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The Council of Pavia (1022), which was convened by Pope Benedict VIII and St. Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, mandated strict celibacy, banning clerical marriage and forbidding clergy to live with any women, including their wives. Clerics refusing to separate from their wives, including bishops, were to be laicized (to be deprived of their clerical ministry, although they remain ordained priests forever). The Council of Burgess (1031) ordered the wives of clerics to leave the towns where their clerichusbands lived. They also struck a blow against the hereditary priesthood by declaring that any children fathered after ordination were illegitimate and, therefore, ineligible to receive Orders. During the pontificate of Pope St. Leo IX (1049-54), synods in Rome and Mainz banned clerical marriage. Pope Victor II (1055-1057) continued Leo’s policy and on 4 June 1055 anathematized clerical marriage and unchastity. Pope Nicholas II (1059-61) convened a synod at the Lateran, which ordered the laity not to attend Masses said by priests who were living with their wives or concubines and which ordered the excommunication of clerics who had not yet complied with Leo IX’s directives. More importantly, the synod established the College of Cardinals and vested it with the authority to elect popes. By stripping the Holy Roman Emperor and his nobles of their power to appoint popes, this synod ended the most egregious example of lay investiture and greatly increased the power and authority of the papacy.

Nicholas II also made effective use of his legates, Cardinal Humbert of Silva, Archdeacon St. Hildebrand of Rome, and the indomitable monk, St. Peter Damian, in enforcing the decrees of his councils. Humbert crusaded tirelessly against clerical incontinence or “nicolaitism,” which had been condemned as a heresy in 1059. At the pope’s behest, Damian, who was also the Cardinal of Ostia, wrote several works that praised celibacy and that condemned unchaste clerics and their consorts. St. Hildebrand used his authority as the Archdeacon to reform the clergy of Rome and he also made trips abroad on behalf of the pope. Nicholas held other councils that repeated the decrees of the synod of 1059 and he wrote an encyclical on celibacy.

Nicholas II was succeeded by Alexander II (1061-73), who had to contend with the claims of the anti-pope Honorius II, and who did little to advance his predecessor’s agenda on clerical chastity. When Alexander died, Archdeacon St. Hildebrand was elected pope and took the name Gregory VII (1073-1085). The new bishop of Rome wasted no time in restarting the engine of reform. Although his bitter struggle over lay investiture with Emperor Henry IV took up much of his energy and ultimately resulted in his exile from Rome in 1080, Pope St. Gregory VII effectively combated clerical marriage up until then. He held several synods at the Lateran, including one in 1074, which required all clerics to make a vow of celibacy upon ordination and which prohibited lay people from attending Masses or receiving the sacraments from unchaste clerics. The synod of 1078 put the burden of enforcing clerical chastity upon the bishops, who would be suspended if they tolerated the behavior of unchaste clerics. The pope even enlisted the aid of abbots and nobles in bringing reluctant bishops to heel.

Gregory VII’s motives were threefold. First and foremost, they were moral, since he rightly considered that clerical marriage was adultery. Secondly, they were material – a celibate clergy would not have possessions to pass on to their children and thus property would be inherited by the Church. Thirdly, they were political: a celibate clergy would be subject only to the Pope and would therefore not have dealings with the world.

During the struggle to gain control over the priesthood, Pope St. Gregory VII finally gave his ultimatum in 1074 by declaring that no man could be ordained without first pledging himself to celibacy: “The Church cannot escape from the clutches of the laity unless priests first escape from the clutches of their wives.” (Citing the authority of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:33-34). Thus, if a married clergyman did not separate from his wife, he was to be deposed. After this ultimatum other synods and local councils passed similar legislation. By the year 1080, when St. Gregory VII was forced into exile, strict clerical celibacy was becoming the accepted practice throughout the Catholic Church. In 1089 Pope Urban II (1088-1099) ordered that married priests who ignored the celibacy laws was to be imprisoned for the good of their souls and that all clerics who continued to live with their wives were to be removed from office. If, after being warned by a bishop, clerics did not comply, the pope gave secular rulers permission to make slaves of clerical wives. In 1095, the Council of Piacenza passed a resolution outlawing the marriage of priests. Pope Callistus II (1119-1124) presided over the First Lateran Council which decreed that clerical marriages were invalid, fought simony and concubinage of the clergy, ended the lay investiture crisis, and decreed that it was adultery for bishops to forsake their see for marriage.

