A WOMAN religious said that celibacy is not about what a priest must not do: that is, satisfy the sexual urge. Celibacy is about what he must be, in this case the representative of the celibate Christ. But speaking more practically, Fr. Thomas Loya explained that it isn’t about celibacy or about having no sex. It is about overhead.
When a Brazilian cardinal asked which is more likely to happen first, the ordination of women or the lifting of the celibate vow, the Vatican answered: the ordination of women.
Long ago, the Church came to the conclusion that it is hard enough to feed one mouth—the priest’s; it is inviting bankruptcy for the Church to feed two: the priest and his wife; not to mention their kids. And then there is widows’ pensions and orphans’ upkeep. The Church can’t afford it. The Church does not collect taxes even if some religions tithe.
Taxes allow public officials to have many families, not to mention pampam girls. This is why Cabinet meetings are conducted in KTVs, I mean not the formal ones but the ones where the real decisions are made. One drink—crème de menthe—costs P10,000 but then you get to grope the girl.
What all this means is that when the Church finally ordains women, they will have to be celibate, too. The Church cannot afford to maintain a family where one celibate religious will do. And that is why it is no big deal—in fact, it is just a confessable sin for a priest to take up with a woman. Heck, what the heck, so long as he doesn’t take her to live him behind the chapel to share his meager meals.
Whenever there is a clamor for married priests, and there are TV documentaries about priests who were expelled and now live married lives in poverty—and how hurt their children are by the stigma that shouldn’t be there—I always say that it can’t be helped. There should be no stigma of course but there cannot be married priests either. Especially among Catholics as kuripot as the Filipinos who still drop a P5 coin or even a P1 coin as quietly as she can into the collection sack at the end of a long, long pole. The length of the pole is because miserliness has a distinctly bad smell.
If priests marry here, their wives will have to street walk to make ends meet.
So female ordination will happen first before celibacy is abandoned. And that won’t be a problem for women. Women are better at celibacy than men. Except for that Italian nun who discovered she was miraculously pregnant, women take to celibacy for the best of reasons aside from avoiding further contact with men. Celibacy makes it easier for them to love and help everyone if they aren’t compelled by marriage vows to love and help just one. That’s what one nun said.