 Hello, welcome to Clock Talk. I'm Crystal here Tuesday morning. We're going to talk about something quite spiritual, but I don't know how spiritual you are or where you sit on this world of religion, but you know everybody has their beliefs and I want to pinpoint some concept of celibacy in religion because why? Why is it that the church and why is it that so many religions are male dominated? There are a couple that aren't. I'm not trying to be a woman's rights advocate for the church right now, but it's an interesting topic on why the importance of celibacy and why men dominate it. I've got two really interesting men here today. They're like, why are we here? We should be, you know, but you will find out soon enough. Let me introduce them and it will explain itself. I've got two very, so now they wear very different hats, but today I'm going to put one on them more specifically than the others. Next to me is the lovely Greg Kinkley, who, why don't you introduce yourself? You've got so many hats that I don't feel like do justice to. Well, I'm a deputy attorney general for the state of Hawaii. I thought you said you were going to say that, you see? He exposed himself already. Oh, you're in trouble now. But nothing that I say has anything to do with state policy. Can you write that in? Yes, I will. I'm also a lay leader for services in the conservative temple here at Anahu, a congregation of Marat. Okay. I teach Talmud on the side. Very interesting. Okay, worldly man. Roy, this is Roy Chiu. And I am Roy Chiu. I'm a co-founder of Island Film Group, which is a local production and financing company for film, television and commercials. But I think the background of my life that's relevant to today's topic is that I was a lecturer in a Catholic church locally for about 10 years and I served on that church's pastoral council for about three or four years. And so I've grown up as a Catholic and was raised that way. But nowadays I tend to focus more on spirituality than religion. So that hopefully will be relevant to the topic. Oh, absolutely. Why don't we start with that? What is the difference between spirituality and religion for a lot of people? In my mind, spirituality deals with your relationship with God, whereas religion incorporates the doctrine of the church that you belong to or follow. And so religious doctrine is something that has been ingrained in me since I was very young. And thinking about today's topic, it made me think that for a lot of people who grew up in a certain religion because their parents kind of put them into that church, they didn't really question what they were taught. They were just told to believe that what they were taught was true. And in my case, I just reached the point in my youth when I was 15, 16, when I started to ask questions about religion and I wasn't getting the answers that were satisfying me in order for me to continue following the religion of Catholicism strictly as it was meant to be. And so I found myself kind of drifting more towards a liberal version of Catholicism, if you will. And so I think the most essential aspect of Christianity and even Catholicism is compassion. If you are compassionate to your fellow human being, you are living a Christian life. And so whether or not you believe whether Jesus turned water into wine or whether he walked on water, all those things are interesting. But to me, they're not really relevant to my faith, my relationship with God. What's important to me is expressing and acting out in compassion towards your fellow human mankind. So quickly, what is your take on celibacy in the church? So it's interesting. I did a little bit of research and actually in the first three centuries of Catholicism, celibacy was not a doctrine or a requirement. The priests were married, right? Yeah. In fact, one of the apostles had a wife and the Bible refers to the apostles and their wives. And it wasn't until like 11 in the 1136 timeframe when the church put into place this rule that priests had to be celibate. And it's interesting, over time, if we jump forward actually to modern day, there are even the Catholic Church has been open to certain Christians from other churches joining the Catholic Church if they want to because, and there's one example of a Christian church came up in the name of it, but certain priests felt like the church was getting too liberal and they were wanted to stay more conservative. The Catholic Church kind of opened its doors to them joining, but some of these men were married and the Catholic Church is willing to make an exception for them. But so if you were married before you switched over, it was okay. Right. And that seems to be the way it goes even for the other exceptions that the Catholic Church makes. For example, deacons can be married and join the Catholic Church and perform weddings and funerals and other Catholic rituals. What they can't do is give communion, which is very specific, right? Because that represents the purity of the bread of life. Going back to clarify that, that if previously married priests were allowed to change over, going back to the topic of celibacy, does that mean that because they're married, they can continue having sex, but if you didn't get in before you were technically married, you're not allowed. Okay, Greg, let's hear you talk about this. Well, of course, Judaism takes a completely