These decrees culminated in the reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which reaffirmed the holy law of clerical celibacy as the undisputed law and practice of the Catholic Church. Although Pope St. Gregory VII (1073-85) is credited with carrying out the reforms that effected this change, the popes and councils who preceded him laid the groundwork of his program, which also included ending the abuses of simony and lay investiture.

Still, the Gregorian programme for reform was not without opposition. The opponents of reform presented their own arguments, not only at the practical but also at the theoretical level. Their main argument was a scriptural one drawn from the Old Testament, which not only allowed priests to marry but mandated marriage to perpetuate the priestly caste. They also drew on the episode of Paphnutius whom, they claimed, opposed the idea of requiring absolute continence from married clerics at the Council of Nicea (325). As for the East, the Greek ecclesiastical historians Socrates (c. 380-439) and Sozomen (c. 400-450), who wrote a century after the event, reported that the First Council of Nicaea considered ordering all married clergy to refrain from conjugal relations, but the Council was dissuaded by Paphnutius of Thebes. As the story goes, he is alleged to have risen during the Council to protest any plan to impose a discipline of total continence on married clerics, suggesting that it be left to the decision of the particular Churches. The argument runs that his advice is supposed to have been accepted by the assembly. The well-known Church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260-340), who was present at the Council and sympathetic to the Arians, does not make any reference to this episode. It is first recorded by the 5th century Greek historian Sozomen. There are several arguments against the authenticity of this episode, but the most telling one is that the Eastern Church itself, which should have had a great interest in it, either did not know of it or, because the Eastern Church leaders were convinced that it was false, did not have a record of it in any official document it used. None of the polemical writers on clerical celibacy made use of it, nor did the Council of Trullo (691) refer to it. And given the polemical tone of Trullo it would have served its purpose well to have referred to it if it was true. The story of Paphnutius was used against the Gregorian reform, and this was why Pope St. Gregory VII, at the Synod of Rome in 1077, condemned the episode as one of the two most important falsifications used by the opponents of the reform (cf. Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and West, pp. 78-92, and Stickler, The Case for Clerical Celibacy, pp 62-65). This means that the historical value of the Paphnutius incident at Nicea is rejected by Rome.

Subsequent Later Reforms and the History and Reason Behind the Great Western Schism

St. Peter Damian (1007-1072), Doctor of the Church and cardinal-bishop of the diocese of Ostia, Italy, said that, since the Virgin Mary delivered the infant Jesus, only virgin priests ought to bring Him forth on the Eucharistic altar (Peter Damian, On the Dignity of the Priest). Damian taught that any married priest who had marital intercourse with his wife “became impure and his impurity contaminated every liturgical action he performed, sullied the sacred vessels that he touched, and defiled the sacred words that he spoke.” (Peter Damian, Against the Intemperate Clerics, Chapter 4). While some who refuse to accept the Church’s teaching in this regard might object that St. Peter the Apostle himself was married, (although there is nothing in the Bible or Tradition that says that he performed the marital act after his ordination) Peter Damian affirms St. Jerome’s condemnation of forbidden sexual activity of the clergy, declaring that, “Peter washed away the filth of marriage with the blood of his martyrdom.” (St. Peter Damian, On the Perfection of Bishops)

In truth, Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself tells us in The Revelations of St. Bridget that St. Peter Damian’s teaching is perfectly right in this regard and that the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul was conformed to how they lived and how much they loved their flesh in this life: “Peter and Paul died for the sake of righteousness, although Peter died a more painful death than Paul, for he loved the flesh more than Paul; he also had to be more conformed to me through his painful death since he held the primacy of my church. Paul, however, inasmuch as he had a greater love of continence and because he had worked harder, died by the sword like a noble knight, for I arrange all things according to merit and measure. So, in God’s judgment it is not how people end their lives or their horrible death that leads to their reward or condemnation, but their intention and will.” (Our Lord speaking to St. Bridget, The Revelations of St. Bridget, Book 3, Chapter 19)

