Celibacy and monachism are to be understood in the light of the fundamental purpose of asceticism, namely the methodical training of the will. When a Catholic priest vows perpetual chastity, and when a monk binds himself solemnly to the observance of the “evangelical counsels,” i.e. poverty, chastity and obedience, neither in the case of the priest nor of the monk is it a mere matter of voluntary renunciation, as though renunciation of itself had a moral value. They esteem the moral goodness of marriage too frankly and too completely for that. They regard marriage as a great and holy thing, as a sacrament, as being indissoluble and founded upon the faithful love of Jesus for His Church. The Catholic priest should be secure beyond all others from the suspicion of despising marriage, for he confesses and preaches the sacramental dignity of marriage as a tenet of the Church’s faith. Why then does he renounce it for himself? And why does the monk go further and renounce gold and riches, and that great good of being his own lord and master? St. Thomas[3] gives us the decisive reason. It is that they may be free for the things of God. And long before St. Thomas, St. Paul had said as much: “He that is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife” (1 Cor. vii, 32-33). The Catholic priest and the religious are by their vocation devoted to the things of God. It is their business to establish and propagate God’s Kingdom, not only in themselves, but also in others, in the world. This task is so sublime, so sacred and delicate, so difficult, responsible and sacrificial, that it demands and engages the best of a man’s being and precludes family life. A man cannot be a good apostle and the father of a family at one and the same time. Our Lord Himself was unmarried, and He spoke the noteworthy words about those who have voluntarily become eunuchs. The apostles left everything and followed Jesus. Although they were when called, with the exception of St. John and St. Paul, married men, yet after they had undertaken the apostolate they no longer lived as married men, but as servants of Christ, as men, in St. Paul’s words, who “had made themselves free as to all, to become the slaves of all” (1 Cor. ix, 19). Consequently celibacy derives its meaning, its power and its serious purpose from the apostolate, from resolute self-surrender to Christ and His Kingdom. The love and care which a married man gives to the restricted circle of his family, are given by the priest and monk to their Lord and Master, and to the thousands of souls entrusted to them by the Lord, to the sick, to children and to sinners. So the priest’s personality becomes richer and deeper, the more he sacrifices himself and gives himself to others. What he loses in spiritual values by his renunciation of family life, he gets back in richer abundance by his life of prayer and by his loving pastoral activity. The Church encompasses the priest’s life with many safeguards, and sanctifies it by the obligation of the daily ofFice and by the frequent celebration of Holy Mass, so that the ideal priest—there must always be occasional hirelings—cannot help but be a pattern to his flock. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God, of the supernatural and other-worldly, of the precious pearl for which one should give up everything, is personified in him, in a form that is manifest and inspiring. The Catholic does not receive from his priest nothing but pious and benevolent words, nor does he love him merely for his noble character. He also expects from and finds in him the uncompromising spirit of the Gospel and a literal belief that the “kingdom of heaven suffereth violence.” Hence the reverence which Catholics show towards their priests. F. Nietzsche observes that “Luther allowed priests to marry. But three quarters of the reverence of which mankind … is capable, rests upon the belief that a man who is exceptional in this respect will be exceptional in others also.”[4] And Schopenhauer goes so far as to say that “Protestantism, by eliminating asceticism and its central belief in the meritoriousness of celibacy, practically rejected the very core of Christianity, and in that respect Protestantism must be regarded as a falling away from Christianity.”[5]