Celibacy

CELIBATO. -

I. ECCLESIASTICAL C

« unius uxoris vir » (Tit. 1, 5-6), an expression that must be understood in the sense of a prohibition directed against those who had married two or more times before entering Holy Orders, and not as though the Apostle were imposing an obligation to have a wife. This second interpretation would, moreover, conflict with what the same Apostle writes elsewhere (I Cor. 7, 7; 32-34), when he expresses the wish that others might be as he is (that is, unmarried: I Cor. 7, 7), or when he explains the dispositions favorable to an individual’s devoting himself to the service of the Lord (I Cor. 7, 32-34).

The precept is therefore restrictive, not prescriptive; it excludes the bigamist from Holy Orders, but does not impose marriage as a condition for entering the priesthood.

Virtually recommended by Scripture, c. does not, however, appear there as obligatory, and this freedom of choice was the norm followed in the first centuries of the Church, despite the high esteem in which continence was held. Indeed, before cenobitism made it an institution, the aristocracy of the Catholic clergy had been concerned to practice it, as numerous testimonies of Christian writers attest, among them Tertullian (De exhort. castit., 13: PL 2, 930), Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, III, 13: PG 8, 1189), Origen (In Lev. hom., 6: PG 12, 473), Eusebius (Demonstr. Evang., I, 9: PG 22, 81), Synesius of Ptolemais (Epist., 105: PG 66, 1485), St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Cateches., 12, 25: PG 33, 757), St. Jerome (Adv. Vigilantium, 2: PL 23, 341), and St. Epiphanius (Adv. haeres., 48, 9: 59, 4: PG 41, 869, 1024).

From these and other texts, which show how widespread the practice of continence was among the clergy, it is difficult to demonstrate the trace of a law on c. of apostolic origin, a thesis maintained by Bickel and now generally abandoned. Other no less explicit testimonies (cf. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, III, 13: PG 8, 1189; Can. Hipp., 8, 55: ed. Achelis, Leipzig 1889, p. 74) show that the clergy’s right to live in marriage was recognized. It was in the fourth century that the discipline of c. began to assume fixed forms in conciliar legislation; but, in regulating it, the Eastern Church separated from the West.

In the East, the Church allowed those who did not feel called to c. to exercise their marital rights. The Councils of Ancyra (314), Nicaea (325), and Gangra (c. 350) pronounced themselves in this sense.

The testimony of Socrates shows that a general law on continence did not exist even around the middle of the fifth century, when it was only beginning to be introduced in certain regions, such as Macedonia, Thessaly, and Hellas (Hist. eccl., V, 22: PG 67, 637).

Custom gradually acquired the force of a general law, and in regulating it the Greek Church was inspired by the Apostolic Constitutions (I, 6, 17, Funk, Paderborn 1905, pp. 339-41) and the Apostolic Canons (cf. can. 6, in Mansi, I, 51), whose prescriptions in this matter were by no means rigid: prohibition of marriage after ordination, but permission to use marriage for those who had already married before ordination. Under the influence of Justinian’s legislation (Novella VI, 1), these same measures were somewhat restricted and later codified at the Council in Trullo (692), which is the East’s final word on ecclesiastical c., still in force today. For bishops, it is summarized in the obligation of absolute continence, with separation from the wife, who, in the case of those married before the episcopate, must retire to a monastery. For priests, deacons, and subdeacons, marriage after ordination is forbidden; for those already married, however, their marital rights with respect to their wife are preserved, and she may not be repudiated, under penalty of deposition (can. 6, 12-13, 48, in Mansi, XI, 944-48, 965).

In the West, the first law on the matter was canon 33 of the Council of Elvira (Granada), around 300,

which obliged those ordained in sacris to absolute continence, under penalty of deposition: « Placuit in totum prohibere episcopis, presbyteris et diaconibus vel omnibus clericis positis in ministerio abstinere se a coniugibus suis et generare filios; quicunque vero fecerit ab honore clericatus exterminetur » (Mansi, II, 11).

At the Roman Council of 386, Pope Siricius promulgated an analogous law (Jaffé-Wattenbach, I, 41), intending to have it prevail throughout the Latin Church (Epist. ad Himerium Tarrac.: PL 56, 558-59, 562). Later, Innocent I communicated this decision to Victricius of Rouen and Exuperius of Toulouse (PL 56, 501, 523-24). Africa, Spain, and Gaul moved toward the path traced by the popes, as attested by the canons of various Councils: Carthage (401), Toledo (390, 400), and Turin (401).