Peter Damian showed that married priests betrayed their high calling because “they lived as married men, amid the reek and screams of sniveling brats, side by side with a smirking, randy wife, [and] bedeviled by daily temptations to unclean thoughts, words, and deeds.” (St. Peter Damian, Against the Intemperate Clerics, Chapter 7)

Cardinal Humbert, one of St. Peter Damian’s contemporaries, was Pope St. Leo IX’s apostolic delegate to the Eastern Church in Byzantium (present-day Istanbul). Condemning the Eastern Church for allowing the impurity of a married priesthood, Humbert depicted the Eastern Rite priests in these words: “Young husbands, just now exhausted from carnal lust, serve the altar. And immediately afterward they again embrace their wives with hands that have been hallowed by the immaculate Body of Christ. That is not the mark of true faith, but an invention of Satan.” Because of various reasons (in addition to the impious practice mentioned above by Cardinal Humbert), on 16 July 1054, during the celebration of the liturgy, Humbert excommunicated his host, Eastern Patriarch Michael, by placing a Papal Bull of excommunication of the Patriarch on the high altar of the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia. Michael reciprocated by “excommunicating” Latin Church leaders for permitting “irregularities” such as prohibiting the marriage of priests. The tragic split between the Eastern “Orthodox” Church – which is a sensual, condemned and heretical sect as we have seen from the Bible and Apostolic Tradition – and the Western (and Eastern) Catholic Church, which is the one and only true Christian Faith, dates from that year, and it has never been healed since that time. So because of the Eastern Schismatics’ obstinacy and inordinate love of this fleeting fleshly pleasure, in addition to their other obstinate rejections of various other doctrines of the Catholic Church, they have sadly denied and rejected Christ and the faith in the process.

The reforms of the eleventh century were finalized in the twelfth century by the

Ecumenical and infallible First Lateran Council (1123), which proclaimed that after a cleric was ordained a subdeacon, deacon, or priest, he could not validly marry or live with his wife, and that the marriages of all higher clerics were invalid. The First Lateran Council was held during the pontificate of Pope Callistus II, and was “for various important matters of the church”, as Callistus himself says in the letter of convocation. Canon 7 declared: “We absolutely forbid priests, deacons or subdeacons to live with concubines and wives, and to cohabit with other women, except those whom the Council of Nicaea permitted to dwell with them solely on account of necessity, namely a mother, sister, paternal or maternal aunt, or other such persons, about whom no suspicion could justly arise.” Canon 21 declared that any marriages contracted of clerics and the chaste servants of Christ were void: “We absolutely forbid priests, deacons, subdeacons and monks to have concubines or to contract marriages. We adjudge, as the sacred canons have laid down, that marriage contracts between such persons should be made void and the persons ought to undergo penance.”

At the Synod of Clermont in 1130 Pope Innocent II decreed that marital intercourse was incompatible with holy men and their holy actions. The pope said that: “since priests are supposed to be God’s temples, vessels of the Lord and sanctuaries of the Holy Spirit… it offends their dignity to lie in the conjugal bed and live in impurity.”

Repeating the decrees of the First Lateran Council, the Ecumenical Second Lateran Council (1139) decreed in Canon 6: “We also decree that those who in the subdiaconate and higher orders have contracted marriage or have concubines, be deprived of their office and ecclesiastical benefice. For since they should be and be called the temple of God, the vessel of the Lord, the abode of the Holy Spirit, it is unbecoming that they indulge in marriage and in impurities.” Canon 7: “Following in the footsteps of our predecessors, the Roman pontiffs Gregory VII, Urban, and Paschal, we command that no one attend the masses of those who are known to have wives or concubines. But that the law of continence and purity, so pleasing to God, may become more general among persons constituted in sacred orders, we decree that bishops, priests, deacons, subdeacons, canons regular, monks, and professed clerics (conversi) who, transgressing the holy precept, have dared to contract marriage, shall be separated. For a union of this kind which has been contracted in violation of the ecclesiastical law, we do not regard as matrimony. Those who have been separated from each other, shall do penance commensurate with such excesses.”

