The Pros and Cons of Clerical Celibacy
The Disputed Case for Clerical Celibacy
By
Robert J. Willis, Ph.D.
On June 24, 1967 Paul VI announced his decision: “We consider the present law of celibacy should today continue to be linked to the ecclesiastical ministry.”[1] He took this position while admitting: “The gift of the priestly vocation dedicated to the divine worship and to the religious and pastoral service of the People of God is undoubtedly distinct from that which leads a person to choose celibacy as a state of consecrated life.”[2] Mandatory celibacy for priests, therefore, exists in the Latin Rite as a discipline imposed by ecclesiastical authorities, not as a theological prerequisite for priesthood. Paul made this declaration while disregarding persistent requests from bishops and priests around the world to relax this discipline. He did so because “Priestly celibacy has been guarded by the Church for centuries as a brilliant jewel,” and because it “retains its value undiminished even in our time . . . .”[3] John Paul II, his successor, adamantly refused to allow discussion of voluntary celibacy for priests. Benedict XVI gives every indication of pursuing the same regulatory path. As late as November of 2006, after a management summit in Rome about married priests, one occasioned by the notorious marriage of the Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, Benedict’s Vatican once again affirmed the sacred role of celibacy.
In his encyclical Sacerdotalis Coelibatus Pope Paul raised these questions:
- “Must that grave, ennobling obligation remain today for those who have the intention of receiving major orders?”
- “Is it possible and appropriate nowadays to observe such an obligation?”
- “Has the time come to break the bond linking celibacy with the priesthood in the Church?”
- “Could this difficult observance of it not be made optional?”
- “Would this not be a way to help the priestly ministers and facilitate ecumenical approaches?”
- “And if the golden law of sacred celibacy is to remain, what reasons are there to show that it is holy and fitting?”
- “What means are to be taken to observe it and, how can it be changed from a burden to help for the priestly life?”[4]
The initial five questions address mandatory, as opposed to voluntary, celibacy for priests. The final two seek ways of assisting them to flourish under this difficult regime.
Since Paul’s encyclical forty years ago, much has changed. In the American church the priesthood drains away toward extinction. Numerous parishes lack a resident pastor; mission congregations sporadically see a priest. Sunday services, conducted by permanent deacons, or by lay ministers, often substitute for the sacrifice of the mass. Some commentators worry about the demise of Catholicism as a sacramental religion as the Eucharist becomes increasingly unavailable: fewer priests, an aging and retiring cadre of the priestly ordained, cannot continue adequately to serve a growing Catholic population. The crisis of Full Pews and Empty Altars [5]challenges us squarely.
In 2002 the scandal of clerical pedophilia erupted. Bishops have been summoned to testify in legal proceedings; some have been summarily retired. Priests have been tried, some convicted and imprisoned; one was executed by an insane fellow prisoner. Dioceses have paid out millions in legal compensation to victims; four dioceses have filed for bankruptcy. Newspapers, in a graphic water torture, day in and day out file reports about victims permanently scarred, diocesan cover-ups, the surreptitious reassigning of predators to unsuspecting parishes. The Catholic community stands aghast. Are glowing claims about the glories of celibacy simply a self-serving scam?
The Priesthood and Sexuality
No matter recent papal certifications: it seems reasonable to examine anew the history of celibacy in our religion, the reasons proposed for its observance, and its current function in our community. Concerned Catholics must revisit Pope Paul’s rhetorical questions and confront them honestly.
“It was assumed by the rabbis of Jesus’ day and afterwards that the Torah rejected celibacy.”[6] Two reasons supported that assumption. In the first place a man’s position in patriarchal Israel depended on the continuance of his house. So much so, if a husband should die without a son, his brother must wed his widow, bear her a son, and the boy would be deemed the son of the dead man’s house.[7] Secondly, the hope of Israel lay in the coming of the messiah. That savior would be the seed of the woman: “The Lord God said to the serpent . . . I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.”[8] An angel proclaimed God’s promise to Abraham: “I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendents . . . and by your descendents shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves . . . (Gen. 22:17-18).” Israelites must marry so that the messiah may rise up among them. Celibacy contradicted the core mission of Israel.
That being said, the Old Testament did affirm continence, the exercising of self- restraint.[9] Notions of holiness and impurity buttressed this practice and rule.
The Israelites conceived of the priestly caste as inhabiting a sacred sphere: “At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister to him and to bless in his name, to this day (Deut. 10: 8).” Before entering the sanctuary the priest should don “holy garments,” ones made of linen that do not hold sweat, but only enrobe after he has “bathe(d) his body in water (Lev.16: 4).” The priest alone may eat food offered to Yahweh: “They shall eat those things with which atonement was made, to ordain and consecrate them, but an outsider shall not eat of them, because they are holy (Ex. 29: 33).” But only those who have recently “kept themselves from women” may consume the “holy bread” (1 Sam. 21: 4). Notice the linkage between holiness and ritual purity.
The priest must teach Yahweh’s people “the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to distinguish between the clean and the unclean (Ezek. 44: 23).” The Old Testament equated uncleanness with the remains of bodily fluids, whether extruded voluntarily or involuntarily. Thus, in effect, “These notions of holiness and impurity are unrelated to ethical virtue or fault. Under discussion, rather, are ‘states’ or ‘conditions’ from which man must emerge in order to re-enter ‘normal life.’”[10] Priests must “not gird themselves with anything that causes sweat (Ezek. 44: 18).” A soldier “who is not clean by reason of what chances to him by night ” must leave the camp, and “when evening comes on, he shall bathe himself in water (Deut. 23: 10-11)” before reentering. This echoes the general regulation in Leviticus 15: 16-18:
And if a man has an emission of semen, he shall bathe his whole body in water, and be unclean until the evening. And every garment and every skin on which the semen comes shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the evening. If a man lies with a woman and has an emission of semen, both of them shall bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the evening.
The priestly author continues, pointing out the impurity of a woman’s bleeding, linked or not to menstruation:
If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness; as in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean (Lev. 15: 25).
The Israelites at Yahweh’s command must drive out of their encampments even lepers, or people having any kind of discharge from disease, or anyone becoming unclean through contact with the dead.[11]
From these examples we may understand that incontinence, whether voluntary, like intercourse, or involuntary, like menstruation, made a man or woman unclean. Until that state could be altered through ritual bathing, the soiled one existed outside of the holiness of Yahweh’s people. “The various interdicts and rituals for purification and desecration were derived from archaic customs of uncertain origins. They were incorporated into the Priestly legislation, the latest part of the Pentateuch, and given a new meaning in the interests of separating Israel from the pagan world around it.”[12] A contradiction existed: the Israelites shall marry and conceive sons in light of their position in the tribe and the future of their race; they shall not remain celibate. Yet their leaders judged the state and condition following upon sexual activity ritually unclean.