different... And I want to say rabbis allow women, so it's a really interesting contrast. Yes, somewhat ironically, when you mentioned 1136, that's just about the time the Jews came out with the edict that you can't be married to more than one woman. Oh, okay. Well, then that's better. Still in the Torah, maybe I have to lay a little bit of foundation here. The Jewish approach to faith begins with the doctrine of the Torah containing all of the laws that we follow. The Torah is the first five books of what Roy would call the Old Testament. Correct. Okay, so Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. We look at that not so much as a book as more of a law book that is told through stories of a very dysfunctional family. So by having the context of this family with all these beefs, you know, people getting beat up on each other, taking each other's heritage and stuff, we have found 613 laws in the Torah. None of them say anything about not getting married or remaining a celibate. So the Occam's razor is, if it's not in there, we don't do that. But I understand that they kind of created this celibacy rule because of the land-owning years ago when they had the priests who had wanted to have claim. Is that right? That is an often repeated sociological and political explanation for the Christian experience. It's nothing like that. I actually have not heard that. For the Christian side, it's always been that celibacy is a necessary part of a priest's way of life in order to more fully reflect the fact that he's so devoted to Jesus. And the whole point really is to kind of mimic the life of Jesus. And the assumption there is that Jesus himself was celibate, which I don't know if that's true or not. Was he a virgin? Tell me, was he a virgin? Well, I can tell you that because he was a Jewish boy. But first, actually, this point of Roy's is maybe the fulcrum. It's the actual place where we need to bifurcate the two faiths. And it has to do with priesthood. Because after all, the priesthood from the Catholic Church came from the understanding of priesthood and Judaism. The thing is, though, that there's something revolutionary in Judaism that for some reason everything went backwards rather than forwards. It still is, right? Political point of view. If you look at the book of Leviticus, children in school learn Leviticus first, actually, in Hebrew school. And everyone wonders, oh, hey, why do you do that? That's the most boring thing there is, right? It's like, oh, put in this much cinnamon and this much acacia and burn it here. But the point is, it was a revolutionary book because inside that superficially boring thing were all of the instructions for how to make sacrifices, what the ingredients were for the holy incense, etc. And since there's universal, the concept of universal education and literacy was always key, what this meant was the priesthood was opening up all the secrets of the priest to every Jew. So there was never any differentiation in terms of understanding or lifestyle between priests and the regular practicing Jews. So the idea of celibacy being foisted upon the priests in order to bring them closer has nothing at all to do with Judaism. We dealt with Torah and Tameans, ritual purity and ritual... But you do mention sacrifice. I want to go back to that between the different religions and what that means in terms of depriving oneself of a natural expression, the sexuality, as men. How do you feel about that? Certainly that is one of the criticisms of the celibacy rule. When Greg was talking, I was thinking too that the whole point of, well, what I gathered from what he was saying was that in the Jewish faith, the secret, so to speak, are available to both priests and the regular people. So there's no mystery, there's no secret sauce in terms of having access to true faith. And I think that's another criticism of the celibacy rule is that, you know, how can a family go to a priest who's never been married for counseling about marital issues? It just doesn't make sense to me. And so somebody who's married would seem to be better qualified to talk to a young couple about marital issues, family issues, because he's lived it. But somebody who has never, and just because he has a closer relationship to God, which theoretically might sound great, but practically it doesn't really help in terms of advising a couple about marital issues about family. So, you know, that's another reason why I just don't think the celibacy rule makes sense. I also find that the biggest contradiction is that the act of lovemaking, the act of sex is for procreation. And that isn't that the essence of the Bible is to create life. I don't know. It's the first commandment. The first commandment in the Torah is, bruvuvuvu, be fruitful and multiply. So we would actually see celibacy as a sin, because it's taking you off the road of the Torah. Celibacy has in fact resulted in sin when you look at all the, you know, the priest molestation cases. Oh, God right. You know, I mean, you feel for them in a way because the rules that they're confined to live by prevent their natural expression. And it's coming out in these ways, which are harming other people. So is it not natural for men to deprive themselves of sex? I think it is not natural to deprive them of the natural urge to have sex. Yes. And it's interesting, because the word