Thus the infallible decrees of the First and Second Lateran Councils made it clear once and for all—and especially to those contraveners in the Christian world that opposed and still oppose the Apostolic and Biblical teaching of clerical celibacy in the New Testament and in the New Law—that this teaching indeed was true and biblical and that henceforth, all clerics had to remain perfectly chaste if they wished to be spotless and lawful and pure ministers of Our Lord Jesus Christ. While it has already been proved that all deacons, priests and bishops of the Church must live totally and perpetually chaste from the time of their ordination and that this is indeed the teachings of the Bible and the Apostles, from that time onward, the law and practice of the Church concerning strict celibacy was made more firm.

And later legislation, found especially in the Quinque Compilationes Antiquae and the Decretals of Gregory IX, continued to deal with questions concerning married men who were ordained legally. In 1322 Pope John XXII insisted that no one bound in marriage—even if unconsummated—could be ordained unless there was full knowledge of the requirements of Church law. If the free consent of the wife had not been obtained, the husband, even if already ordained, was to be reunited with his wife, exercise of his ministry being barred. Accordingly, the assumption that a wife might not want to give up her marital rights may have been one of the factors contributing to the eventual universal practice in the Latin Church of ordaining only unmarried men.

One further word on the canonical legislation of the Middle Ages. On various occasions, in penitential books, it is said that for a married priest to go on having sexual relations with his wife after ordination would be an act of unfaithfulness to the promise made to God. It would be an adulterium since, the minister now being married to the Church, his relationship with his own wife “is like a violation of the marriage bond” (Stickler, L’évolution... (ut supra), p. 381). This weighty accusation against a lawfully wedded man only makes sense if something is left unexpressed because it is well-known, i.e., that the sacred minister, from the moment of his ordination, now lives in another relationship, also of a matrimonial type — that which unites Christ and the Church in which he, the minister, the man (vir), represents Christ the bridegroom; with his own wife (uxor) therefore “the carnal union should from now on be a spiritual one”, as St. Leo the Great said. (Ep. ad Rusticum Narbonensem episc. Inquis. III: Resp. (PL 54, 1204 A): «ut de carnali fiat spirituale coniugium».)

Conclusion

The universal law of clerical celibacy confirmed by the Council of Nicaea applied, and still applies, to the Eastern Church as well as the Western. It is noteworthy that at that Council, the Easterners (Greeks) made up the overwhelming majority. Previously, the Council of Neo-Caesarea (c. 314) had reminded all Eastern clerics in major orders of the inviolability of this law under pain of deposition: “If a presbyter marry, let him be removed from his order.” (Canon 1) And of course, we must nor forget to cite earliest canon law on the subject: “None of the clergy, except readers and singers may marry after ordination.” (The Apostolic Canons, Canon 26)

We may then take it for a general principle that in no part of the ancient Church was a priest allowed to contract holy matrimony; and in no place was he allowed to exercise his priesthood afterwards, if he should dare to enter into such a relation with a woman.

The Eastern Church began at a late date to violate its own law of celibacy. The Quinisext Council of 692, also called Council in Trullo, which St. Bede the Venerable (673-735) called “a reprobate synod,” breached the Apostolic Tradition concerning the celibacy of clerics by declaring that “all clerics except bishops may continue in wedlock” (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Council in Trullo, vol. 4, 1908). This reprobate synod taught: “Nor shall it be demanded of him at the time of his ordination that he promise to abstain from lawful intercourse with his wife...” (Canon 13) The popes refused to endorse the conclusions of the Council in the matter of celibacy, and the Eastern Church planted the seeds of its schism.