In the revelation of Christ no ambiguity existed relative to the blessed state of marriage. God, “he who made them from the beginning made them male and female.” Because of this “a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one (Mt. 10: 4-6).” This union “let no man put asunder” for God himself “has joined together (Mk. 10:9)” this couple. According to the evangelist John, Jesus demonstrated his approval of marriage when he graced the nuptial celebrations of a young couple at Cana. By his appearance he blessed their union; by a miracle he contributed a superior vintage to the wedding festivities; in this setting he publicly proclaimed his God-initiated mission of love as central to salvation.[13] He, moreover, chose for his closest and most trusted followers— his apostles— married men.[14] We find nowhere in the New Testament accounts any indication that sexual intercourse leaves the spouses unclean, tainted and in need of ritual cleansing, or disqualifies them, as somehow unholy, from positions of community leadership. Christ and his followers dissolved the Hebrew and pagan coupling between sexual abstinence, holiness, and authority. Indeed, Paul teaches that as followers of Christ “the husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does (1 Cor. 7: 3-5).” This Pauline teaching holds true for all married members of the community, leaders as well as ordinary people. Continence must, of course, be practiced in marriage as the situation warrants it and as the couple mutually agrees. Paul specifically mentions, for example, a calculated period of abstinence in order that the two may devote themselves to prayer; Christian spouses today could from their daily experience multiply the personal, interpersonal, and familial circumstances that dictate temporary sexual restraint. Sexual intercourse belongs in marriage but always as one aspect of marital and familial life.
Commentators tend to confuse continence and chastity. As we have seen, continence refers to an exercise of sexual restraint whether outside, or inside, marriage. Chastity essentially flows from a promise to another and expects faithfulness to that gift of one self. The marriage vows aim at the union of the spouses: body and emotions, imagination and spirit. Because of this goal, Jesus said to the Pharisees and his listening disciples: “Whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Mt. 19:9).” Even more, in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught the listening crowd: “Every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt. 5:28),” because that desire does not proceed from any sworn faithfulness between the two people. As mentioned previously, the gift of conjugal rights requires that the spouses make their very bodies the possession of the other. To refuse a loving act of sexual intercourse violates chastity; to force a violent one does also. A refusal may be continent but still unchaste; a demand may be both incontinent and unchaste. Chastity lies in tatters when a spouse avoids marital interaction through adulterous desires or in a solitary satisfying of sexual needs. Chastity, the ongoing and daily practice of love, hopes for, and ever strives for, the realization of two becoming one through their promise and in their reciprocal gift.
Jesus did not in the gospel accounts directly address celibacy. He did so indirectly, however. We have no New Testament data that compels us to accept that Jesus was married, even though to be so would have been both the norm and expectation for Jewish men of his age and time. We know that he loved both men and women: Martha and Mary and their brother, Lazarus; Joseph and Mary, his parents; John and Mary Magdalene, his disciples; the crowds of followers toward whom his care and concern flowed. But to no one of these does he appear to have promised himself in a unique, special love that excluded others.
Moreover, Jesus indicated to his disciples that belief in him could generate a new kind of family. To Simon and Anthony he said, “Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men.” Soon afterwards he called James and John “and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and followed him (Mk. 1: 17-20).” To the rich young man, Jesus said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me (Mk. 10:21).” When told that his mother wished to speak with him, Jesus replied, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren? . . . whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother (Mt. 12: 48-50).” He even declared: “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple (Lk. 14:26).” In other words, he may call faithful Christians to dedicate themselves to spreading the gospel by asking them to forsake marital intimacy. They would thus become “eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 19: 12).”
The apostle Paul portrayed himself as unmarried. We do not know whether that state followed upon the death of a wife or not. He told us that he had “no command of the Lord (1 Cor. 7:25)” concerning marrying or not marrying. He only counseled the fledgling community that “every one lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which God has called him (1 Cor. 7:17).” That being said, he did “wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. (1 Cor. 7: 7).” For Paul this grace showed itself in two qualities. In the first instance he had his emotions under control and would not succumb to the lustful temptations of Satan if he remained unmarried.[15] But, more importantly, because of his celibate lifestyle Paul could offer himself exclusively to the Lord’s work. He pointed out:
The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord (1 Cor. 7: 32-35).
Paul, a celibate for the kingdom of God, remained single because he could not do otherwise. He must fling himself totally into his vocation: bringing the good news of salvation to the world. Consumed with this apostolic task, his very being demanded that he stay focused on Christ alone and on this God-blessed mission.[16]
We should note the reasons Paul did not marshal to explain his preference for celibacy. He did not reject marriage as incontinent or unclean, unholy or unchaste. He did not claim continence to be superior to marital sexuality. He did not equate the Christian and celibate vocations, as if God requires this way of being: celibacy does not exercise any exclusive lock on Christian life or virtue. All believers, married or celibate, must be continent and chaste and holy in their state of life. He chose to stay single, to sacrifice wife and family for one reason: a celibate existence fit best his all-consuming attention to his apostolic vocation.
In the early centuries of the Church’s life, no questions arose concerning the relationship of clerical office and celibacy. As I discussed elsewhere,[17] a hierarchical priesthood similar to that of the Old Testament did not become normative until the 4th Century. Also, the Church needed first to wrestle with the relationship of baptism and marriage: could a Christian be both holy and participate in a sexual relationship? Even though rejected in the New Testament, the ancient linkage between holiness and continence died hard.
