COWLEY ON CELIBACY, CHRIST ON THE CROSS

To comment, please open your gmail account, use my email address, Facebook, Messenger or Twitter. Scroll down for other comments.



Joy Cowley, darling of the liberal NZ Catholic Church, has very publicly taken the part of 'disgraced' Palmerston North bishop Charles Drennan. Cowley makes the front page of the Manawatu Standard today and is all over the news everywhere, saying she has "seen how young women flirt with priests". 

We will charitably assume that she never flirted with her husband to be, the former Father Terry Coles. And charity also forbids me to repeat two Proddy friends had to say, spontaneously and in unison, about the young woman who made the complaint against Bishop Drennan. 

But Cowley's thinking on the Church's requirement for priestly celibacy (there's nothing 'compulsory' about it; priests makes their vows voluntarily) is jaw-droppingly facile and ignorant: "it has," she opines, "more to do with finances than holiness".

She says that celibacy is "idealistic" (who does that remind you of? the Pope?) and "works for some priests, but for many others it means alcoholism, depression and guilt-ridden sexual behavior". Well yes, that's certainly the worldly view. But there's another view, and that is Christ's. 

A reader of this blog points out that for priests, celibacy is the "narrow gate" Jesus speaks of in the Gospel. By his ordination, the priest accepts the three Evangelical Counsels of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience. Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church all insist that these counsels of perfection, as Jesus named them, are to be followed by every diocesan priest. 

In fact, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Christ proposes them for each and every one of His disciples (that's you and me, chaps!). Vatican II calls every Catholic to live these counsels; the 'Angelic Doctor' St Thomas Aquinas teaches that they make "the gaining of (eternal bliss) more assured and expeditious", and that "carnal pleasures" are renounced by "perpetual chastity".  

Cowley has read about priests charged with sexual abuse. She has "known that both abuser and abused are victims". Pardon me? Victims of each other? Victims of fate? Or circumstance? Which? Or all? She implies abuser and abused are both blameless and to be pitied.

This scenario is also an echo of the Pope, handily dispensing with the Sacrament of Confession which if approached by both parties in a spirit of repentance, sorrow for sin and amendment, would clear the whole matter up. No need for 'independent investigators', resignations, compensations, Q&A sessions and publicity which is deeply hurtful to the church - but revenue-gathering for the media and savvy media-skilled famous authors.

Cowley quotes the Greek playwright Aeschylus: "Who is the slayer and who the victim? Speak". We would be impressed by this familiarity with Greek playwrights, were Aeschylus not a pagan with no knowledge of the truth. Christians might find Greek tragedians illuminating in some respects but hardly as helpful as Jesus Christ, the "Light of the World".

Cowley is sorry the Church would lose "a very fine Bishop". However, at least one reader of this blog (which BTW I'm told is 'very depressing and hurtful to priests') believes that "Bishop Drennan failed to take up the Cross and enter the "narrow gate". Jesus Christ says the person who fails to do this is "not worthy of Me".

"A bishop who breaks his vows has not entered by the "narrow gate", has not taken up the Cross and is not a disciple of Christ our Lord. These vows are solemn vows, a mystical marriage with Christ the Bridegroom and His Bride the Church. To fail in this is to commit spiritual adultery."

Cowley trots out the one about Pope Francis on one of his airplanes - "Who am I to judge?" - employing it to imply that the Pope would not judge Bishop Drennan for sexual misconduct, same as the media misinterpreted that remark as a licence to homosexuals to pursue a sinful lifestyle, when in fact the Pope had very precisely stated the opposite.

The Pope more than anyone has a duty to judge: to judge acts, that is, as either right, wrong, or indifferent. He like priests and even us lowly laity must constantly assess our own and others' actions as either in accord with the Gospel, or otherwise. But the Pope like the rest of us - except for priests in the confessional whose task is mandated by Christ - must not judge the doers of those deeds, because we're not mind-readers. We can and must judge only ourselves. Only God can see and judge another's motivation for their actions.

Cowley reckons that Catholics are "generally understanding about priests slipping up. We know that a hungry man cannot be judged for stealing a loaf of bread". Well, pardon me once more, but a hungry man who has voluntarily vowed not to steal, and who is hungry because he has not eaten the food that the Lord has provided for him, will certainly be judged - not by us, but by the Supreme Judge.

Lumen Gentium (n 44, Canon 573.1 of the Code of Canon Law) and Thomas in the Summa Theologica 11-11 q.186 a.1) both support our reader's contention, that the consecrated life is a "total" consecration. The vows made by a diocesan priest (and bishop) are absolutely not as Cowley claims, "to give a priest more time for his ministry" (!) but are intended to increase his charity and assist his growth in all the virtues.

Cowley might know a lot about human nature, especially the fallen variety, but perhaps not much about the Science of Love of the Mystical Doctor, St John of the Cross, who as our reader says "proposes the means to this Divine Union with God: mortification of the senses and sexual appetites and to prefer nothing to the love of Christ." The great Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange concurs, of course, summing up the evangelical counsels as "the spirit of mortification".

Celibacy is not about making it easy to deal with church property, as Cowley claims, but it certainly is about holiness. Because as our reader points out, the three enemies of the soul are the world, the flesh and the devil, and St John says the hardest to overcome is the flesh. Without contemplation and asceticism (detachment, mortification and holy abandonment to the Divine Will) it simply can't be done.

If a bishop fails to pray, our reader adds, especially before the Most Blessed Sacrament, then he must follow the Lord "from afar off!" As Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen put it, without this lowly, interior prayer (of contemplation) our actions and works are empty and fruitless.

"And with contemplation and asceticism we come to possess all the virtues. Including overcoming the flesh, and every temptation!"

Leo says:

The best priest I've ever known (name supplied) was seduced by a (parish name supplied) parishioner, and that was the end of his priesthood.



I find your blog  "hurtful and depressing" too.  Thats because it has so much reality that has to be faced. I find writing pieces on your blog "hurtful and depressing"  but I am compelled to do so.  I find the damage that is being done to our faith from the top down  "hurtful and depressing".

Philippa O'Neill says:

Joy Cowley has awful views for a Catholic. She once stated that St Paul was gay as she felt he protested too much regarding the sin of homosexuality... the act that is. She is warmly welcomed to give talks and retreats all over the country whereas faithful priests like Fr Linus Clovis are treated terribly and with distain. 

I was ashamed when his talks were not to be advertised here in our diocese yet she is given the right to preach whatever terrible liberal views she likes. I feel that you are going up against the proverbial brick wall. 

We are all praying for our bishops and priests I'm sure (that's for those that tell us to shut up and pray!) But I'm reminded of Saint Catherine of Siena.. she did more than pray...she acted and told it as it was.

Paul Collits says:

Has he admitted the liaisons?

I say:

Not in so many words, not that I've heard. But isn't tender of resignation a tacit admission? It there hadn't been a liaison, he wouldn't have resigned. If he resigned when there was no liaison, either he has an overwrought sense of chivalry or the plot thickens.