The Superiority Of Celibacy [long Post]

[AugustineA]

This question came to me when I read the first letter to the Corinthians wherein St. Paul says, if believers cannot exercise self-control they should marry, chapter 7 verses 8-9. I read this as a child and asked my family, protestants who passionately argued the holiness of marriage without acknowledging the question let alone answering: is celibacy superior, if so why do we not teach its superiority, and if not how do we explain Paul's passage?

 

I was disappointed after converting to Catholicism to experience the same sort of what I may be too strongly interpreting as avoidance of the question, which is one of the reasons I'm happy for this resource on Phatmass.  A short reading of St. Ambrose's biography last month again confirmed to me that he shared my hunch that St. Paul truly did consider celibacy superior, and brought the question to the fore of my mind.

 

Now today, I can't remember precisely where, somewhere between books 2 and 4 of St. Augustine's City of God, he clearly praises celibacy as superior and adjoins that idea with an order not to judge nor think less of those who resort to matrimony. And just this evening, I have seen St. Jerome in Against Jovianus describe marriage as a form of weakness in comparison to celibacy. And by some great luck recently I found my copy of "The Church Teaches", looked up celibacy, and see the Council of Trent confirmed its superiority in Canon 10 on matrimony with dire warning.

 

Why doesn't the CCC reflect this? Is it simply a cultural expression or bias that we avoid mentioning it today, or is my experience peculiar? In the CCC celibacy is briefly commended in Pars. 1579 and 1580 whereas matrimony has the better part of 60 paragraphs dedicated to it, while the topic of the superiority of celibacy, which has risen up in every other document I've read from the apostles to the fathers, is conspicuously absent. What is up?