The Post-Apostolic Fathers addressed the issue. So, for example, the author of the 2nd Letter of Clement to the Corinthians counseled his hearers:
And ‘the male, with the female, neither male nor female, this He [the Lord Himself] saith, that brother seeing sister may have no thought concerning her as female, and that she may have no thought concerning him as male.’ If you do these things, saith He, ‘the kingdom of my father shall come.’[18]
The flourishing of the Church, God’s kingdom on earth, depends upon the diminishing of sexual attraction between the sexes. And Ignatius of Antioch, in his letter to Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, exhorted him to allow marriage as long as it did not devolve into lust:
Speak to my sisters, that they love the Lord and be satisfied with their husbands in the flesh and spirit . . . . But it becomes both men and women who marry, to form their union with the approval of the bishop, that their marriage may be according to God, and not after their own lust.[19]
Some took this supposed opposition to the absurd. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis on Cyprus, employed rhetoric that illustrates their position. Schillebeeckx characterizes it in these words: “Woman is entirely a creature of the devil, man only half-way; above the waist he is a creature of God, but the rest of him was wrought by the devil. The union of both in marriage is thus doubly the work of the devil.”[20] And a Christian and neo-Pythagorean, Sextus, went so far as to counsel self-castration as a better alternative for one not able to be sexually abstinent:
But Sextus says in the Sentences, a book that many considered to be tested by time: ‘Cast out any part of the body that would cause you not to live abstinently. For it is better to live abstinently without this part than ruinously with it.’ [Sextus, Sentences 13]. And again he gives occasion to the same kind of action when he says further in this book: ‘We can see that people cut off and throw away parts of themselves in order to kept the rest of their body healthy; how much better is it to do so for the sake of abstinence?’ [Sextus, Sentences 273].[21]
Such extremes even resulted in a schismatic church. Encratism (from ẻνκρατεια: abstinence), a sect spawned in the Middle East and imported to the West, demanded that Christians practice complete continence, even to the point of disallowing marriage. Early on, Paul warned against those “who forbid marriage and enjoin abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving . . .(1 Tim. 4: 3).” Given subsequent Church history, Paul here spoke with both prescience and wisdom.
Celibacy and Lay Spirituality
In this ascetical milieu a lay spirituality movement took root in the Egyptian desert. In its beginnings pious individuals led simple, hermetic lives on the fringes of settlements. Soon the more intrepid followed Anthony into the solitary wilderness of sand and rock, distances away from the Nile and its human habitations. Eventually, some, led by Pachomius, gathered together to lead a common life of prayer and asceticism.
As in most endeavors, diverse attractions drew religious seekers to this exacting existence and supplied them with the heroic motivation to persist, no matter the extreme disciplines demanded. Jesus’ challenge to the rich young man to “sell what you have, and give to the poor . . . and come, follow me (Mk. 10:21)” seems uppermost among conscious religious reasons. Belief in the imminent coming of the resurrected Christ and in the necessity to be prepared for his triumph and judgment certainly played a major role in their choice of life style. The Egyptians, moreover, did not find a religion of Incarnation and Resurrection and Final Judgment either strange or foreign. They already knew about a god, Osiris, who came to live among humans. After his evil brother, Seth, murdered him, his wife, Isis, had used her power to raise him from the dead. Resurrected he ruled over a vast kingdom to which he welcomed his faithful followers. On earth, His son, Horus, continued to battle his uncle and the forces of evil for the salvation of the world. The Christian myth continued and amplified the same story. As one commentator remarked: “Moreover, it must always be remembered that the rise and progress of Christianity in that country [Egypt] was partly due to the fact that many of the doctrines of the old religion closely resembled those preached by Christianity and the twelve apostles and by St. Paul.”[22]
One wonders, in light of our discussion about holiness and sexual expression, how much influence Manichaeism, a species of encratism, exercised, consciously or not, on this movement. First enunciated in the latter half of the 3rd Century, the doctrines of Mani spread from Mesopotamia and Babylonia to Africa. “In no country did Manachaeism enter more insidiously into Christian life than Egypt.”[23] The desert monks struggled constantly with the forces of evil, outside of them, and in the depths of their being. They endured astounding deprivations of shelter and food and water, of lodging and personal hygiene, of sexuality and human companionship. For them continence, chastity, and celibacy fused in a daily regime of rigid discipline and deprivation “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 19:12).” Yet as Athanasius noted, Anthony, the founder of the anchorite movement, recognized the danger of Mani’s otherworldly sect that preached the battle of good and evil as one between the light of spirit and the darkness of flesh. “And neither toward the Manichaens nor toward any other heretics did he profess friendship, except to the extent of urging the change to right belief, for he held and taught that friendship and association with them led to injury and destruction of the soul.”[24] These ascetical athletes competed with each other; “each tried to lead a more austere life than that of his neighbor, believing that through the multitude of fastings, vigils, and prayers he could make himself acceptable to God.”[25] Their actions we witness; their motivations remain cloaked in individual complexity.
Continence and Priestly Office
During the hierarchically important 4th and 5th centuries, the cultic priesthood took hold. Mandatory continence enhanced its reputation for holiness and specialness, while acquiring an honored position among the faithful. It separated the clerical vocation from the ordinary Christianity of laymen and women who did not have the strength to practice total abstinence.
Although questions about the compatibility of baptism and marriage decreased, those concerning a supposed opposition between sexuality and ministry increased. In 309 A.D. the Council of Elvira, Spain, took a firm position in this regard:
Canon 33: Bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and all other clerics having a position in the ministry, are ordered to abstain completely from their wives and not have children. Whoever, in fact, does this shall be expelled from the dignity of the clerical state.[26]
We should note that this canon did not forbid clerical marriage; in fact, this declaration underlined its prevalence. Rather, it mandated sexual abstinence. A subsequent birth of children would, presumably, reveal the betrayal of non-compliance.
Pope Siricius explicitly linked the priestly vocation and continence. In 385 A.D. he wrote Bishop Himerius of Terracina, a small town southeast of Rome. He instructed him as follows:
All we priests and deacons are bound by the unbreakable law of those sanctions, so that from the day of our ordination, we give up both our hearts and our bodies to moderation and modesty, in order that in every respect we may please our God in these sacrifices which daily we offer. ‘They who are in the flesh,’ says the chosen vessel, ‘are unable to please God. But you are not now in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.’ And where can the Spirit of God dwell except, as we read, in holy bodies?[27]
The Council of Carthage in 419 A.D. claimed apostolic support for its requirement that all ministers at the altar “should be continent together, by which they would be able with singleness of heart to ask what they sought from the Lord (Canon 3).” Moreover, “it seems good that a bishop, a presbyter, and a deacon, or whoever performs the sacraments, should be keepers of modesty and should abstain from their wives (Canon 4).”[28] The Council demanded continence, not celibacy. It did not elaborate on their source of apostolic justification; one can imagine they refer to Paul and his remaining celibate for God’s kingdom.