It is abundantly clear that the fathers in The Quinisext Council thought the discipline they were setting forth to be the original discipline of the Church in the matter, and the discipline of the West an innovation, but that such was really the case is an innovation itself. Thomassinus (1619-1695), French theologian and Oratorian, treats this point with much learning, and I shall cite some of the authorities he brings forward. Of these the most important is St. Epiphanius (c. 310-403), bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, of whom we have already cited some verses before, who as a Greek would be certain to give the tradition of the East, had there been any such tradition known in his time. I give the three great passages:

“It is evident that those from the priesthood are chiefly taken from the order of virgins, or if not from virgins, at least from monks; or if not from the order of monks, then they are wont to be made priests who keep themselves from their wives, or who are widows after a single marriage. But he that has been entangled by a second marriage is not admitted to priesthood in the Church, even if he be continent from his wife, or be a widower. Anyone of this sort is rejected from the grade of bishop, presbyter, deacon, or subdeacon. The order of reader, however, can be chosen from all the orders these grades can be chosen from, that is to say from virgins, monks, the continent, widowers, and they who are bound by honest marriage. Moreover, if necessity so compel, even digamists may be lectors, for such is not a priest, etc., etc.” (Epiph. Exposit. Fid. Cath., c. xxi)

“Christ taught us by an example that the priestly work and ornaments should be communicated to those who shall have preserved their continency after a single marriage, or shall have persevered in virginity. And this the Apostles thereafter honestly and piously decreed, through the ecclesiastical canon of the priesthood.” (Epiph. Hæresi. 48, n. 7)

“Nay, moreover, he that still uses marriage, and begets children, even though the husband of but one wife, is by no means admitted by the Church to the order of deacon, presbyter, bishop, or subdeacon. But for all this, he who shall have kept himself from the commerce of his one wife, or has been deprived of her, may be ordained, and this is most usually the case in those places where the ecclesiastical canons are most accurately observed.” (Epiph. Hæresi, 59, n. 4)

Nor is the weight of this evidence lessened, but much increased, by the acknowledgment of the same father that in some places in his days the celibate life was not observed by such priests as had wives, for he explains that such a state of things had come about “not from following the authority of the canons, but through the neglect of men, which is wont at certain periods to be the case.” (Ibid. ut supra.)

The witness of the Western Fathers, although so absolutely and indisputably clear on this subject already, yet one more passage from St. Jerome should be quoted: “The Virgin Christ and the Virgin Mary dedicated the virginity of both sexes. The Apostles were chosen when either virgins or continent after marriage, and bishops, presbyters, and deacons are chosen either when virgins, or widowers, or at least continent forever after the priesthood.” (Hieron. Apolog. pro. lib. adv. Jovin.)

It cannot be more clearly stated. And there is a reason for the tradition. The main reason why clerical celibacy is doctrinal and not disciplinary, is because the cleric in major orders, by virtue of his ordination, contracts a marriage with the Church, and he cannot be a bigamist (the crime of marrying a person while one is still legally married to someone else). As our fathers in the Faith still explain it, these clerics are virgins in order to be true disciples and ministers of Christ, a virgin consecrated to His Spouse. St. Jerome, in his treatise, Adversus Jovinianum, bases clerical celibacy on the virginity of Christ. Thus as early as 306 the Council of Elvira in Spain imposed sanctions on virgins who had been unfaithful to their consecration to God and their vow of virginity. At the same time the Council of Ancyra (314) declared that consecrated virgins who marry were guilty of bigamy, since they were espoused to Christ. In 364 the civil law, under Valens, declared that anyone who married a consecrated virgin was subject to the death penalty. Canon 16 of the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451) states that: “It is not lawful for a virgin who has dedicated herself to the Lord God, nor for monks, to marry; and if they are found to have done this, let them be excommunicated.” St. Peter Damian adds: “No one can be ignorant of the fact that all the Fathers of the Catholic Church unanimously imposed the inviolable rule of continence on clerics in major orders. The Body of the Lord in the sacrament of the altar is the same as the one carried by the immaculate hands of the Virgin at Bethlehem. To be able to touch It, it is necessary to have pure hands, sanctified by perfect continence.”