Until the fifth century, subdeacons were not subject to the rule of c.; indeed, Pope Siricius seems to have exempted them (PL 56, 560). But in the time of St. Leo the Great they too were compelled to observe the adopted rule (Ep. ad Anast. Thessal.: PL 44, 672).

There was no lack of resistance, and the Church’s most influential doctors, such as St. Ambrose (De offic., I, 1: PL 16, 97-98), St. Augustine (De coniugis adulterinus, II, 22: PL 40, 486), and St. Jerome (Adv. Vigilantium, 2: PL 33, 340), had to use their influence in support of the papal thesis and rebut the errors of Epidias, Jovinian, and Vigilantius. Epigraphy, too, bears witness to individual resistance encountered by c. among certain bishops (Leclercq, Célibat, in DACL, II, cols. 2822-27).

The rules issued by the Popes and Councils in the West continued to govern the discipline of c. until the twelfth century, although, during periods of crisis, its practice fell into eclipse, as, for example, in France in the eighth century under Charles Martel, when ecclesiastical benefices were often conferred on unworthy persons.

The indefatigable work of St. Boniface (v.) and, later, the common life (canonical life promoted by Bishop Chrodegang of Metz; v.), as well as the legislation of Charlemagne, contributed to a restoration of c., unfortunately of short duration: the decline of the Empire brought about with it the collapse of ecclesiastical discipline, and throughout the tenth century and until the second half of the eleventh, despite isolated voices of protest (the Council of Trosly of 909, Rather of Verona, Egbert of Trier), the evil continued to spread. Not only particular Churches, but Rome itself presented the spectacle of concubinage and marriage, which tended to become the normal condition of the clergy. A terrible description of the clergy’s decline was drawn in the Liber Gomorrianus by St. Peter Damian, one of the champions of the revival of ecclesiastical c. He vigorously supported the work of the reforming popes of the second half of the eleventh century, who, proportioning their remedies to the evil, restored the clergy to an awareness of the discipline of the primitive Church. Above all, the firm attitude of St. Gregory VII assured lasting success to the papacy’s action through the struggle against lay investiture, the root of the evil (cf. A. Fliche, La réforme grégorienne, 3 vols., Louvain 1924-37). Although the Pope did not yet declare priests’ marriages null, he treated them in practice as such. The Lateran Council convened by Callistus II (1123) took the final step (can. 21), confirmed by Lateran II (1139), can. 7, and later by Alexander III in 1180, who extended the law of the invalidity of marriage to subdeacons as well (Decret., chaps. 1-2, X, IV, 6). From then on, Major Orders constituted a diriment impediment to marriage in the Latin Church (cf. now cann. 132, 213, 214, 1072).

The attitude of the popes provoked among the enemies of celibacy a series of treatises and pamphlets (1060–80), for which recourse was also made to forgeries. Particularly noteworthy is the rescript De continentia, attributed to St. Ulrich, bishop of Augsburg (d. 973), as early as the time of the Roman Council of 1079, but in reality written around 1060, apparently by Ulrich, bishop of Imola (Fliche, op. cit., III, pp. 1–48). Attacks against celibacy did not cease thereafter. Opposed by Jean de Meung in the Ramon de la Rose (1277), it became the subject of discussions by ecclesiastics who favored marriage as a remedy for greater evils. Thus Durandus the Younger at the Council of Vienne (1313), Cardinal Zabarella at the Council of Constance (1414), and years later the emperor Sigismund at the Council of Basel. For other reasons, however, it was attacked with the advent of the Protestant Reformation: Luther declared the vows of chastity of religious and priests null. In the face of the Protestant schism, some Catholics held that, for the restoration of unity, the Church might derogate from the law on celibacy, and this view persisted even after the Council of Trent condemned the Lutheran error by defining the invalidity of marriages contracted by religious bound by solemn vows and by clerics in Major Orders (sess. XXIV, can. 9). The emperors Ferdinand I and Maximilian II asked the Holy See for a dispensation from the law for the German countries, and Pius IV seriously considered granting II. But with the Pope’s death and the accession of Pius V, the project was definitively abandoned, and the Tridentine laws were imposed upon the whole Church (cf. G. Constant, La concession à l'Allemagne de la communion sous les deux espèces, Paris 1923, pp. 546–612, 1013–23). In more recent times, the secular attacks against celibacy made by the French Revolution, then by the “Old Catholics,” and after the war by the group of apostate priests who founded the Czechoslovak National Church (1920), are well known. More recently, the German neo-Modernists, in their disciplinary program (Der Katholizismus der Zukunft, published anonymously in Leipzig in 1940), included celibacy as optional. At the same time, another movement against celibacy must not be overlooked: the literary one (cf. P. Franche, Le prêtre dans le roman français, Paris 1902, pp. 80–92).