Eminent Church fathers of the time added their voices to the call for priestly continence. Ambrose in his “De Officiis Ministorum” asserted: “But you know that the ministerial office must be kept pure and unspotted and must not be defiled by coitus.”[29] And his disciple Augustine equated the pleasure-seeking penis with the sign of insubordination and rebellion against God.[30]
That being said, ecclesiastical authorities still showed themselves unwilling to demand a law of celibacy by favoring, rather, one of continence. Even Leo the Great concurred. The bishop of Narbonne in southern France asked whether a man married before ordination must send away his wife on attaining the priesthood. Leo, in a demonstration of humanity, but also of slight psychological insight, replied:
The law of continence is the same for the ministers of the altar as for bishops and priests, who when they were laymen or readers, could lawfully marry and have offspring. But when they reached to the said ranks, what was before lawful ceased to be so. And hence, in order that their wedlock may become spiritual instead of carnal, it behaves them not to put away their wives, but to ‘have them as though they had them not,’ whereby both the affection of their wives may be retained and the marriage functions cease.[31]
The allowance of clerical marriage coupled with the demand for ministerial continence made both marriage and the priesthood difficult for priests and their families. The Eastern churches resolved this contradiction at the Synod of Trullo in 692 A.D. 150 bishops, most from the Byzantine territories of the divided Roman Empire, met in the dome of the Imperial Palace in Constantinople.[32] Much of their agenda revolved around their dispute with the West and the rule of the pope in Rome.
They resolved the question of clerical marriage in three canons. Canon Six addressed the issue of the marriage of clerics other than bishops:
Since it is declared in the apostolic canons that of those who are advanced to the clergy unmarried, only lectors and cantors are able to marry; we also, maintaining this, determine that henceforth it is in nowise lawful for any subdeacon, deacon or presbyter after his ordination to contract matrimony but if he has dared to do so, let him be deposed. And if any of those who enter the clergy, wishes to be joined to a wife in lawful marriage before he is ordained subdeacon, deacon, or presbyter, let it be done.
For these clergy the bishops allowed marriage before ordination. This permission, however, existed also in the West. Change came in Canon Thirteen:
Since we know it to be handed down as a rule of the Roman Church that those who are deemed worthy to be advanced to the diaconate or presbyterate should promise no longer to cohabit with their wives, we, preserving the ancient rule and apostolic perfection and order, will that the lawful marriages of men who are in holy orders be from this time forward firm, by no means dissolving their union with their wives nor depriving them of their mutual intercourse at a convenient time. Wherefore, if anyone shall have been found worthy to be ordained subdeacon, or deacon, or presbyter, he is by no means to be prohibited from admittance to such a rank, even if he shall live with a lawful wife. Nor shall it be demanded of him at the time of his ordination that he promise to abstain from lawful intercourse with his wife. . . .
For the lower clergy, the Council resolved the practical, daily conflict between marriage and ordination. Neither the married state nor the voluntary incontinence of marital sexuality shall henceforth violate their ordination. Of course, the fathers did also include that “they who assist at the divine altar should be absolutely continent when they are handling holy things, in order that they may be able to obtain from God what they ask in sincerity.” They could not shake off a lingering habit of thinking that intercourse made a person unholy and thus temporarily unfit to serve the community before God.
Finally, in Canon Forty-Eight the bishops allowed that marriage did not prohibit a man from becoming a bishop. However, “the wife of him who is advanced to the Episcopal dignity, shall be separated from her husband by their mutual consent, and after his ordination and consecration to the episcopate she shall enter a monastery situated at a distance from the abode of the bishop.”[33] They required celibacy and continence only for consecrated bishops. But these men still retained the obligation to see to the welfare of their wives. In practice, the Eastern Church henceforth avoided this awkward separation by selecting their bishops from monks already vowed to a celibate life. As regards the Roman Church, it has never recognized the disciplinary canons of this Council; at the same time it has not disavowed them.
The situation in the West did not change. What did that mean? Schillebeeckx says pointedly:
While the Eastern churches maintained that there should be either no marriage (and then no form of living together), or marriage and living together, but with the full consequences of a real married life, the Latin church until the 12th Century allowed its clerics to be married, but required them to practice complete continence. Because of this psychologically abnormal situation, the law of continence remained, as we have said, a dead letter during these centuries.[34]
Episcopal regulations continued, pious encomia flourished in letters and preaching, and marriage and concubinage, fornication and incontinence made the priesthood a spectacle of sexual activity. By 1051 A.D. Peter Damian, a cardinal and Church reformer published his Book of Gomorrah, “the most dramatic and explicit condemnation of forbidden clergy sexual activity.” Why? With understated irony one commentator answers: Because he “lived in a society wherein clerical decadence was not only widespread and publicly known, but generally accepted as the norm.”[35]
Continence and Celibacy Joined
During the 11th Century, two churchmen, Damian and Hildebrand, inspired five popes to attempt radical reforms. The latter, born in Tuscany, as a young man studied at the monastery of Santa Maria on the Aventine Hill. While becoming a Benedictine monk he absorbed the spirit of the Cluniac reform. As a minor cleric he filled various ecclesiastical offices between 1046-1073 A.D. On that first date Gregory VI appointed him papal chaplain; on the later one Hildebrand assumed the title of Gregory VII. For those twenty-five years he urged the pontiffs he served to change clerical life; he became one of the most powerful advisors in Rome during this period. Because of the severe resistance put up by the clergy, these papal reforms failed. But the seeds were planted.[36]
Upon his elevation to the papacy, Gregory VII summoned a Church council. It met in Rome during 1074 A.D. Under Gregory’s influence the episcopal delegates produced two reform decrees:
Those who have been advanced to any grade of holy orders, or to any office, through simony, that is, by the payment of money, shall hereafter have no right to officiate in the holy church. Those also who have secured churches by giving money shall certainly be deprived of them. And in the future it shall be illegal for anyone to buy or to sell [any ecclesiastical office, position, etc.].
Nor shall clergymen who are married say mass or serve the altar in any way. We decree also that if they refuse to obey our orders, or rather those of the holy fathers, the people shall refuse to receive their ministrations, in order that those who disregard the love of God and the dignity of their office may be brought to their senses through feeling the shame of the world and the reproof of the people.[37]
In light of our discussion, note this: the Council moved away from once-again urging continence. Instead, it prohibited clerical marriage, taking a position more rigorous than that of the Eastern Church. This pope spent most of his pontificate promulgating and enforcing these decrees against strong opposition, political and clerical.
Some years after his death in 1085 A.D., another council expanded upon his groundbreaking reforms. Also gathering in Rome, the First Lateran Council in 1123 A.D. strictly forbad clergy to have intimate relationships, in marriage or not in marriage, with women:
Canon 3: We absolutely forbid priests, deacons, and subdeacons to associate with concubines and women, or to live with women other than such as the Nicene Council (canon 3) for reasons of necessity permitted, namely, the mother, sister, or aunt, or any such person concerning whom no suspicion could arise.
