EDITORIAL McBrien suggestion: serious or passing fancy?
The case for genetic determination
of ever more human traits and characteristics seems, at times, relentless to
the point of overpowering. And now comes the suggestion that folks are
genetically disposed toward a divine calling. Consequently, the reasoning goes,
one might detect a deficiency in the Catholic gene pool as far as sacred traits
go because priests have been unable to marry.
Whew!
Fr. Richard McBrien, the provocative and courageous theologian
whose column appears regularly in these pages, is enamored of a suggestion by
Yamil Lara, a Catholic attorney from New Haven, Conn. Lara concludes that the
failure of priests to have children "has lowered and continues to lower the
quality of the Catholic gene pool across the centuries and around the
world."
As Lara reasons, priests have been above-average individuals on
the whole, and their progeny would have carried on not only paternal
intellectual traits but such characteristics as love for the church.
McBrien extends Lara's argument with examples of standout
offspring in the realms of religion, politics and the performing arts. He cites
the Gores, the Kennedys and the Bushes in politics; Rabbi Abraham Heschel,
historian Martin Marty and theologians H. Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr, among
others, in the world of religious thought; and actors such as Kirk Douglas,
Martin Sheen and Carl Reiner.
McBrien unwittingly in those examples opens the gate of the
"nature or nurture" debate: Is it genes or environment, not to mention
position, political clout and money that not only determines a youngster's path
but opens lots of doors that remain closed to the offspring of others?
Even before that debate can take shape, however, one hears an
eerie echo in this suggestion that raises a kind of positive eugenics. We've
already seen enough evidence of how unhealthy it can be to assign an undue
superiority to the ordained clerical culture sans offspring. And that positive
view of eugenics, by definition, has to have a negative side. So who might be
unfit for clerical duties?
And finally, we have to wonder what the suggestion implies for
those thousands upon thousands of holy couples who, down through the centuries,
have provided the church with worthy ministers full of intelligence and a deep
love for the church.
Nor do we wish to get into the far more numerous offspring -- the
legions of "preacher's kids," who have found that station in life itself to be
a reason to run from the church.
McBrien, we are thankful, has argued far more forcefully and
convincingly for the efficacy of a married priesthood from far sounder
theological, scriptural and traditional grounds. Arguing the case from genetics
is certainly a novelty -- and a quickly passing fancy, we hope.
National Catholic Reporter, January 10,
1997
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