No official Church position on the celibacy of Christ

No official Church position on the celibacy of Christ

ABC News did it’s laughable “expose” on Monday night, highlighting the “DaVinci Code” novel as if it were the truth. The book purports to be based on fact and claims that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had several kids and that she was in fact the most important person in the Church, not Peter.

Anyway, to provide “balance”, ABC asked the US bishops’ conference, USCCB, to comment. The host, Elizabeth Vargas, said the following:

We asked the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for the Catholic Church’s position on Jesus being married. It said that there was no official doctrine on the subject but that it is the Church’s opinion that he was not married because it is not in the Gospels.

No position? No official doctrine? The evangelical counsel of consecrated celibacy being based on the celibacy of Christ is not an official position of the Church?

How about Vatican II’s Prebyterorum ordinis, no. 16, which says priests who are celibate follow the example of the Lord? How about Paul VI’s encyclical on celibacy that claims of course that Christ was celibate his entire life? Never mind all the other teachings of the Church over 2,000 years.

Are the bureaucrats at the bishops’ conference so used to waffling on everything that they can’t even make a simple declarative statement on something so fundamental as this?

I’d hate to see them order breakfast: “While we don’t deny the tastiness and suitability of pancakes as a breakfast food, we take no official position on whether pancakes are inherently better than fried eggs or cereal.” Now we know where Clinton’s PR flacks ended up after his term ended.

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