The Church’s conduct in the face of these episodes has been firm and peremptory. Cf. the encyclicals of Gregory XVI, Mirari vos (15 Aug. 1832), of Pius IX, Qui pluribus (9 Sept. 1846), of Pius X, Pasciendi (7 Sept. 1907), and of Pius XI, Ad catholici sacerdotii (20 Dec. 1935).

By decree of the S. Congregation of the Sacraments (27 Dec. 1930), every candidate for the priesthood is required, under oath, to attest in writing that he binds himself, with full awareness, to the obligations of ecclesiastical celibacy.

The excellent reasons underlying the efforts of the popes to establish celibacy are not those dimly perceived by Montesquieu, when he asserted that “otherwise their power would never have risen so high and would never have endured, if every priest had had a family at heart” (Riflessioni e pensieri inediti, Turin 1943), but those indicated by St. Paul (Hebr. 6, 1). The priest is appointed for men in matters pertaining to God, in order to offer gifts and sacrifices, and only celibacy permits the perfect and total fulfillment of these duties. He who is unmarried is concerned with the things of the Lord and seeks to please him; he who has a companion is also concerned with the things of the world and seeks to please his wife, and thus is divided. Moreover, he who must continue in souls the work of the Redeemer needs freedom from worries of a family nature that would absorb a large part of his activity. The individual in the priest must disappear before the material and spiritual needs of the entire human family; otherwise he risks becoming an ordinary professional. The priestly ministry, and especially the direction of consciences, requires unlimited trust in the one who exercises it, and this trust is scarcely obtained by a priest who lives in the company of a woman who shares in his confidences.

The objections to celibacy arise not so much from the nobility of its program as from the alleged impossibility of practicing II. Chastity, it is said, is impossible, and the claim to master instinct is sheer hypocrisy. The Church condemned this error at the Council of Trent (sess. XXIV, can. 9). The preservation of chastity is a matter of Grace, and the Church has never claimed that nature can triumph over its instincts when abandoned to its own strength alone. If, in particular cases, deeply rooted habits and hereditary defects assign to virtue tasks that are almost superhuman, these are abnormal persons, for whom the priesthood is not suitable. The thesis that seeks to present chastity as harmful to the demands of hygiene and as a cause of neurasthenia has also been decisively rejected by eminent physiologists, who have demonstrated the perfect compatibility of abstinence from sexual gratification with physiological and moral laws. Where neurosis occurs, this effect is produced only in individuals with an abnormal generative instinct. Common pamphleteering likes to insist on the point: the private life of the priest is not, and has never been, chaste, and in hidden disorders he seeks what is publicly forbidden to him. But scandals, past and present, do not constitute the past or the present of the Church. The overall perspective is far more luminous, and beyond the zones of shadow it can display its reality, formed of saints and heroes.

II. THE CELIBACY OF THE LAITY

This celibacy has always existed in the Church from the earliest times, because from the beginning Christian communities spontaneously offered fertile ground for the implementation of the evangelical counsel brought by Jesus Christ. Indeed, this public profession of a perfect life, generously devoted to God’s interests, became so frequent in the various Churches that those who practiced it began to appear within society as a distinct class (v. VERGINITÀ). History has subsequently demonstrated with ever-increasing evidence the manifold and effective assistance that celibate laypeople can render to the Church and to souls through the living example and immediate contact of a life perfectly and wholly consecrated to sanctification, putting it into practice in cases where canonical religious life is impossible or poorly suited; intensely re-Christianizing families, the various professions, and civil society; exercising the apostolate in many ways; and carrying out functions which place, time, and circumstances prohibit or make impracticable for priests and religious (cf. the constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia, 2 Feb. 1947; AAS, 39 [1947], pp. 114 ff.). For this reason, in order to overcome the difficulties and dangers that may be encountered, to respond to the frequent and repeated wishes of the Episcopate and the laity, and in implementing this celibacy, the Church has proceeded to recognize laity (v.).