celibacy, when I was doing my research doesn't necessarily mean abstaining from sex. It just means being not married. So you can not married and have sexual relations. There's always a loophole, right? That's right. Right? Legal guys. That's right. So it makes me think that maybe at least in the horse historical past, when the rule was in effect, at that time, that they were able to abide by it because it didn't mean abstaining from sex, it just meant abstaining from marriage. Maybe those priests, of course, that too was subject to the Jewish interpretation, because the primitive Christians were Jews. So when they look at celibacy, which means colin, Liba, right, living alone, a man couldn't live alone with a woman under Jewish law unless there was intercourse. So that was just understood. That was understood, right? But then it developed over time. So what about something like masturbation? Because even in the church, that's highly, highly evil and shunned on. Why? Why? Right. Okay, so let's talk about that. I haven't researched where in the Bible it says that, but you know, the only downside from a spiritual aspect is that you are now not using that seed in order to promulgate your race to have children. So it's a waste of energy or a waste of your spirit, maybe. Not to speak for Christians, but I thought the idea from the Catholic point of view is that might have been Messiah there that just went up. So that's the assumption that each sperm is carrying an individual identity. There raises another question of when does that identity actually come into being? Is it after the connection between sperm and egg? Or is it before? And I kind of think it's after but I have no proof. That's just my own view. So what did you take on abortion then? Abortion is a very difficult subject because I grew up obviously with the, you know, Christian Catholic way of thinking. Right, fair enough. And whenever you have any joining of sperm and egg, it makes me question, at what point does life begin? And I think that's, you know, if you were to, if life begins at that moment, and you're killing that life, then is that murder? And of course, in Roe v. Wade, you know, they actually went through, Justice Blackman went through and the other justices who agreed with the decision, went through the trimesters and tried to analyze when a fetus is viable. And that's a whole other way to approach it. But from a religious standpoint, I can certainly understand the people who are, you know, who believe that life begins at the moment of the union between sperm and egg. It's a difficult subject. Well, yes, in the there's some light given to this in the Talmud, again, I can't speak even for all Jews, let alone old men. But there is a biblical verse that has to do with tort law when it comes into the Talmud about two men fighting each other. And then a pregnant woman comes along and one of them accidentally hits her and causes her to miscarry. Their monetary damage is given to the husband of the pregnant woman. Now, quite irrespective of what you might think of all these other things, because yes, women were chatteled back then in every religion, unfortunately, it shows that they were dosing it to a property claim. So that means it wasn't considered life. Because it would be capital if they've lost a life. I mean, that's the inference. Well, that's why we have kids, though, right? It's all for investments of somebody to take care of us in the end, it's all a big investment. But does that does that mean that life only begins after based on what you put us on that example? That's a reasonable inference. Are you looking to get shrunk? Join us on shrink wrap Hawaii. My name is Steven Philip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. I see couples, individuals, families, because you know why? Because we all have problems. And if you're curious about shrinks and what they talk about, come look at my show shrink wrap Hawaii. And maybe you'll find your shrink. Aloha, Kako. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to navigate the journey with us. We are here every Wednesday morning at 11am. And we really want you to be with us, where we look at the options and choices of end of life care. Aloha. You know, it's the same back here on Fox Talk talking to two very interesting men about a celibacy in religion. Now, this is a huge topic, but we're going to just try to open it up a little bit and see what interesting things come out of it. We're talking and arguing, but we have different views on on celibacy on masturbation on on whether women should be allowed to take part in the church. And I want to recap that celibacy, this this issue. There are, you know, their websites on on promoting celibacy. And what's the benefit of it? Well, you know, on a, I guess, physical level, they think that, you know, you're going to protect yourself and you're going to wait till the true love comes for you, not for your not for your body, but for your yourself. It's a sense of empowerment and self worth. So there are a lot of ways that people can convince you that this is the way to go to keep yourself clean and pure. So going back to this, how do you feel about that and how your religion kind of takes on that concept of purity? Well, yeah, something that at least is translated as purity is something very central to Judaism. Indeed, one might say that Judaism