Canon 21: We absolutely forbid priests, deacons, subdeacons, and monks to have concubines or to contract marriage. We decree in accordance with the definitions of the sacred canons, that marriages already contracted by such persons must be dissolved, and that the persons be condemned to do penance.[38]
Sixteen years later, the 2nd Lateran Council went even further. It decreed that married clerics must be separated from their partners because “we do not deem there to be a marriage which, it is agreed, has been contracted against ecclesiastical law. Furthermore, when they have separated from each other, let them do a penance commensurate with such outrageous behaviour.”[39] Finally, the Council of Trent in its 24th Session, in 1563 A.D., not only declared clerical marriage invalid (Canon IX), it even defended celibacy as more blessed a state than matrimony (Canon X).[40] At long last, a law of celibacy prevailed in the Latin Rite; it subsumed the ancient law of continence, a law mostly in name, a requirement marked in practice more by disobedience and widespread incontinence than continence or celibacy.
Having briefly reviewed the history of celibacy, consider anew the questions initially posed by Paul VI. Taken together they fall into three categories: reasons for, observance of, and changes affecting mandatory celibacy.
Reasons for Mandatory Celibacy
From ancient Judaism and its pagan neighbors came a prejudice against any form of incontinence, sexual or otherwise. Bodily fluids and their resulting stain rendered one unclean. In our day we reject this notion. We know that the flow of fluids keeps the human being alive and healthy. Imagine blood that only clotted, or perspiration that refused to cool one during hot weather, or saliva that dried up to the point where one could neither talk nor eat. Moreover, we accept these bodily functions as normal and natural, in themselves holding no moral relevance. Resultant stains on clothes or body require cleansing for hygienic reasons, not moral or religious ones.
Both Judaism and Christianity raised their cultic priesthood above the body of believers. Standing before God necessitated a particular holiness. Because of the taint of bodily fluids, and a bias against sexual activity for being natural and earthbound rather than supernatural and heaven seeking, even legitimate sexual intercourse acquired a negative coloring. The married priest, therefore, must abstain from sexual relations prior to liturgical celebration. Ecclesiastical authorities regarded “celibacy for the kingdom” as superior to, and more blessed than, the married state.
The council fathers of Vatican II refused to sanction this position. In their judgment each vocation, Christian and priestly alike, sought holiness. In Lumen Gentium they declared: “Thus it is evident that all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status are called to the fullness of the Christian life and the perfection of charity.”[41] In addition, they did not take literally Paul’s characterization of celibacy as a state of undivided devotion to God, as if marriage implied division and a lesser dedication. They described the celibate life in these words: “Outstanding among them is that precious gift of divine grace which the Father gives to some men so that by virginity, or celibacy, they can more easily devote their entire selves to God alone with undivided heart.”[42] Celibacy does not reign above marriage; rather, its concentrated attention may outweigh marriage’s many and diverse obligations.
The monks of the Egyptian desert practiced celibacy for reasons as diverse as the individuals. Today we discount many of their motivations. We do not, for example, regard ordinary life and marriage as fruitless in light of the imminent coming of the Risen Christ.[43] Nor do we refuse sexual contact because of Manichaen teachings that the devil uses sex to entrap souls in evil flesh.[44] We also resist any Pelagian reliance upon self, upon one’s ability to perform good works without God’s grace, as if personal discipline alone can keep one free of sin.[45] Moreover, we recognize the seduction hidden in holier-than-thou competition among ascetics: pride, indeed, precedes the fall from heavenly heights.
Some Christians forsake married and familial life because of an intense desire to give self over to the mission of Christ. Vatican II praised such action as being “a more direct imitation (pressius imitari) and perpetual representation in the church of the form of life which the Son of God accepted in entering this world to do the will of the Father and which he proposed to the disciples who followed him.”[46] One wonders at this reasoning, as if imitation equals witness to the Gospel. It seems more a remembrance, like living in Galilee or working as a carpenter there. Whatever the justification, following a path pioneered by the desert fathers, these religious—some ordained, some not—blend a celibate life style, the continence required of the unmarried, and the single-minded chastity of intellect and body, emotion and imagination expected of vowed life within the Church. They must choose celibacy; it should not be forced upon them. It depends, primarily, on the gift of God’s grace; and, secondarily, it takes shape through a mature and thoughtful exploration of personal options.
Such a religious life “clearly manifests in a very special way that the kingdom of God and its needs are raised above all earthly considerations.”[47] The Christian living of one’s baptism must, however, ground this special way. True witness to the Way remains essentially this: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” For, indeed, “a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another (Jn. 13: 34-35).” Paul warned: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal (1 Cor. 13: 1-2).” Even more pointedly John asserted: “If any one says ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar (1 Jn. 4: 20).” In itself, celibacy has no moral meaning, being neither good nor evil. Celibacy, be it hermetic or cenobitic, shaped by love, witnesses to Christ’s presence. Jesus said: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them (Mt. 18: 20).” Baptism—not ordination, not vows, not celibacy—creates Christ’s presence in the Spirit among us.
A final motivation lurks, unspoken and even unconscious. Celibacy supports and reinforces the sexually immature authority structure of the hierarchical Church. This requires explanation.
In the stage of pre-puberty young boys confront the approaching requirement of inter-sexual attention, attraction, and interaction. As before any important life moment, regression in service of the ego occurs. Boys gather together in school and after, on teams and in gangs, in clubs and on projects. They put on imitative behaviors, like smoking and stealing an occasional drink, like roughhousing and playing practical jokes, like guffawing over dirty jokes and exaggerating moments of dawning male prowess. Girls remain peripheral, recognized by their absence, and by the uneasiness their occasional appearance generates. The boys manufacture a masculine world where sameness dominates and diversity is shunned. Anyone who has experienced a recreational gathering of priests readily recognizes the distressing aptness of this picture of their immaturity.[48]
The New Testament presented a community of equals through baptism in Christ: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3: 28).” Leadership emerged indiscriminately out of the group in response to common needs. A woman as well as a man may have hosted a Sunday’s worship, prayed and broke bread in remembrance of the Savior. Neither gender nor clerical caste separated believers.
In a growing organization, uniformity gradually gained ascendancy. Unity suffered. Males ruled over females; male clergy exercised ecclesial authority over laymen and women; the hierarchy possessed power and controlled access to it. For clerical insiders, the maintenance of personal authority demanded the certainty of male bonding. In time Church leadership came, not from the people, but from a system of male patronage: or, as one might suggest, from “the old boys’ network.” This network sustained itself in dress, ceremonial or mufti, in drinks and banquets, in vacations and through back-room decisions taken in the name of maintaining an all-male structure.
