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Eunuchs for the Kingdom
Matthew 19:12
For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from [their] mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive [it], let him receive [it].
The "eunuchs for the kingdom" scriptural verse (logion) that is the foundation of celibacy in the Roman Church is found in Matthew 19:12. Recent hermeneutical re-evaluation by J. David Hester of the Center for Hermeneutics and Rhetorics has opened a discussion on the meaning of this verse that has been closed for decades.
Traditional exegesis converts "eunuch" to "celibate" and thus justifies celibacy as a higher call for those able to take it up. But this is not what Jesus said.
First, the problem with Jesus’ admonition to become eunuchs is that in the socio-historical milieu of Jesus’ time, the eunuch was not only not a celibate figure, but not even chaste, and even considered a gender monstrosity. Exactly what Jesus meant is important because the Jesus Seminar's analysis of the logion shows that it is one of the few handfuls of texts that is most likely a real utterance of Jesus (a "dominical" text). Therefore it is important to get it right.
Jesus said "eunuch," not celibate. We know the physical requirements for being a eunuch. Apparently what is not so clearly known by pro-celibacy exegetes is what is the result of the castration? Eunuchs can still have sex, though they cannot procreate. So clearly the eunuch's not being able to reproduce is not related to sexual activity, though the standard ideology of the Roman Church wishes to strongly link the two activities. Indeed, the strong linkage is the basis for the sexual morality and ethics taught by the Church today.
Eunuchs were not chaste, not celibate, and could easily perform sex acts with women or men. Eunuchs were a blended gender and considered somewhat monstrous in the ancient world. Yet the sexual energy of eunuchs was extremely powerful. They moved in-between the worlds of men and women with ease. Hester notes: “The eunuch was seen as the embodiment and even the means of facilitating sexual transgression.” (Hester n.d, 14)
Since eunuchs were anything but chase and celibate, did Jesus make a mistake calling for disciples to become eunuchs, knowing what was the common knowledge of the sociopolitical role of eunuchs at the time?
Ironically, despite pious exegesis that equates eunuch with celibate, the subsequent history of what was supposed to be a chaste and celibate clergy is much closer to the way things really were in Jesus’ time. If someone is a "eunuch on account of the kingdom,” then what this could actually mean is that they are profligate, gender-bending, and promiscuous--just as many have been in the historical sociology of the church.
The earliest congregations of Christians knew exactly what Jesus meant in urging them to become eunuchs for the Kingdom--ritual castration. Hester shows that the most naturalistic and obvious reading of the logion of Jesus is that he wanted his followers to practice ritual self-castration "as a sign of religious devotion and commitment" (Hester n.d, 21-22). This practice was followed in both the heterodox and orthodox movements of the first through the fourth centuries. The ritual was widespread, though it would be a stretch to call it popular. No figures exist on how many foolhardy followers got out their knives. A few famous examples remind us how powerful was the belief. Origen, the great apologist for Christianity, cut off his testicles just like Jesus recommended. (Hester n.d, 21).
Jesus’ hard advice to mutilate your genitals turned into a churchly admonition to become a eunuch in an allegorical castration. The re-interpretation went thus: Jesus must have only meant not to have too many ejaculations, since this was though to diminish the vital male essence, and thus weaken masculinity (Hester n.d, 26). Later interpretations clear into our own times have dropped this erroneous male physiology as an explanation, though not the church teaching, which essentially forbids ejaculations outside of a vagina, and then only for the sole purpose of reproduction. The erroneous physiology may be gone, but the result is the same, this time with an argument based on the purpose of ejaculation of sperm into a vagina--to conceive a child.
The benefit to a celibate, and therefore ejaculation-free priest, is more mysterious, though usually it gets back to the rejection of the “flesh” and the self-punishment that results from eliminating genital sexuality. But why? There is an implied payback to this voluntary self-punishment and self-denial that can be cashed out when you check in to the kingdom of heaven, though, unlike the Muslim heaven with its wild sex with legions of virgins, the prudish Roman Catholic tradition does not say what the payback in heaven is. The “beatific vision” which heaven-goers are promised may be a code word for a kind of orgasmo-religious ecstacy-- a sort of celestial poontang! And the celibate and chaste clergy may even get a little more of it than the weaker, married people who have succumbed to the delights of the “flesh.”
