My Encounter With Jehovah's Witnesses, Part 1: Priestly Celibacy

It was surely a God-incidence. I just happened to be at home, working on my computer when I heard a knock. I opened the door to see a sweet little old lady and her husband, very nicely dressed I might add, holding out a pamphlet asking something along the lines of, “Have you considered where you will spend eternity?”.

I instantly got a smile on my face, not only because this was the cutest little old lady I’ve ever seen (she looked like my Grandma), but because I had been longing for my Jehovah's Witness friends to return. (You may recall a blog post from a couple years ago, with a similar situation). You may ask, "why do you even bother?". Some might even consider it to be misleading, full well knowing I'm inviting them in for their benefit, not mine.

I take every advantage I can for two main reasons:

1. To evangelize - Many of these door to door disciples are well versed on Scripture passages, however, have very little critical thinking skills and have a very skewed perspective of history.

2. To practice - Having these people willingly coming to my door, attempting to dismantle the very faith that was handed down from the Apostles, gives me every opportunity to stay up to date with any fresh arguments and keeps my brain sharp.

I welcomed this elderly couple in, asked if they would like some coffee and we began to chat. I asked them what made them decide to become Jehovah's Witnesses. I also asked if they attended any church prior. They told me they used to be “Roman Catholic".

The conversation seemed to take an interesting turn after that. Before long, the husband was going off about Priestly celibacy, the sex scandal lawsuits and that the reason the last Pope (Pope Emeritus Benedict XI) resigned was because he couldn’t deal with all of the lawsuits. I believe the phrase he used was, “scapegoat”.

I politely interrupted this slander to interject. I suggested that the more practical reason Pope Benedict XI stepped down was for health reasons (as recent pictures of his frail body have evidenced), and that he exercised humble discernment to pass the keys on, so that the church would have a shepherd that can most effectively lead the flock. Similar to how Jesus entrusted Peter to, “Take care of my sheep” (John 21:16).

This caused him to pause for a moment allowing me to debunk his assumed correlation between Priestly celibacy and sex abuse cases. First off, I reminded him of the common misunderstanding that child sex abuse is caused by celibacy. I shared a recent statistic:

"4% of Catholic clergy were sexual abusers in the 1950s through 1980s and that 'this is about the same as it was among other clergy [Pastors of other denominations] … and less than it was in the general population of males,' which was about 8%”. Comparatively, child abuse statistics for teachers are almost double Catholic clergy at a staggering 7%. (2002 study of professional sexual misconduct by German psychiatrist Werner Tschan)

In the same breath I also stated that this shouldn’t diminish the responsibility and accountability of those heinous crimes, which should be punished and continued to be prevented from happening in the future. Even one incident is an abomination.

By now he was completely silent, with a stunned look on his face. I continued to remind him of the Biblical reasons for celibacy in the first place. The Apostle Paul himself told the disciples that he wished everyone could be celibate as he was:

"I wish that all of you were as I am [celibate]" (1 Cor. 7:7)

Why? For good reasons:

"An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— and his interests are divided" (1 Cor. 7:32-34).

Hence why Latin rite Catholic priests have a discipline of celibacy. Traditionally, Catholic priests were the ones who chaplained the military in battle, as they didn’t have a wife and children back at home to consider.

He replied to this, stating that men shouldn’t be forced to be celibate, that’s not the way God created man. Man and women are meant to be fruitful and multiply, he said. I agreed, and mentioned that no one forces a man to choose the celibate life. No one forces a man to be a Priest, they have their own free will to choose. In fact, the Eastern Catholic rite doesn’t have the discipline of Priestly celibacy, meaning there are some married Catholic priests.

Jesus himself reaffirms Paul’s words when speaking regarding the single life:

"Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it." (Matthew 19:11).

A clear and effective explanation from a Protestant apologetical organization enlightens Jesus’ use of the phrase, “eunuchs”:

"Natural eunuchs include those who are born with a physical defect, but they also comprise those who are born with no real desire for marriage or sex. Forced eunuchs are those who have been castrated for whatever reason. Voluntary eunuchs are those who, in order to better serve the Lord in some capacity, choose to forego marriage.” - GotQuestions.org

I concluded this topic by asking him if any of the leaders of his church have chosen the celibate life. If not, why? Jesus, and the Apostle Paul, clearly instruct those who want to serve the Lord in a special capacity to live this discipline.

I recognized that there are many misconceptions and it’s important to look to the source before jumping to conclusions, which leads to slander and misdirection… I then made mention that this wasn’t what they had come to chat with me about in the first place.... They wanted to discuss how Jesus isn’t God.

Coming up next: "My Encounter With Jehovah's Witnesses, Part 2: Jesus Isn't God?".