All this makes understandable the fierce hierarchical opposition to married and female priests. A sexually immature power structure cannot suffer the insecurity of dealing with the tension, nay even fear, female presence stimulates. This also explains the stubborn denial of any shortage of priests and the secret panic it induces. However, as women figure more centrally in the liturgical life of parishes, as women function as parish administrators and education directors, as women sit on diocesan committees and in formerly men-only assemblies, male dominance diminishes. It is disintegrating, not through prudent choice and mature direction, but through the ravages of attrition. We cannot continue to promote celibacy for the sake of male hegemony, for it is failing, its moments of exclusive, boyish power ticking away.[49]
Observance of Celibacy
In its first millennium the Christian religion did not link celibacy with priesthood. Instead, ecclesiastical authorities tirelessly urged clerical continence and took sporadic steps to enforce their demands. However, clerical marriage and concubinage continued unabated until the reform movement of the 11th Century. The declarations of the Lateran councils and the Council of Trent that made clerical marriage invalid eventually imposed both continence and celibacy upon men in major orders.
Since the Protestant Reformation only the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church has mandated clerical celibacy. Vatican II, bowing to an alarming shortage of priests, authorized the reinstitution of the lay deaconate for married men. Otherwise, the regulations have remained the same and constant from the 11th Century to the present.
At the 1971 Synod of Bishops held in Rome, Cardinal Seper, former Archibishop of Zagreb, then director of the Sacred Congregation of the Faith, remarked: “I am not at all optimistic that celibacy is in fact being observed.”[50] Since the scandal of clerical pedophilia became public in Boston in 2002, and its prevalence around the world gradually stood exposed, many Catholics share the cardinal’s doubt.
Because of guilt, fear of being discovered, and the possibility of scandal, priests generally do not speak about their life of celibacy with its temptations and falls, successes and rewards. The growth in, and developmental process of, a celibate life remains cloaked in secrecy and surrounded by hearsay and rumors.
In 1960 Richard Sipe began a study of the lived experience of celibacy in the American church. Over a period of twenty-five years, Sipe interviewed 2,776 priests and received reports about them from sexual partners and qualified observers. As a result of his analysis he concluded: “at any one time 50 percent of priests are practicing celibacy.” He divided this positive population into three categories:
Two percent (2%) of vowed clergy can be said to have achieved celibacy—that is, they have successfully negotiated each step of celibate development at a more or less appropriate stage of development and are characterologically so firmly established that this state is, for all intents and purposes, irreversible.
Another group of priests—eight percent (8%)—has consolidated celibate practice beyond the point of reversal in spite of past failures.
An additional forty percent (40%) do practice celibacy but their practice is not established enough to make it as consolidated or achieved. And indeed, these priests are open to sexual reversals and experimentation as well as progress.[51]
We see, given this account, that celibates compose the first group. In the second we find priests reasonably adjusted to the demands of celibacy and faithful to their promises. The members of the third group do, indeed, work at being celibate but have not integrated this practice into their life. In Cardinal Seper’s phraseology, this fifty percent of priests “observe celibacy,” though in various distances from the ideal.
What did he conclude about the other fifty percent? They are involved “with sexual activity of some sort.” He categorized them also three ways:
Thirty percent (30%) of priests are involved in heterosexual relationships, associations, experimentation or patterns of behavior.
Fifteen percent (15%) of priests are involved with homosexual relationships, experimentation, or patterns of behavior.
Five percent (5%) of priests are involved with problematic behaviors—transvestitism, exhibitionism, pornography, or compulsive masturbation.[52]
Cardinal Seper would have reason to be distressed about these priests. They were not practicing celibacy even though they had assumed the obligation to do so. We must presume that they understood full well Paul VI’s reaffirmation of mandatory celibacy and what the Church through its hierarchical authorities expected. No matter: denial and rationalization, emotional immaturity and addiction prevailed.
I have never executed a similar study. However, from 1965 to 2000 I practiced as a psychologist/psychotherapist. I sat with innumerable priests in therapy. Some reported ongoing sexual experimentation; others were struggling within themselves, celibates in heterosexual or homosexual affairs. A majority manifested emotional and sexual immaturity; some were caught up in obsessive sexual behavior; most swung between guilt and intellectual defense mechanisms as they pursued an acceptable compromise between their vocation and their sexual behavior. My experience as a therapist confirms both the groupings and percentages reported by Sipe.
Sipe’s results echoed an earlier study of the American priesthood commissioned by the United States’ bishops. Eugene Kennedy and Victor Heckler had conducted the research from Loyola University in Chicago. The authors concluded that nine percent (9%) of priests were psychologically maldeveloped—Sipe’s five percent (5%) engaged in problematic sexual behavior; sixty-four percent (64%) were psychologically underdeveloped and twenty-one percent (21%) developing; and seven percent (7%) well developed—Sipe’s ten percent (10%) consistently and successfully leading a celibate life.[53] Expanding on the experience of celibacy in these groupings, Kennedy commented:
We learned that even the healthiest priests in the sample did not perceive celibacy as a virtue to be practiced as much as a condition of life to which they had to adjust. This required an enormous investment of energy and often led them to do things–such as taking expensive vacations, having big cars, or costly hobbies–for which they were criticized. Other less healthy priests in the sample accepted celibacy for reasons varied and emotionally self-serving enough to raise questions about how sturdy a foundation it is for ministry.
Even then, many immature candidates found no challenge in celibacy because their own sexuality had not yet awakened within them and had not yet been integrated into their personality development. Because they were not attracted to marriage, celibacy was never a true existential choice for them. Often, their sexual feelings only asserted themselves after they had entered parish work. They were dismayed and puzzled by erotic attractions to boys that reflected their own pre-adolescent state. Celibacy for these men was an illusion of virtue, a stage set for life rather than a condition for service, and they found themselves abusing the trust that this presumed virtue won for them by seducing and defiling the innocent in their care. Their lack of maturity was reflected in their low-level denial and distorted descriptions of their behavior.