Yet as we see from Hester's historical exegesis, the shuffling and rearranging that theologians have done to change the meaning of these canonical words of Jesus miss the true power of what he said. What Jesus said and meant by the verse is a direct challenge and refutation of the "heterosexist binary paradigm of identity," in Hester's words. This means that the "kingdom of heaven resides in-between, even outside, in the ultimate ancient figure of sex-gender transgression" (Hester n.d, 29).
The implications of this interpretation of Jesus’ gnomic logion in Matthew 19:12 are profound. First it means that so much contemporary Catholic and Protestant sexual ethics are wrong, especially the conservative heterosexist interpretations. Jesus exalted the eunuch as a type of the third, or the in-between sex. This is a direct rejection of the male/female dyad—“the binary sex paradigm." Such an interpretation turns conservative Christianity on its head. Jesus is saying that that homosexuality or any sexuality outside of the heterosexist binary paradigm is where the kingdom can be found. The "transgressive body of the eunuch...symbolizes the kingdom." (Hester n.d, 31) Jesus was quite clear about it. The early Christians knew what he meant, and some, the bravest (or stupidest), tried to do it following prescriptive call of Jesus to remove your testicles and in doing so, demonstrate that where they least expected to find the kingdom, there it is.
What is even more powerful than the traumatic self-castration that Jesus recommended is the awakening to the liminality of the kingdom. This was Jesus’ constant message: the kingdom is not where the rich, powerful, conservative males think it is. It is found amongst lepers, prostitutes, the sick and maimed, the outcast, and eunuchs. Who but Jesus would say such a thing as he did in Matthew 19:12?
The effect that Jesus’ statement had on the Pharisees was the same as the effect that this revised hermeneutic will have on churchmen, the popes, cardinals, bishops, clergy, and male religious. Nuns are off the hook. There is no discussion of parallel elective surgery for women. (By the way, such a parallel procedure would not be a clitoredectomy, since the clitoris has only a pleasure function, and the self-removal of ovaries is not a practical do-it-yourself operation.) But again, the castration itself is mild compared with the profound shock of realization that the kingdom and thus the church is not where the conservatives think it is. Jesus’ advice to be a eunuch is also a symbolic cutting off, not of testicles, but of the normal roadmap for believers where the true path to the kingdom lies.
Eunuchs, homosexuals, the varieties of the transgendered in general are the heart of the kingdom of god, not its outcasts, as conservative Christians claim. But pedophiles and hebophiles are criminals first and foremost. It's safe to say they would not be welcomed into the kingdom.
Protecting the Criminals: The Vatican’s Smoking Gun
An amazing document was uncovered by an investigative reporter for CBS in 2003. A memo written in 1962 by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the Prefect of the Holy Office (formerly the Inquisition). It is a detailed instruction to Bishops and priests on how to proceed in the cases of clergy sexual abuse. What did Ottaviani recommend? All you have to do is look at the clergy sex abuse cases that have come to trial to see what the Vatican ordered bishops to do. The bishops followed it to a letter. In a few words, Ottaviani called for absolute secrecy and conspiratorial silence. Ottaviani claimed that all information about any cases was to be considered Holy office material.
| Read the Vatican document. |
| Read the CBS report |
This document proves that the Vatican is the source of the criminal sexual abuse cover-up in the church. The behavior of the bishops was so uniform that, prior to the document, it could have been surmised that the bishops were talking to one another and getting collegial advice on what to do, namely shuffle pedophiles off to other parishes, and especially not to alert the civil authorities. When the bishops got caught, in a dazzling display of episcopal omerta (the Mafia's code of silence) they still would not blow the whistle on why they all so uniformly did the same thing. The reason was that the Holy Office forbade it under pain of excommunication (or should that be spelled "excummunication?")
