PRIESTHOOD AND THE FAMILY,

A PAIR IN THE CHURCH’S DOCTRINE

CONGREGATION FOR THE CLERGY

TELECONFERENCE - 28 MARCH 2006

Prof. P. PAOLO SCARAFONI, L.C.

Priesthood and the family come from the Lord himself and express the Creator’s design of love and the plan for salvation.

God’s nuptial love for mankind

The Holy Scriptures describe the deep bond between the only God known in faith and man, who experiences being loved by God freely, passionately and mercifully. God ties himself to man with the intensity and exclusiveness of a Spouse (Deus Caritas Est 9). This is confirmed by the covenants which characterise the relationship between God and mankind (CCC 50-75): the covenant of nations, Abraham’s covenant of faith and promise, the covenant of Moses in the law and finally Christ’s new and eternal covenant of grace and love. The pierced heart of Christ on the cross reveals that God is love, offered in sacrifice “for us and for our eternal salvation”. That loving bond with Christ and his fellowship is perpetuated in the sacrament of the Eucharist, anticipation and memorial to the gift of Christ on the cross. The Supreme and Eternal Priest, who intercedes for us in the heavens in the presence of the Father, is also the Spouse faithful to the Church his Bride, who wishes to be joined forever with her Spouse “Maranathà, come Lord Jesus”: “The Spirit and the Bride say "Come'. And let him who hears say, "Come'’” (Ap 21, 17).

God’s love and the family

The propensity towards an intense bond of love which aspires to immortality characterises also man created in God’s likeness, in his innermost nature; man seeks his woman to tie himself to her exclusively (he leaves his father and mother) in the hope of not dying thanks to love. Together, man and woman represent the entirety of mankind. “Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love” (DCE 11).

The family is the primary context within which God’s love is expressed and experienced concretely, where God and mankind are alike. God’s design of goodness, justice and love for mankind is based on the family. Families are the foundation of society because they form the nation or homeland, especially if they share the same faith in God, the same culture, live in the same territory, have in common the same language and customs (Cfr. JOHN PAUL II, Memory and identity, section “Thinking of the Homeland”, chapters11-15).

The dignity of the family bond

The family “not only is the fundamental cell in society generally, but it has its own specific subjectivity”, recognisable before God, the providential creator and redeemer; through the prayer “Our Father” recited by the family it is possible to experience the substantiality of the family bond desired by God and sanctified by Christ. In the second book of Samuel (c. 24) it is said that the Lord punished David and his people because they took a census with the aim of commanding men outside of their own families and of putting the sovereign’s power between God and families. The Decalogue theology has highlighted the fact that God has dictated the law for families which are in communion with God, which can be understood and applied responsibly and consciously by each individual only in the context of the family (Cfr. G. Quell, Patér, B, in Great Lexicon of the New Testament, IX Paideia, Brescia 1974; C.J.H. Wright, Familiy, in The Anchor Bible, Doubleday, New York 1992).

God’s design for the family as revealed by Christ: marriage and fatherhood

Christ is the centre of every Christian life. The tie with him is pre-eminent and gives meaning to every other family and social tie. A full light can come to the family from Christ alone; He did not live alone (“it is not good that the man should be alone” Gen 2.18), but spent most of his life in the family of Nazareth, a model of all Christian families. He then established around him that special family of disciples that was the germ of the Church. In his teachings, He made a strong reference to the initial design of God the Creator (Mt 19,1ss), who “from the beginning” created males and females, that they might form one flesh, laying down monogamous marriage in fidelity and indissolubility, “as the foundation of the common good of the family” (Familiaris Consortio ). With the words “from the beginning” Christ referred to the secret and wise thinking and the all powerful creating will of the Trinity (“let us make man in our image, after our likeness” Gen 1,26), contradicted by the rigidity of our hearts and by our sin, never altered by God: this expresses an intention of intense love of mankind, created to be very similar to God himself: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1,27), so that being one flesh (Mt 19,6), as spouses they might form a communio personarum.

