The article on Celibacy which appeared in the March issue of New Blackfriars was written last October and followed up by the rest of my book In Filial Disobedience, published by Mayhew-McCrimmon in June. Since March I have received a good deal of comment, both favourable and unfavourable, and in the light of this it has seemed worth while to add a final piece responding in particular to the major objections raised very seriously and kindly by some people. Could a priest really be morally justified in rejecting the Church’s law of celibacy with all the canonical consequences this entails? I have given my reply to that question the form of an article in the Summa Theologica. It is, hopefully, my last public contribution to the debate. This is not the most important subject for the Church today by any means, and yet it is a very important one both for its own sake and because it affects so many others. It is the key to a more flexible restructuring of the ministry. Yet if there is one thing which has grown in my mind in the last months it is the conviction that a law of so massive a nature, so tenaciously maintained by Rome with such powerful sanctions, cannot be defended or criticised primarily in terms of pragmatic pastoral advantage and disadvantage, whether in Europe or in Africa. It must be regarded primarily as a semi-doctrinal statement and one profoundly significant for the understanding and the misunderstanding of holiness.

Videtur quod. It seems that a secular priest may not marry.

Jesus was celibate. A priest should imitate Jesus as closely as possible because of his calling to be another Christ. In the words of Cardinal Hume, ‘Our Lord was celibate. Whatever reasons were important to him, I want to make mine’. (Searching for God, p. 52).