And now, to widen the conspiracy, the U.S. government has just won a case that says the Vatican has immunity in clergy abuse lawsuits. A U.S. District court has ruled that the Vatican is a foreign state subject to immunity protections of the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. This limits the claim of three men who alleged a cover-up by the Vatican to protect clergy who sexually abused children. The court did not agree that the Vatican is an international religious organization. In Texas, U.S. Government lawyers are arguing that the Pope should enjoy immunity because he is the head of state of the Vatican. This reeks of the same mentality that allowed the Vatican to have a Concordat with Hitler’s Germany.
But if the “Vatican” (the governing bureaucracy of the Catholic Church) is not an international religious organization, then why is the Vatican Holy Office sending “apostolic” visitors to all of the 229 U.S. seminaries to root out errors in teaching about celibacy. (This is occurring in October 2005 at the writing of this essay). While the apostolic inquisitors are searching for error, they are also looking in seminary closets for “evidence of homosexuality.” The intention is to eliminate homosexuality in the clergy and seminary ranks. This is the opening religio-political gambit of the new Pope, Ratzinger.
What the Catholic church in the U.S. needs is a fearless Savonarola to stand up to the inquisitors and demand that they personally follow Matthew 19:12. If the inquisitors are reluctant to follow Jesus’ injunction, the seminarians should offer to do it for them.
The Problem with Celibacy
With a few exceptions, most sexual abuse by clergy is in the ranks of the Roman Catholic Church. You never hear about legions of rabbis or imams molesting children and teenagers, so the problem is localized to the shepherds of the flock of the world's one billion Catholics. There must be something in the institutional nature of the church that makes this so. There is. It's celibacy--the rule that priests, monks and nuns may not marry.
Celibacy creates an institutional mindset that there is a something not quite right with marriage. Of course it’s not really "marriage" that is the problem. A man and a woman living together under one roof is not so bad. Priests and their housekeepers in the rectory do it all the time. What is bad is what they might do at night, which is copulate. There's the rub.
You would never hear this in so many words. Catholic apologists always remind the questioner that marriage is a sacrament, that Mary and Joseph were married (sort of--they did not consummate it according to pietistic Catholic tradition), and don't forget, Jesus went to the wedding feast at Cana. The church values marriage because marriages are the source of new Catholics. But as for really valuing marriage, sexuality, and the dynamics of two people giving their lives to each other, the church reserves a higher category of sociality for the celibate- those who do not marry for the "sake of the kingdom."
Doing something for "sake of the kingdom" is a messianic doctrine that views earthly events and institutions as temporary and unworthy of an imagined other worldly religious utopia—the “Kingdom.” The logic of opposing the existential world with an idealized one is a source of unhappiness and neurosis. This “kingdom” is a psychological space that is a refuge from intolerable political or cultural conditions.
Rhetoric about “kingdom of god” is a divorce from reality. This dynamic explains the logic of celibacy--a "divorce" from sexuality, the “world,” that which is, in favor of that which is not. Celibacy is the problem because it is a sign of a dislocation from reality. Catholic theology calls celibacy a gift. The scriptures call for "eunuchs for the kingdom" that is of self-emasculation for a future state of union with God. Not just union, but a higher union than those mortals who are too weak or unlucky to have this "gift."
Although the Muslim notion of heaven as a place of intensified sexual encounters and bliss is far from the Catholic/Christian notion of renunciation of the "flesh", still there is an implicit reciprocal relationship implied between giving it up now and getting more later. The "more" is left unspecified, but it is easy to see in the "beatific vision" the promised reward that is supposed to make heaven so great, a hidden sexual bliss, the post-orgasmic ecstasy of gazing on the face of the beloved. And who would deny to priests, nuns and other celibates a few more beatific orgasms since they had the fortitude to be able to forego sexual pleasures on earth.
Except for one problem, only suckers fall for it. There are two kinds of celibates: those who believe it and are too naive to realize that it's only a trick played on them for reasons having nothing to do with god or heaven, and those who do realize it and keep up the outward appearance by simply not getting married, but who are anything but chaste.
The Catholic Church has been obsessed with sexuality since its beginning. Usually the obsessions are expressed in anti-sexual practices translated into repressive doctrines. The ambiguity of Jesus own sexuality in the milieu of Roman-occupied Israel contributed to the kick-start the Christian church got in the wrong direction. Was Jesus married? Did he have a lover? Was he asexual, or even gay? His millennialism was shrouded in marital and sexual ambiguity: his apostles were required to leave their wives, husbands and families in order to follow him. As we know, he even recommended that his male followers cut off their testicles as a sign of their commitment.
