Victoria, Canada, Mar 7, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The culture assumes celibacy is unhealthy, repressive, and gamophobic, but is it?
Canadian priest Father Harrison Ayre says no, which is why he started the trending Twitter hashtag #celibacymatters.
“The common misconceptions people have about celibacy: sexual repression, the confusion between celibacy and chastity, and that [priests] didn’t want or couldn’t handle marriage,” Ayre told CNA.
“No, this is a healthy lifestyle. It’s the way Jesus lived. If Jesus can live it then with his grace we can live it too.”
The hashtag began after the priest read a tweet from comedian Joe Rogan, a frequent critic of the Catholic Church. Rogan tweeted on March 6 the question: “At what point are we going to realize that forced celibacy is unnatural and unhealthy?”
Ayre, the pastor of Holy Family Notre Dame parish in Port Alberni, British Columbia, lamented that authentic human sexuality has been misrepresented in popular culture today, and that the importance of sexual love has been over exaggerated.
The culture has “this overemphasis on sex, like it’s the ‘end all, be all’ of life,” said Ayre. “When you see something like Joe Rogan’s tweet, they are trying to tear down the Church to its level.”
Society, he said, considers celibacy an impossibility, and views celibates as people sexually repressed or afraid of marriage. Rather than repressing their sexuality, he said priests “are actually sexually free in a good way… living our sexuality in a beautiful healthy way.”
Additionally, he said celibacy is an opportunity to sacrifice a good aspect of creation, not a window to escape from marriage. He said the sacrifice, though, doesn’t mean that sexuality is forgotten.
“Sexually, I’m a man, and I’m always living that out, but I’m just not acting on a particular aspect of what I’m created for. I’m giving that up for a greater good.”
He said celibacy points to Christ’s fulfilling promises, especially to heaven, where people will no longer be given in marriage.
“#CelibacyMatters because the world needs to know that there is more to live for, that Christ is the true substance of life,” Ayre tweeted.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CelibacyMatters?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CelibacyMatters</a> because the world needs to know that there is more to live for, that Christ is the true substance of life.</p>— Fr. Harrison Ayre (@christian_state) <a href="https://twitter.com/christian_state/status/971135849248079874?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 6, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Since Ayre started the hashtag on March 6, #celibacymatters has gained popularity with religious men and women, lay people, and other priests.
Rather than an attack on Joe Rogan’s tweet, the priest said the hashtag has inspired a witness to something positive, beautiful, and life giving.
“It was great to see a lot of people take up that hashtag as a sign to say [celibacy] is something beautiful.”
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Celibacy is fine, and not at all unnatural, when it is chosen by a man or a woman. With that said, St. Paul wrote in his letters to Timothy and to Titus that a church leader is to be married & he reasons, “…for if a man cannot manage his own family with dignity, how can he take care of the church of God?”
Note that married priests are to be MEN, not women. The role for women in the church is NOT as an ordained pastor. It often seems that when the idea of a married priesthood is broached, someone always wants to include women as priests and that is a definite NO, per Scripture. It’s so clear.