is based on a very bifurcated form of discrimination, discrimination between holy and not holy. So not holy doesn't mean profane, although it's often translated that way. That's what the church tends to do, right? It's the right or wrong. Yes, the complication is when it that got transferred into Christianity, it got twisted a little bit from the Jewish point of view. First of all, there's another challenge we need to start with the forebear of both Judaism and Christianity was a Judaism that was a temple cult and they sacrificed, you know, was like a big Mac all the time, right? They had a huge barbecue right there in Jerusalem all day. That got stopped by the Romans. So Judaism either had to morph and change physically, maybe even emotionally what it was or give up. And what we did is we changed. We started to offer prayers instead of sacrifices. But we needed to keep the concept of holy and not holy. The twist with Christianity is because you have their priestly class, which is seen as an intercessor. There somehow I think you even use the word closer to God as it were. This is a concept that would be totally foreign to to a Jew. Our God is everywhere and nowhere at once, not in anything yet in everything as it were. So we all have our chance to to be together and to be with the one. Okay. So the purity as a religious concept is no longer really viable on a day to day basis. But why is it that women on in the general sense of world religions tends to be kind of an outcast? Or are they not deemed pure enough to represent the church or that is a point there is this concept of Nidda the menstruant woman right for Jewish studies among the Orthodox certainly and any practicing observant you're forbidden to have intercourse with your wife during a seven day period either side of the menstruation. That's because it's tied to the blood which was seen as the essence of life itself. And again, this is a matter of holiness. It wasn't that it was unclean. That term really has no purchase. It's that it was so suffused with this concept of holiness, because that's life itself. There are many times in the Torah, it says for the blood is the life you you can't eat blood right because blood is the life. So what's your take on that? In the Catholic faith, we actually growing up at least my understanding was that we celebrate women because you know, the mother of Jesus has a very revered place in Christian doctrine. There's a, you know, Holy Mary mother of God prayer that celebrates her praise for our centers now and at the hour of our death. And that prayer along with the Lord's prayer are often said together. I know I say it together. And so I've always thought that women were celebrated as a maternal figure, but not as a leader. So do you see like if you look at how we're all educated and boiled down to how this patriarchal kind of society kind of stems from this whole church concept, agree? And I see no reason why women cannot be priests and popes even in the Catholic church. I see no reason. Why? Why should there be any difference between men, women in terms of being able to act as an intercessor, you know, a bridge between the people and God. So you are very liberal and going feeding on that is how do you feel that you think the Pope's on the right path to say that we should be considering married men? So this kind of gets to what I heard Greg talk about in the Jewish faith where, you know, that you kind of take out the mystery between the rabbis and the people. I think that, you know, the notion of we have to change or die is very applicable in the Catholic Church. And there's even a book that I have called Why the Catholic Church Must Change or Die. And I think that Pope Francis is kind of starting that process of showing that the Catholic faith can change. He's initiating changes. He's the one who even said that unmarried priests, right? Sorry, that married priests may be able to serve, although he tried to couch it, I think to satisfy the conservative priests in the outlying areas where there is a shortage of priests and there's a shortage worldwide. Do you think it's kind of a business motivation behind this whole, you know, instigation? Maybe. I mean, in his mind, I like to ascribe a more, you know, altruistic motivation. I think he's generally more liberal person. And I think his leadership, I think is helping a lot of people who are disenchanted with the Catholic faith, like myself, to maybe reconsider it and to come back into the folds of the church. I don't know where I'm going to go on that, but my own personal journey with God is a personal one. But it's nice to see that Pope Francis is thinking more along the lines that I am. So where does woman sit in your world of not just religion, but in your life and how maybe perhaps religion kind of morphed that concept of women in your life? Well, in my own personal practice, although we're called conservative, you have to know the history of the development of Judaism. So conservative is very, very liberal next to the orthodox. Right. We, the orthodox would not allow a woman to touch the Torah, to read from the Torah, to take what we call an aliyah, where they say the blessing. We do all that. They lead our services. It's a common place. There's no discrimination one way or the other. The idea of women in religion, though, is very complex, though, because I think