The more disturbed the priest, the more disturbed was the sexual adjustment he forged under the cover a celibate priesthood provided. It became apparent that celibacy existed far more for the purposes of the institution than the growth of seminarians or the good of the people. Celibacy sealed an all-male clergy totally dependent on the institutional church for identity and livelihood. While we all admire men and women who voluntarily choose, with full understanding of themselves and the sacrifice they make, to lead celibate lives, we must not look away from the high price this requirement exacts from the large majority of even healthy persons.[54]
Efforts to Buttress Mandatory Celibacy
Since Pope Paul’s encyclical on celibacy, vocations to the priesthood and religious life have declined dramatically in the United States.[55] The appointment by dioceses and orders of attractive, younger vocation directors produced a meager flow of applicants. They mounted advertising campaigns in Catholic newspapers and journals, organized visitations to seminaries, crafted professional websites, sponsored vocation days and preached Sunday sermons. None showed appreciable results. Prayers for vocations at public masses and in private settings have generated less than noticeable divine assistance. The Church has developed no strategy capable of overcoming the discouragement born from the official rejection of the reforms of Vatican II. Its institutional chauvinism needles mothers and sisters, and makes ecclesiastical affiliation unappealing to their sons and brothers. In the glare of sexual scandal, a pall of hypocrisy blankets the hierarchical ranks. Decreased mass attendance and dwindling availability of Catholic schools cut severely into occasions for vocational influence. Should a prospective candidate happen to engineer an interview with a priest, he will likely be face-to-face with someone his grandparent’s age: beloved and respected, perhaps, but no compelling role model for youth.
Hoping to stem losses due to emotional immaturity or psychological disturbance, religious authorities no longer accept the very young. They have shut down minor seminaries. They prefer candidates with a college education and even independent life experience. Most admission processes screen aspirants psychologically, using test batteries and depth interviews by trained professionals. But superiors are caught in a double bind: they desperately need new vocations, which inclines them to overlook potential personal deficits, yet they hate to spend time, money, and energy on seminarians who will eventually wash out. Desperation often overrules the chance of defection.
We miss in this assessment, however, the recognition of the regressive effect an unhealthy ecclesial environment has on everyone, even the healthy. Current hierarchical life and training is fixated at a pre-pubertal level, a homosocial society that excludes women as equals and defends itself against their influence. In recent years superiors have introduced token women into the training regime as teachers, consultants, and advisors. But everyone knows, in the final analysis, that they exist like blacks in a white society, or like third-world nations in an international society shaped by first-world superiors.
In its rigid controls and demands for conformity, training for ecclesial service rewards the dependent and devalues the independent. In its atmosphere of male camaraderie and patronage, it attracts homosexuals and men uncomfortable interacting with women. At the same time it cares little for the emotional and sexual maturity of men experienced in, and capable of, healthy interpersonal relationships with women. All the psychological screening one may imagine cannot negate the regression in the service of the ego that occurs as candidates adapt to an emotionally and sexually immature system. Those who enter in a similar condition stay there; the mature either regress or leave. At some future time, the results of repression and regression will manifest in a delayed adolescence of sexual experimentation and trial-and-error relating. Some may grow, finally, into mature celibates; most, however, will not. Milton once commented that he “cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race . . .”[56]; one may add, especially when, released from the cloister, virtue must inevitably suffer the distressing ups and downs of immaturity.
How might the Church alter this situation? It would have to abandon the security of fixation for the challenges of growth.
A healthy training regime would seek to integrate emotionality and sexuality into a celibate lifestyle. Superiors would encourage, not discourage, personal relationships with mature men and women. They would expect the generating of emotional responses and the awakening of sexual attraction. Spiritual directors would help their charges struggle with the loneliness and even depression that accompany non-possessive love. They would counsel them in the means of transforming the narrowing focus of sexual desire into a personal caring of, and compassion for, a world of people searching for God. This would include devoted attention to a prayerful interiority that places each personal relationship in the context of ones commitment to living and preaching humanity’s hope of salvation. The young priests and religious would experience celibacy as a process of an expanding and deepening love. Inevitably, they would know times of failure balanced with occasions of gratifying success. Older celibates would put these moments into perspective, always calling them back to God’s presence within and God’s grace to persevere in their chosen mission.
Current training concentrates on celibacy as an ideal, not a process. It equates celibacy with continence; that is, a successful celibate does not engage in any directly willed sexual activity, solitary or with another. This viewpoint prompted one rector of a major seminary in most solemn tones to warn the year’s ordination class that “anyone who masturbates more than twice a month has a solemn obligation to refuse ordination.” Celibacy, he taught, means will power, discipline and order, and constant attention to necessary protections against temptation. Develop the will and educate the intellect; control the emotions and suppress ones sexuality. As for the imagination, starve it into non-troubling weakness. These form the fortress walls surrounding Milton’s “cloistered virtue.” Internal pressure will, however, eventually breach them: when the fortress is recognized as a prison, anger and depression take over; someday, too much to handle, the confines will crumble, allowing geysers of repressed emotions and denied sexuality to escape. Adolescence will then trump the external trappings of imposed celibacy. The findings of Kennedy and of Sipe document the results.
To address the current burdens of aging and overworked priests, the Church has taken some measures to assist them. Bishops recruit lay deacons from the ranks of married men. These half- breeds, clerical yet lay, assist at masses and in non-sacramental parish activities. Other lay congregants participate in liturgical celebrations as eucharistic ministers, servers at the altar and as lectors. They also take charge of, and teach in, CCD programs. In parishes without a resident pastor, some substitute as parish administrator. Clearly, non-ordained Christians are assuming more roles, and more influential ones, in their local churches.
These changes, though welcome, do not solve the most pressing problem and greatest burden. Fewer and older priests must create the sacramental life of the parish. They alone may offer the eucharist and hear confessions; they alone may preside over a nuptial mass and offer the Church’s final blessings to the sick and dying. The consolidation of dwindling parish congregations helps, as does the scheduling of fewer masses. But as the Catholic population expands, need increases, and priestly availability lessens, these strategies suffer. Unless the Church is willing to deprive parishioners of the sacraments, it must either generate more celibate, male priests or it must permit the ordination of married men and, finally, of women. The only other option would be to separate the consecration of the eucharist from priestly office. That would signal a return to the practice of the Early Church.
In his encyclical, Paul VI urged priests to support their fellows and bishops to furnish them with kindness and understanding. Well and good, but these strategies do not substantially ease overwork nor overcome celibate loneliness. We applaud such male bonding, camaraderie, and fatherly concern; but we know they have nothing to do with the integration of emotions and sexuality required to live happily, holily, and at peace as a celibate for the kingdom of God.
Conclusion
Church history reveals celibacy as a contentious practice marked by disobedience and dissension. It, moreover, was not associated with the priesthood till the 11th Century and not solidified until the 16th.
