Celibacy, No! Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church of The Netherlands has been the single most progressive force in Catholic reformation. Last week, once again, Dutch Catholics demonstrated that they are still the vanguard. The Dutch Pastoral Council, a representative church body composed of bishops, priests, nuns, seminarians and lay men and women, voted 93 to 2 in favor of an umbrella policy statement that "obligatory celibacy as a condition of the priesthood should be abrogated."*
The Dutch Council—the only national pastoral council thus far operating —also passed overwhelmingly a series of related recommendations urging that future priests not be obliged to take the celibacy oath, that priests already married be allowed to remain in the active ministry and that married men be ordained. A smaller but impressive majority (72 in favor) also recommended that women be admitted "to all ecclesiastical functions," notably the priesthood.
All eight Dutch bishops—including the primate of The Netherlands, Bernard Jan Cardinal Alfrink—abstained from the various votes on the celibacy question. As a Vatican spokesman quickly noted, the Dutch Council's recommendations were purely advisory. Even if the Dutch hierarchy acts on them, according to the Vatican, the question is not properly for the Dutch bishops to decide, though as bishops they theoretically have the power. Bufthe hierarchy, faced with hundreds of restless young priests, has already tacitly accepted the limited participation of some married priests for preaching in services apart from Mass. Now Cardinal Alfrink has promised: "We are going to inform Rome and the universal church. Your bishops are prepared to do something, otherwise they would not have organized this council. It will be something between what should happen and what can happen."
Alfrink himself does not view the end of obligatory celibacy as a cureall. He did tell the council that unless the celibacy issue is solved, "very soon we won't have young priests any more." But he also questions whether abolition of the rule would attract more priests to the diminishing Dutch clergy, who lost 250 of their 13,400 members in 1968 alone. Just what the bishops can do, short of a confrontation which Rome would likely view as schismatic, remains to be seen. Throughout the four-day council debates, the most recurrent catchphrase among the delegates was "Wir willen geen breeck" ("We don't want a break"), and Alfrink argued against any timetable that would preclude "dialogue with Rome." Yet 72% of the Dutch Catholic population favor an end to the celibacy obligation, and would doubtless back their bishops if they should take the extreme step and challenge Pope Paul's recent affirmations of the historic discipline.
* The first 37 Popes were themselves under no obligation of celibacy, though some of them chose it voluntarily. Not until the 12th century did church councils declare clerical marriage invalid in the Latin rite; it is still valid in Eastern Catholic rites.