This is also why there is a connection between monogamous marriage (the state or practice of having only one husband or wife over a period of time) on the one hand and continence on the other. Tertullian speaking clearly about this invokes the example set by Christ who, according to the flesh, was not married and lived in celibacy (he was not, therefore, “a husband of one wife”); yet, in the spirit, “he had one bride the Church” (De monog., 5,7 (CCL 2, 1235)). This doctrine of Christ’s spiritual marriage to the Church, here inspired by the Pauline text of Ephesians 5:25-32, was common in early Christianity; Tertullian saw this spiritual marriage as one of the main theological bases for the law of monogamous marriage: “because Christ is one and his Church is one” (De exhort, cast., 5, 3 (CCL 2, 1023); hence, Tertullian goes on, the law of single marriage is also founded on ‘Christi sacramentum’). But it does not follow from this that Tertullian had already made the connection between this doctrine and the formulae unius uxoris vir or unius yin uxor of the Pastoral Letters (1 Timothy; 2 Timothy; Epistle to Titus), where monogamous marriage is explicitly referred to.

Besides, Ephesians 5:25-32 dealt not precisely with monogamous marriage but, in principle, the relationship of every Christian marriage with the covenant. Here Paul is speaking of all married members of the Church. When, referring to Genesis 2:24, the Apostle says that husband and wife “will be one flesh” (v. 31), he is justifying the use of marriage for them. The formula unius uxoris vir of the Pastoral Letters, however, is not used for all married men but only for ministers of the Church (this fact has been too little noted); yet subsequently it came to be regarded as the biblical basis of the law of continence for clerics. This is the point that still needs to be cleared up.

With St. Augustine we take a step forward. He, having taken part in the deliberations of the African synods, was certainly aware of the ecclesiastic law (based on divine law) governing the ‘continence of clerics’ (St. Augustine speaks of this in the De coniugiis adulterinis, II, 20, 22: «solemnus eis proponere continentiam clenicorum» (PL 40, 486)). But how does Augustine then explain the stipulation unius uxoris vir which is used by Paul for married clerics? In De bono conjugali (written in about A.D. 420), he advances a theological explanation for it, and asks himself why polygamy was accepted in the Old Testament, whereas “in our own age, the sacrament has been restricted to the union between one man and one woman; and consequently it is only lawful to ordain as a minister of the Church (ecclesiae dispensatorem) a man who has had one wife (unius uxoris virum).” And here is Augustine’s answer: “As the many wives (plures uxores) of the ancient Fathers symbolized our future churches of all nations, subject to the one man, Christ (uni viro subditas Christo), so the guide of the faithful (noster antistes, our bishop), who is the husband of one wife (unius uxoris vir) signifies the union of all nations, subject to the one man, Christ (uni viro subditam Christo).” (De bono coniugali, 18, 21 (PL 40, 3 87-388))

In this text, where we find the formula unius uxoris vir being applied to the bishop, the whole accent falls on the fact that he, ‘the man’, in his relations with his ‘wife’, symbolizes the relationship between Christ and the Church. An analogous use of the phrase ‘man and wife’ occurs in a passage of De continentia (c. 418-420): “The Apostle invites us to observe so to speak three pairs (copulas): Christ and the Church, husband and wife, the spirit and the flesh” (De continentia, 9, 23 (PL 40, 364)). The suggestion these texts offer us for interpreting the stipulation unius uxoris vir applied to the (married) minister of the sacrament is that he, as minister, not only represents the second pair (husband and wife) but also the first: henceforth he personifies Christ in his married relationship with the Church. Here we have the basis for the doctrine which was later to become a classic one: Sacerdos alter Christus. Like Christ, the priest is the Church’s bridegroom. From this, it has become abundantly clear that, for married ministers, their ordination implied an invitation to live in continence thereafter.

At the Council of Trent, the discussions of the theological commission led to the approval of the following canon by the Fathers of Trent on November 11, 1563. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) considered the matter and at its twenty-fourth session decreed that marriage after ordination was invalid: “If any one saith, 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 that the contrary is no thing else than to condemn marriage; 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.” (Session 24, Canon 9, A.D. 1563)

It also decreed, concerning the relative dignity of marriage and celibacy: “If any one saith, 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.” (Canon 10)

In relation to the Apostles who were married before being called by Christ, all the theologians affirmed unhesitatingly that afterwards they gave up conjugal life with their wives in line with their own declaration: “We have left everything and followed you...” (Matthew 19:27).

So not only would it be a violation of Sacred Tradition to blot out a constant teaching decreed for 2,000 years to be absolutely obligatory, but also one must recognize that clerical celibacy is to be seen not merely as of ecclesiastical institution, but part of what is more broadly known in Catholic moral theology as “divine positive law,” initiated by Christ and His Apostles. That is, it is not merely disciplinary in nature, as many assert.