Reasons proposed over the millennia for mandatory celibacy underline confusion between celibacy and continence. Moreover, non-Christian theology distorts many lofty motivations. Today, clerical scandal terribly compromises celibacy’s supposed witness value to Christ, His mission, and Christian escatology. Moreover, the purported facility that celibate existence offers to community service scarcely exists because of a shortage of priests, their aging condition, and the crumbling facade of celibate practice.
Celibacy sounds grand as an ideal. We like to think that our priests and bishops live selflessly out of an existential drive to bring us God’s love. But the much-touted “facts on the ground” strip away the rhetoric and distortions. With some regularity and success, an estimated half of the ordained attempts to live as celibates. The other half does not.
Clerical superiors have instituted only incidental changes to ease celibacy’s personal angst. That burden will weigh down its priests until the Church surrenders male hegemony and rejects a homosocial, immature hierarchical society. Few bishops seem to recognize this truth; fewer still manifest the courage to stand against a self-serving power structure that does drastic disservice to the People of God.
We may only conclude that the hierarchy, for the good of the Church, must make celibacy for diocesan priests optional.
[1] Sacerdotalis Coelibatus, paragraph 14.
[2] Ibid. , paragraph 15.
[3] Ibid. , paragraph 1.
[4] Ibid. , paragraph 3.
[5] Schoenherr, Richard A. & Young, Lawrence A. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.
[6] Sloyan, Gerard. “Biblical and Patristic Motives for Celibacy of Church Ministers.” In Bassett, William & Huizing, Peter. Celibacy in the Church. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972, p. 17.
[7] Cf. Deut. 25: 5-10.
[8] Gen. 3:14-15. This and all subsequent scriptural quotations are taken from the Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition.
[9] From the Latin continere, “to hold in.”
[10] Sloyan, op. cit., p. 15.
[11] Cf, Num. 5: 1-4.
[12] Sloyan, op. cit., p.15.
[13] Cf. Jn. 2: 1-11.
[14] Cf. 1 Cor. 9:5.
[15] Cf. 1 Cor. 7: 5-6.
[16] Cf. Schillebeeckx, Edward. Celibacy. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968, p. 23.
[17] “Catholicism Must Adapt,” pp. 17-24.
[18] Chapter XII, 3-5. Cf. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/2clement-roberts.html
[19] Chapter V, 1-2, 8-11. Cf. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.v.viii.i.html
[20] Op. cit., p. 26.
[21] Cf. Origen , “Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew,” 15.3. Cf. http://www.well.com/~aquarius/origen-matthew.htm
[22] Budge, Ernest A. Wallis (trans.). The Paradise of the Holy Fathers. London: Chatto and Windus, 1907, p. LXXJ.
[23] Catholic Encyclopedia. “Manichaeism.” Cf. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09591a.htm
[24] Athanasius. The Life of Anthony. Robert C. Gregg (trans.). New York: Paulist Press, 1980, p. 82.
[25] Op. cit. The Paradise of the Holy Father , p. XLJ.
[26] Cf. http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/elvira.html
[27] Cf. http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/Canon%20Law/Decretals/SiriciusDecretal.htm
[28] Cf. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3816.htm
[29] Chapter 50, 258, 1.
[30] Cf. The City of God, Bk. XIV, Chap. 23.
[31] Epist. Ad Rusticum Narbonensem episcopum, Inquis III, Resp., PL54, 1204a. Cf. http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/EN2/cob.htm
[32] A trullo structure is a round building with a bee-hive-like dome. From this comes the naming of this Trullan Council. Cf. http://www.trulloholiday.com/whatare/whatare.html
[33] Cf. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm
[34] Op. cit., pp. 41-42.
[35] Doyle, Thomas. “A Very Short History of Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church,” p. 3, para. 10. Cf. http://www.crusadeagainstclergyabuse.com/htm/AShortHistory.htm . August 31, 2007.
[36] Cf. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06791c.htm
[37] Cf. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/g7-reform1.html
[38] Cf. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran1.html
[39] Cf. http://www.piar.hu/councils/ecum10.htm
[40] Cf. http://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct24.html Canon IX: If any one says that clerics constituted in sacred orders, or Regulars, who have solemnly professed chastity, are able to contract marriage, and that being contracted it is valid, notwithstanding the ecclesiastical law, or vow; and the contrary is no thing else than to condemn marriages; and, that all who do not feel that they have the gift of chastity, even though they have made a vow thereof, may contract marriage; let him be anathema: seeing that God refuses not that gift to those who ask for it rightly, neither does He suffer us to be tempted above that which we are able. Canon X—If any one says that the marriage state is to be placed above the state of virginity, or of celibacy, and that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity, or in celibacy, than to be united in matrimony; let him be anathema.
[41] Abbott, Walter. The Documents of Vatican II. New York: America Press, 1966. Chapter V, #40, p. 67.
[42] Ibid. , Lumen Gentium, chapter V, #42, p. 71. (My italics.)
[43] Cf. 1 Thes. 4: 14-18.
[44] A dualistic heresy begun in Persia in the 3rd Century. Augustine, in particular, fought against it in Egypt.
[45] Pelagianism was condemned by the Council of Carthage in 418 A.D.
[46] Schillebeeckx, op. cit., p. 88. Cf. Lumen Gentium, chapter VI, #44.
[47] Ibid.
[48] For an excellent discussion of celibacy and the all-male world of the priesthood, see Sipe, Richard. Celibacy in Crisis. New York: Brunner—Routledge, 2003. Cf. especially pp. 2275-278.
[49] Cf. Schoenherr, Richard. Goodbye Father; The Celibate Male Priesthood and the Future of the Catholic Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Cf. especially chapter 14, pp. 197-216.
[50] Quoted in Sipe, Richard. Op. cit. , p.322.
[51] Ibid. , p.50.
[52] Ibid. , pp. 50-51.
[53] Kennedy, Eugene & Heckler, Victor. The Catholic Priest in the United States: Psychological Investigations. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Catholic Conference, 1972. Quoted in Schoenherr, op. cit., p. 22. Cf. also Sipe, Richard, “Celibacy Is A Problem For Priests—And Laity Too”: http://www.richardsipe.com/Articles/Celibacy_is_a_Problem.html
[54] Cf. http://www.beliefnet.com/story/102/story_10237_1.html
[55] Cf. Willis, Robert. “The Wasting Away of the Roman Hierarchical Church in America,” section one: “The American Church Today. “
[56] Cf. Areopagitica, 1644: http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/areopagitica.html