Being parents too complies with divine likeness. Fatherhood does not exist without motherhood, and all paternity derives from God the Father, from He who is the supreme Father. Fatherhood-motherhood consolidates the ties between husband and wife in imitation of God the Father and in docile submission to Him. Fatherhood and motherhood should be experienced as a mystery, a gift, and in the event of any crisis caused by sin, selfishness or weakness, it is very important to go back to kneeling before divine Paternity, to draw light and strength: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Ef 3,14-15).

The mystery of Christ Spouse of the Church

Marriage and the family are “a great mystery” in connection with the communion between Christ and the Church (Ef 5,32). With his holy humanity Christ is joined to the Church, which is formed by a Mystical Body of great purity and beauty, thanks to its union with Christ. Saint Paul presents the communion between Christ and the Church through the analogy between Head and Body; and through the analogy between Husband and Wife. The Apocalypse considers the Church Bride of Christ her Spouse; they live reaching out in a craving for the definitive union (Ap 21,17). “This revelation reaches its definitive fullness in the gift of love which the Word of God makes to humanity in assuming a human nature, and in the sacrifice which Jesus Christ makes of Himself on the Cross for His bride, the Church. In this sacrifice there is entirely revealed that plan which God has imprinted on the humanity of man and woman since their creation(23); the marriage of baptized persons thus becomes a real symbol of that new and eternal covenant sanctioned in the blood of Christ” (Familiaris Consortio 13). This nuptial dimension between Christ and the Church indicates that the purpose envisaged by God’s love for the life of every man and for human families is to be found in God’s eternal life, in the bosom of the Trinity where Christ’s humanity rests. Every Christian family reaches out towards this dimension of eternity. And generating children too is not only for earthly and material life, but for eternal life. This gives unique dignity to every human being that comes into existence, fulfilled through salvation in Christ.

Priests identify with Christ Spouse of the Church and with the Father

Priests experience the nuptial dimension of Christ thanks to their priestly ordination which establishes the association Christ, Head of the Mystical Body, Spouse of the Church. “The nature and mission of the ministerial priesthood cannot be defined except through this multiple and rich interconnection of relationships which arise from the Blessed Trinity and are prolonged in the communion of the Church, as a sign and instrument of Christ, of communion with God and of the unity of all humanity. In this context the ecclesiology of communion becomes decisive for understanding the identity of the priest, his essential dignity, and his vocation and mission among the People of God and in the world” (Pastores dabo vobis 12). The clergy’s specific mission, like that of Christ, is linked to the salvation of the Church, i.e. to procuring attainment of eternal life for the Church and the whole of mankind in communion with Christ. The fidelity and totality of the gift of Christ the Spouse is expressed in members of the clergy through their charity towards everybody, towards the totality of the Mystical Body, of the Church Bride; but also towards all the men for whom Christ sacrificed himself on the cross. Preferring some, excluding or even rejecting other denies the nature of priesthood, the totality of consecration and of the gift to the Church Bride. The hearts of priests are therefore trained in universal charity, to love all, to close the doors to no one, to not reject, abandon and betray the Bride in any of her members. Priests experience the dimension of a paternity which comes from the Father, source of all fatherhood, and is expressed by Christ the Good Shepherd. Their paternity is spiritual, for eternal life, for communion with Christ; it is universal and with their ministry their generate many sons and daughters to eternal life.

Universal nuptial love and celibacy

The universal nature of Christ’s love is expressed in the clergy prominently through the celibacy which priests in the Latin Church are called to. It is highly considered also in the oriental Churches. Thanks to celibacy, it is possible to love freely the people who are entrusted to pastoral care, regardless of race, culture and nationality, and to exercise spiritual paternity for eternal life.