Against the long-standing tradition of the Church in the East as well as in the West, which excluded marriage after ordination, the “reformer” Zwingli married in 1522, Luther in 1525, and Calvin in 1539. And against what had also become, though seemingly at a later date, a tradition in both East and West, the married Thomas Cranmer was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533 (Cranmer was not yet a priest when he entered into marriage; he was also a widower before his ordination). Once his appointment was approved by the pope, Cranmer declared Henry’s marriage to Catherine “void”, and four months later “married” him to Anne Boleyn; thus was the seeds of the Anglican schism sown.

Barely nine months after the king’s death Convocation voted in December 1547 to abolish the laws which made the marriages of clerks in Holy Orders null and void ab initio, and a Bill to this effect was passed in the House of Commons in the 1548-49 session. All such marriages hitherto contracted, involving as many as eight or nine thousand clerics, were rendered good and lawful by the same Bill. Three years later a second Act was passed which legitimated the children born of such unions. In 1553 the new code of Canon Law for the Church of England condemned as heresy the belief that Holy Orders were an invalidating impediment to marriage.

Following the elimination of celibacy in different countries, it is not surprising that many priests, diocesan as well as religious, abandoned their obligations. Sadly this was often the prelude to the abandonment of the faith as well.

As Stickler incisively comments in The Case for Clerical Celibacy, pp. 50-51: “This demanding commitment, which involves a life of constant sacrifice, can only be lived out if it is nourished by a living faith, since human weakness is a constant reminder of its practical implications. It is only through a faith that is constantly and consciously sustained that the supernatural reasons underlying the commitment can be truly understood. When this faith grows weak, the determination to persevere fades; when faith dies, so does continence.” He goes on to point out that “a constant proof of this truth is to be found in the various heretical and schismatic movements that have arisen in the Church. One of the first institutions to be attacked is clerical continence. Therefore we should not be surprised that one of the first things that was rejected by the heretical movements that broke away from the unity of the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century – Lutherans, Calvinists, Zwinglians, Anglicans – was in fact clerical celibacy.” (ibid., p. 51) It is also significant that the Old Catholics, when they seceded after Vatican I, abolished celibacy and reverted to a married clergy.

The revolutionary dimension of the opposition to celibacy at first evinced a political response from many civil authorities. The emperors Charles V (1519-56), Ferdinand I (1558-64) and Maximillian II (1564-76) all counselled a mitigation of the law at different stages during the Council of Trent. Humanists like Erasmus advised the same course. A change was admissible, even desirable they said, if it did not touch on the substance of the faith.

Some theologians and bishops rowed in with the humanists and were prepared for any accommodation which did not undermine their flawed and false understanding of what “the essentials of the faith” is. Still, the majority of bishops, convinced of the doctrinal and ascetical arguments for celibacy, refused to be railroaded into change. Since many of the priests who were living in compromised situations were already committed to heterodox theological positions, the bishops judged that a change in the law of celibacy would do little to win back these men to orthodoxy. They were also convinced that tolerating marriage for priests would completely undermine the radical reform of the clergy which was necessary if they were to become exemplary ministers of Christ.

Despite powerful political pressures Rome refused to legislate for a compromise solution. Priests who desired to be readmitted to the ministry could do so only on condition that they separated from their concubines and showed an authentic spirit of repentance. These were the dispositions which were offered to Germany. Through Cardinal Pole, Rome made a similar arrangement with England during the period of the Catholic restoration under Mary (1553-58) to facilitate those married priests who wanted to return to orthodoxy. From 1917, all cases of dispensation from the impediment of marriage were reserved to the Holy See. But those receiving dispensation were not authorized by that fact to continue with marital relations. (cf. B. Ojetti, Commentarium in Codicem luris Canonici, Rome/P.U.G., 1930), 11, pp. 103-109; M.C. a Coronata, Compendium luris Canonici (Turin/Rome, Marietti, 1949 III, pp. 327-8; F. Capello, Summa luris Canonici Rome/P.U.G. 1951,), II, pp. 277-8.)