Early followers of Jesus expected the "last days" at any moment. They sold their belongings and waited for the re-appearance of Jesus. What good was anyone's marriage with such apocalyptic expectations? Jesus’ promised Kingdom was coming and human culture and earthly institutions seemed useless to these enthusiastic early Christians. Although a promise of bodily resurrection (borrowed from Egyptian practices) was developed and elaborated into core Christian doctrine, the body itself was disdained. Christians could renounce the "world" (meaning human sexuality and cultural practices because they had an alternative--a promised "heaven" as a locus of the kingdom promised by Jesus. After the "final days," everyone's bodies would be restored, though apparently without any base desires such as sexuality. It would be unnecessary; generations of priests would explain, because the direct vision and experience of God would make bodily pleasure unnecessary and meaningless.
The anti-sexual attitudes projected into a heaven of resurrected bodies spilled back down to earth. The common explanation for the presumed chastity (no sex) and celibacy (no marriage) of priests and nuns was "the sake of the kingdom (or, on “account of the Kingdom”). For the sake of the kingdom, no marriage, sex, or procreation was permitted for priests, bishops, and nuns. This profoundly anti-human attitude and set of practices was bound to have unintended consequences, as it surely did.
One consequence of a set of rules proscribing sex and marriage was tendency for the priesthood to attract homosexuals. Men who would not marry anyway were drawn to the all-male ambience of the priesthood, and especially that mostly-male enclave of all--the seminary and the monastery. Homosexuals or ambiguously sexual men thrived in seminaries and monasteries. But also attracted to seminaries were sexual deviants and sexual predators. It was common practice to send young boys to seminaries. The minor seminaries normally began with high school. Boys as young as 13 and 14 would leave home and have little contact with their families and former friends. They were forbidden contact with their female age mates. These young seminarians also began their indoctrination and acculturation to a church institutionally suspicious of women and with a nominally chaste and celibate clergy. Young men in such a disorienting setting are vulnerable to intentional or unintentional brainwashing by authority figures, but even more in danger from sexual predators who were allowed free rein in the seminaries.
The enormity of the scandal is nearly unimaginable: criminal practices of priest pedophiles in the seminaries and parish churches, and the greater scandal of the conspiracy of the bishops in ignoring the crimes and even allowing more crimes to continue by their failure to remove pedophiles or alert secular authorities. Now we know that the Vatican not only approved of what the Bishops and Cardinals did, but also even ordered to happen precisely that way.
Stephen Duplantier, Ph. D.
Reference
J. David Hester
“Eunuchs and the Postgender Jesus: Matthew 19:12 and Transgressive Sexualities”
Interfakultäres Zentrum für Ethik in den Wissenschaften, Tübingen Centre for Hermeneutics and Rhetorics, California
The Pope's Beloved Eunuchs
Pope Clement VIII
Centuries of catholic apologists and theologians have steered Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:12 away from eunuch and mistranslated it as “celibate.” But the church as recently as the 19th century had a love affair with eunuchs—those angelic-voiced castrati.
Castrati, young boys who were castrated to preserve their lilting boy sorprano voices, were apparently a Spanish innovation in the late sixteenth century. But in Italy the practice was well established and was used to keep the ranks of choruses filled.
When the boys grew up, their voices did not. Pope Clement VIII liked the singing of the castrati when they appeared in the Vatican in 1599. Where did they come from? Poor boys were targeted to be castrati. The boys were anesthetized with opium, and bathed in hot water until numbed. Then the seminiferous tubules were severed. These castrati still had a scrotum and testes, but they were incapable of supplying testosterone to their body and so the boy was functionally castrated. Castrati sang the high parts in sacred music normally sung by the prepubescent boys who had an annoying habit of getting deep their voices just as they knew the music and lyrics. Although he enjoyed the singing of the castrati, Pope Leo XIII banned the practice in 1878.
Roman Clamp for castration
Alfredo Ottaviani