Christ himself is the foundation of Catholicism and of universality in love: He is the only son of Mary; he had no carnal brothers and was perfectly predisposed for universal brotherhood; being the son of God, born by work of the Holy Spirit and, although he belonged to the Jewish nation, he was radically the first born, the elder brother not of carnal brothers or only of one people, but of all nations, of every man. His impassioned love, to the extent of giving his life on the cross, is not exclusive, but chooses and embraces with exclusive love all the men and women on earth. He summons strongly to aspire to eternal life, and points out that marriage belongs to this world, and with his virginity he points to destiny in the house of the Father. Presbyters are summoned to make the image of a loving Christ transparent in their lives.

The Church, le families and consecrated virginity

The Church is formed by families. It is considered a great family within which every family is a domestic Church (LG 11). The Church is called “the household of God”, according to 1Tm 3,15 and Ef 2,19-22; in Ap 21,3 the words “tabernacle of God with men” are used. The Church is also called by Saint Paul, as we have seen, “Mystical Body of Christ”, and the Vatican Council II describes her as “God’s people”. The Church’s characteristic is universality or catholicity, with the ability of turning men and women belonging to different families, nations and ethnic groups, cultures and languages into brothers and sisters. The specificity of the love of the Holy Spirit effused in the Pentecost by the Father and the Son into the Church has expressed the universal and catholic character which was lacking in other covenants, that of nations, of the promise, of the law.

In the New Testament it is stated that whole families joined Christ and represented reference points for the community of Christians (At 18,8). Christ’s first disciples were relatives with each other. This applied to Jewish but also to pagan families. Peter baptised first the Roman Cornelius and then his entire family at Cesarea (At 10). In Rome too, in the Domus Ecclesiae, we have testimonies of converted families which provided the warmth and shelter of the hearth to the entire Christian community, offering their homes for meetings of the community, for the celebration of the Eucharist and catechesis, carrying on the custom reported in the Acts of the Apostles 2,42: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers”. “These families who became believers were islands in an unbelieving world” (CCC 1655). However, in the New Testament we have also descriptions of cases of people, both men and women, who because they followed Christ in the Church, were rejected by their families and were forced to leave them because they were not accepted as Christians. Following the Lord did not deprive them of a family, rather the Church became their only family, the Catholic family called upon by the Father, capable of welcoming them, ensuring that they should want for nothing. These more radical conversions express a sense of the universality and catholicity implicit in following Christ, which goes beyond belonging to a blood relationship.

The Gospel describes also Christ’s summons to a total consecration to his service and to that of the Church, without forming a family according to the flesh. Forms of consecration took place in the Church right from the early stages. Christian families in the Church encourage and protect vocations to Consecration. The beauty of the Christian family does not contradict but rather underlines and exalts the beauty of consecrated life. “Esteem of virginity for the sake of the Kingdom (Cfr Lumen gentium, 42; Perfectae caritatis, 12; Optatam totius, 10) and the Christian understanding of Marriage are inseparable and they reinforce each other” (CCC 1620); “Marriage and virginity or celibacy are two ways of expressing and living the one mystery of the covenant of God with His people. When marriage is not esteemed, neither can consecrated virginity or celibacy exist; when human sexuality is not regarded as a great value given by the Creator, the renunciation of it for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven loses its meaning”. (Familiaris consortio 16).

The Church’s main apostolate is the family

The main apostolate of the Church and especially of the lay the family. “In our own time, in a world often alien and even hostile to faith, believing families are of primary importance as centres of living, radiant faith” (CCC 1656). Since the last century the Holy Spirit has inspired the founders of different movements and new lay communities to place the family at the core of their apostolate. Christian families humanise the world, accomplish the civilisation of love. “The hearth is thus the first school of Christian life and ‘a school of deeper humanity’ (Gaudium et spes, 52). “Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous - even repeated - forgiveness, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering of one's life” (CCC 1657). Christ’s disciples had not initially understood this vocation which made them different from the Jews of those days and also from the pagans; they were answering Christ who used a language that was hard to accept. This means that living the family according to the Gospel, in compliance with God’s true design clearly indicated by the Son, requires an answer of faith to the vocation to be Christians. A Christian vocation implies for many people a calling to form a Christian family. Christ’s help, the sacraments, prayer are needed. Christ is close to spouses: the Spouse is with you, the Good Shepherd, the Spouse among spouses, as at Cana. For this reason, families have a great need for the support and help of the clergy.

