priests (and gay seminarians) who are having sex because they reject the church\u2019s moral teaching?\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t tell us.\u00a0 In fact, he is writing in a manner that enables his readers to assume that he is speaking of chaste priests, if they are not aware of the distinction between celibacy and chastity.<\/p>\n

This is devious.\u00a0 This suggests that priests \u2014 or by extension any of the rest of us \u2014 are not bound to Catholic teaching on sexual morality unless we specifically make a vow or promise.<\/p>\n

And maybe these claims are all exaggerations.\u00a0 But if Martin is carefully parsing his words to ensure that he avoids telling us, who can know?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Jim_Martin2.JPG; By Kerry Weber (photosub 2015040610018739) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fr. James Martin, as many readers will know, is a Jesuit priest best known for promoting acceptance of, as he would say it, the LGBT community.\u00a0 He\u2019s always been coy about what he believes specifically, and whenever Facebook-friends would share his posts on his Facebook page, I noticed that many of them tended to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":10833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1050],"class_list":["post-10827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fr-james-martin"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat does Fr. Martin believe?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Fr. 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