I'm not sure if it's Carter horse, but the fact of the matter is women have always been subjugated and treated as chattel throughout the generations. Religion sometimes just picked up on that or took that for granted and then maybe solidified it into a tradition. But some of the things that Judaism did even anciently that were seen as positive for women, like guaranteeing her divorce rights in a certain amount upon being divorced, those were still paternalistic, right? Those were, there was nothing giving them the say and saying, okay, you go girl, but that's something that just doesn't happen in any religion until I'd say this century or the beginning of the 20th century, for maybe all religions. We all have to work on it, honestly. I've never heard of a rational argument as to why women cannot serve in the priesthood in the Christian or Catholic faith or in any faith for that matter. What about even like nuns? I mean, that's just kind of like a, I guess, a category in their own sense, because they uphold celibacy, but does that make them more pure to do what? I mean, what's their influence? It's the same whether or not you have to use that argument for nuns as for male priests. Yes. And they're equally invalid in my view. Well, there's a technical legal argument for why women shouldn't be rabbis. Okay. If by rabbi you mean someone that leads a congregation in prayer, and again, rabbis don't necessarily have to do that at all, but there's a technical legal reason why women, if you're orthodox, shouldn't lead prayer, and has nothing to do with sex or anything else. It's that, again, we're driven by the mitzvahs, by the commandments. You can only fulfill a mitzvah if the Torah says that you're supposed to do it. Women do not have a statutory obligation to pray. Only men do. So if a woman leads a service, there are others who can't say every word in Hebrew the way they get the benefit of that and fulfill their obligation is by saying amen at the end. That's where amen came in in Christianity. You can't say amen to a woman because you can't fulfill an obligation through someone that doesn't have the obligation. But that obligation is written out in what in the Torah, and so everyone just upholds that. Yes, it's really developed through the Talmud, I would say. It's complex. But coming to the modern century, a woman can take on those mitzvahs, and then she is obligated, and then she can. So how much is this going to or have the potential to morph? I mean, look at gender issues now. You know, the concept of transgender, where does that person stand in the voice of God, or in the church, or in the synagogue? Where do we place that? Again, I see no reason why a person's sexual orientation has anything to do with his ability to share the teachings of Christ with Christians or to, you know, perform all these ceremonies. To me, it's totally irrelevant. If they are sincere in their approach, anyone can do it. Roy, if everybody was as liberal as you, they wouldn't have so many issues out there. I mean, come on. Seriously. I know. And all the objections that I hear, to me, just don't make sense. They're all based on some notion of sexism or discrimination that was taught when they were young or, you know, that they carry and it's an emotional, you know, for a stubbornness that's preventing them from being open-minded about the possibilities. And I feel like once you kind of let go of that resistance, all whole world of possibilities become, you know, visible. So you think part of it is because of that underlying repression, if you will, that women don't feel that urge or that kind of stimulation to want to challenge these old traditions. I was thinking about this, too, when I was growing up and everything was sort of accepted in terms of how life was and how religion was, even the issue of women struggles wasn't really in my face growing up in Hong Kong because women, and my mother worked, but a lot of women didn't. They were at home moms and so on. And they never, at least to me, objected and said, gee, I wish women had a better station in life. That didn't really happen for me in terms of my seeing it until I came to America. And then when I was exposed to that and heard about it and saw about and talked to people about it, I realized this is a very important struggle. And it wasn't that it, that struggle wasn't there in Asia. It's just that women are not as vocal about it, maybe because they're not as, I don't know why. Okay. But you brought out some very interesting, unfortunately we were running out of time, so again, this is in this conversation, but I do believe that the spirituality that both of you have in your deep heart kind of runs through your work. I know you're both had legal backgrounds. Roy, you're a film producer and you have many, many big projects to work on and I'm sure you're going to be embedding that in there. And for Greg, obviously in your teachings and your linguists and your multi-cultural background, it's just fascinating that you have found a way to kind of incorporate spirituality in our work in life. There you go. So again, find your own spirituality, I guess, if that would, it is right? And then celibacy is just a small little kind of a thing that we wanted to pray for to open up this conversation. So thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for joining our conversation. Thank you.