The decrees and reforms of the Council of Trent were not immediately followed in all Catholic nations but with time they did bring about a general observance of the law of celibacy, thanks in no small measure to their provisions for the better training of the clergy. The “Enlightenment” brought fresh assaults against clerical celibacy and after the First Vatican Council, the Old Catholics, as already noted, separating themselves from Rome, abolished the rule. Despite the pressures on the Catholic Church to relax the law of celibacy, it has always resisted. Pope Benedict XV declared, in his Consistorial Allocution of 16 December 1920, that the Church considered celibacy to be of such importance that it could never abolish it: “We once more affirm, solemnly and formally, that this Apostolic See will never in any way lighten or mitigate the obligation of this holy and salutary law of clerical celibacy, not to speak of abolishing it.” (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 12 (1920), p. 585)

In the early nineteenth century an association was formed in Germany to advocate a change in the law, but Gregory XIV rejected this move in his encyclical Mirari Vos (1834). Fourteen years later Pius IX defended the discipline in his Qui Pluribus. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Modernism provoked a new attack on the law of celibacy, but its effects were limited, due largely to the decisive measures taken by St. Pius X. In his Apostolic Exhortation on the Priesthood, Haerent animo, published on August 4, 1908 to mark the Golden Jubilee of his ordination, the pope refers to celibacy as “the fairest jewel of our priesthood.” Pope Pius XI, in his detailed encyclical on the priesthood, Ad Catholici Sacerdotii, reaffirmed St. Pius X’s appropriateness of the Church’s teaching on clerical celibacy, where he refers to celibacy as “the most precious treasure of the Catholic priesthood.”

As always, since lustful men tried to deny and reject the biblical and apostolic teaching on clerical chastity, Pope Pius XI, in Ad Catholici Sacerdotii (#’s 40-43), of Dec. 20, 1935, had to reaffirm the Church’s position once again concerning this matter: “It is impossible to treat of the piety of a Catholic priest without being drawn on to speak, too, of another most precious treasure of the Catholic priesthood, that is, of chastity; for from piety springs the meaning and the beauty of chastity. Clerics of the Latin Church in higher Orders are bound by a grave obligation of chastity; so grave is the obligation in them of its perfect and total observance that a transgression involves the added guilt of sacrilege. … In the Old Law, Moses in the name of God commanded Aaron and his sons to remain within the Tabernacle, and so to keep continent, during the seven days in which they were exercising their sacred functions. But the Christian priesthood, being much superior to that of the Old Law, demanded a still greater purity. The law of ecclesiastical celibacy, whose first written traces pre-suppose a still earlier unwritten practice, dates back to a canon of the Council of Elvira, at the beginning of the fourth century, when persecution still raged. This law only makes obligatory what might in any case almost be termed a moral exigency that springs from the Gospel and the Apostolic preaching. For the Divine Master showed such high esteem for chastity, and exalted it as something beyond the common power; He Himself was the Son of a Virgin Mother, Florem Matris Virginis, and was brought up in the virgin family of Joseph and Mary; He showed special love for pure souls such as the two Johns – the Baptist and the Evangelist. The great Apostle Paul, faithful interpreter of the New Law and of the mind of Christ, preached the inestimable value of virginity, in view of a more fervent service of God, and gave the reason when he said: "He that is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God." All this had almost inevitable consequences: the priests of the New Law felt the heavenly attraction of this chosen virtue; they sought to be of the number of those "to whom it is given to take this word," and they spontaneously bound themselves to its observance. Soon it came about that the practice, in the Latin Church, received the sanction of ecclesiastical law. The Second Council of Carthage at the end of the fourth century declared: "What the Apostles taught, and the early Church preserved, let us too, observe." [Council of Carthage, Canon 3 A.D. 390]”

Indeed, the Son of God Himself in The Revelations of Saint Bridget also reveals to us that the Apostles “had every intention of remaining chaste, and living continently in every way” at the time of Pentecost, which was in the very start of the Church, which shows us that the necessity of priestly chastity was well known to the Apostles at the very start of the Church at the time of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and their few followers in the shape of tongues of fire.