The exchange of gifts between the Church and families, between priesthood and families

From what we have said, it is clear that there is a great exchange of gifts between the Church and the family, between priests and families coming from the same God and at each other’s service.

The family receives from God, from Christ and from the Church its monogamous character (not clearly perceived without the help of Christ because of the harshness of people’s hearts), fidelity and exclusiveness in love, care and totality in exercising fatherhood, the aspiration for eternal life and total respect for life. The family remains a family and grows within its identity to the extent of its bond with God and Christ. In this sense, the role of priests who prolong the humanity of Christ is essential for the family. The family that moves away from Christ does not subsist long in its essential features. The family that moves away from the priest moves away from God. How many families today have moved away from priests! How important it is to bring them close once again to priests, to Christ and to the Father. Priests teach and catechise, they celebrate the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, they pray with the family and for the family. Priests receive all the intentions and bring them to the Eucharistic sacrifice.

Families learn from the Church and especially from priests and from the ordained to open up to other families, not to retreat into special interests. Baptism provides the gift of supernatural and universal love which makes us children of God and enables and commands us to love in Christ with realism and concreteness all brothers, loved by Christ. Where there is a truly Christian family, it is unlikely that families and people close to it will suffer starvation, desertion, poverty. The universal Church teaches families gratuitousness, solidarity, justice and universality in love, and teaches to go beyond particularism and partial interest. “In our own time, in a world often alien and even hostile to faith, believing families are of primary importance as centres of living, radiant faith” (CCC 1656).

The Church must be a family and love families

The Church finds in the family the characteristic of familiarity. The Church must be a family and this is the way in which all Christians must experience it, all families, all human beings, especially the weakest. The Church must give warmth and be welcoming. This being the family of the Church represents a great asset for all men who find goodness and benefits in the Church. The Church promotes everywhere the cause of man and of every man. The Church, and especially priests in the Church, must fulfil their ministry in fatherhood and brotherhood thanks a deeply felt love of Christ: they must not be reduced to being bureaucrats and administrators, but real shepherds. They must help men experience Christ’s love.

The Church protects families, especially in the current circumstances. Families today are exposed to attacks from an attitude in the world that wishes to damage them: they face difficulties over faithfulness and the indissolubility of marriage because of immorality, especially pornography which reduces women to objects of pleasure. The sacredness of life is overruled by abortion and euthanasia. The dignity of procreation is desecrated. How many priests, bishops and the Pope himself have defended families! Alone they cannot not stand up to the world that wishes to destroy them.

The Church prays for families. She nourishes them with the sacraments thanks to the priestly ministry.

The celibacy of priests and women in the Church

Celibacy does not isolate priests, on the contrary it enables them to love with great intensity, gratuitousness and purity the Church and all men and women. The way in which priests love women takes its inspiration from love for their mothers and sisters. This love therefore can be learnt above all in the priest’s family of origin. The pure heart of priests enables them to enjoy great esteem and collaboration on the part of women. On the contrary, particular affection normally leads to diffidence and estrangement.

The family plays a fundamental role in priestly vocation: “the break-up of the family and an obscuring or distorting of the true meaning of human sexuality. That phenomena have a very negative effect on the education of young people and on their openness to any kind of religious vocation” (Pastores dabo vobis 7). On the contrary Christian families help the young to be open to learning about the vocation God gives to each person. God has established that in the calling to become priests, normally mothers play an important role in their sons’ vocations. Furthermore the contribution in terms of sacrifice provided by the family for a son’s vocation, especially burdensome in the case of missionaries, superabounds in the fecundity of the priestly ministry and produces a strong tie between the family and priesthood.