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Mary P. Walket's avatar

I was blessed to be able to interview Ralph McInerny at a conference called "Art and Soul" at Baylor. He was witty, and truly a gentleman in every sense of the word. I've read many of his mystery novels, and this essay has caused me to want to read the memoir. What I loved about his fiction was that he never took himself or his characters too seriously.

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John Brundage's avatar

Hi Chris, as a seminarian discerning (and at times intensely wrestling with) a potential call to celibacy, I must say I wasn’t impressed by McInerney’s anecdote. His shrug and a wink manner of telling the story (and calling celibacy “a single life”) doesn’t leave me with the impression that he had a deep understanding of celibacy, or that he made a serious effort to live it out. I think you’re right to recognize the unjust contrast between the agony you have experienced, and McInerney’s blazé fumblings. His ‘I couldn’t keep myself away from the girls’ mode of discernment doesn’t do justice to the plight of people living in circumstances where they are (or believe themselves to be) involuntarily and indefinitely prevented from marrying.

But neither does Vines’ argument in my opinion. I think the main problem with it is that he doesn’t seem to distinguish between celibacy and sexual continence. Celibacy may be supererogatory, but chastity is not. For people currently unable to marry, we might very well sympathize with them, and recognize reduced culpability for their failures in living out chastity. But the burden of sexual continence can’t transform an unchaste relationship into a chaste one.

The key question then, which Vines seems to overlook, is whether same sex relationships are chaste? If they are, Vines et al’s argument (at least as you’ve presented it) is superfluous; there’d be no need for this sort of lateral justification. If they aren’t, then the argument is relativistic sophistry, or at best, incompatible with Christian ethics. You can’t come away from the sermon on the mount thinking ‘we’re excused from moral precepts if they are a burden.’

In spite of my frustration with their thought, I do think Vines and McInerney have a lot that’s worth salvaging. seeing celibacy as a gift requiring grace, (and not as the product of human willpower) is especially important. If more people understood this, it would go a long way in reducing the dysfunction and shame which are running rampant in the Church right now. I am interested to see your future efforts to integrate their thought with the Church’s understanding.

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