CELIBATO

CELIBACY. -

I. ECCLESIASTICAL CELIBACY

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

Virtually recommended by Scripture, celibacy 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 conciliar legislation made it an institution, the aristocracy of the Catholic clergy had been concerned to practice it, as evidenced by numerous testimonies from Christian writers, among whom are 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 (Demostr. 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 trace any law on celibacy of apostolic origin, a thesis once supported by Bickel but 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 right to live in marriage was recognized for the clergy. It was in the 4th century that the discipline of celibacy began to take fixed form 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 celibacy to exercise their conjugal rights. In this sense, the Councils of Ancyra (314), Nicaea (325), and Gangra (c. 350) pronounced themselves.

The testimony of Socrates shows that a general law on continence did not even exist by the mid-5th century, when it began to be introduced only in certain regions, such as Macedonia, Thessaly, and Illyria (Hist. eccl., V, 22: PG 67, 637).

Custom gradually assumed the force of general law, and the Greek Church regulated it in accordance with 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 not at all strict: prohibition of marriage after ordination, but allowance of conjugal relations for those already married before ordination. Under the influence of Justinian’s legislation (Novella VI, 1), these same measures were somewhat restricted and codified later in the Council in Trullo (692), which is the final word of the East on the matter of ecclesiastical celibacy, still in force today. It is summarized for bishops as the obligation of absolute continence, with separation from the wife, who was required to retire to a monastery for those married before episcopal consecration. For priests, deacons, and subdeacons, it forbade marriage after ordination; for those already married, however, it preserved their conjugal rights over their wives, whom they were not permitted to repudiate, under penalty of deposition (can. 6, 12-13, 48, in Mansi, XI, 944-48, 965).

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

It obliged those ordained to sacred orders to absolute continence under pain of deposition: “Placuit in totum prohibere episcopis, presbyteris et diaconibus vel omnibus clericis positis in ministerio abstinere se a coniugibus suis et generare filios; quicumque vero fecerit ab honore clericatus exterminetur” (Mansi, II, 11).

At the Roman Council of 386 Pope Siricius promulgated a similar law (Jaffé-Wattenbach, I, 41), with the intention of imposing it throughout the Latin Church (Epist. ad Himerium Tarrac.: PL 56, 558-59, 562). Later Pope Innocent I communicated this decision to Victricius of Rouen and Exuperius of Toulouse (PL 56, 501, 523-24). Africa, Spain and Gaul followed the path traced by the popes, as witnessed by the canons of various councils: Carthage (401); Toledo (390, 400); Turin (401).

Those in minor orders were not subject to the rule in the 4th century; indeed Pope Siricius seems to exempt them (PL 56, 560). But in the time of St Leo the Great they too were bound by the rule that had been adopted (Ep. ad Anast. Thessal.: PL 44, 672).

There was no lack of resistance, and the most influential Church Fathers such as St Ambrose (De offic., I, 1: PL 16, 97-98), St Augustine (De coniugis adulterinis, II, 22: PL 40, 488, 486), St Jerome (Adv. Vigilantium, 2: PL 33, 340) had to lend their influence in support of the papal thesis and refute the errors of Elpidius, Jovinian and Vigilantius. Even epigraphy bears witness to individual resistance encountered by the rule among some bishops (Leclercq, Celibat, in DACL, II, cols. 2822-27).

The rules laid down by the popes and councils in the West continued to govern the discipline of celibacy until the 12th century, even though in times of crisis its practice lapsed, as for example in France in the 8th century under Charles Martel, when ecclesiastical benefices were often conferred on the unworthy.

The indefatigable work of St Boniface (v.) and later the common life (vita canonica promoted by Bishop Crodagandus of Metz; v.), together with the legislation of Charlemagne, contributed to a restoration of celibacy, albeit of short duration: the decline of the Empire dragged down ecclesiastical discipline with it, and throughout the 10th century and until the second half of the 11th, despite isolated voices of protest (the Council of Trosly in 909, Rathier 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 state of the clergy. A terrible description of the decline of the clergy was drawn by St Peter Damian in the Liber Gomorrhianus, one of the champions of the renewal of ecclesiastical celibacy. He vigorously seconded the work of the reforming popes of the second half of the 11th century, who, matching remedies to the evil, restored the clergy to the sense of primitive discipline. Above all, the firm stance of St Gregory VII secured for papal action a lasting success in the struggle against lay investiture, the root of the evil (cf. A. Fliche, La réforme grégorienne, 3 vols., Louvain 1924-37). The Pope, though not yet declaring the marriage of priests invalid, in practice treated it as such. The Lateran Council convoked 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 invalidity to those in minor orders (Decret., capp. 1-2, X, IV, 6). From then on the major orders have constituted in the Latin Church an impediment that renders marriage invalid (cf. now can. 132, 213, 214, 1072).

The attitude of the popes provoked among the enemies of celibacy a series of treatises and pamphlets (1060-80), in which recourse was even had to forgeries. Notable above all is the rescript De continentia, attributed to the bishop St Ulrich of Augsburg (d. 973) already at the time of the Roman Council of 1079, but in fact written about 1060, it seems, by Ulrich, bishop of Imola (Fliche, op. cit., III, pp. 1-48). Attacks on celibacy have not been lacking even subsequently. Opposed by Jean de Meun in the Roman de la Rose (1277), it was the subject of discussion by ecclesiastical supporters of 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 that of Basle. For other reasons it was attacked with the advent of the Protestant Reformation: Luther declared the vow of chastity of religious and priests null and void. Faced with the Protestant schism, some Catholics were of the opinion that, for the return of unity, the Church might derogate from the law on celibacy, and this disposition remained even after the Council of Trent condemned the Lutheran error, defining the invalidity of marriage contracted by religious with 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 lands, 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 on 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 attempts against celibacy by lay movements are known, made by the French Revolution, then by the “Old Catholics,” and after the war by the group of apostate priests who formed the Czechoslovak National Church (1920). Recently German neomodernists in their programme of discipline (Der Katholizismus der Zukunft, published anonymously in Leipzig in 1940) have included celibacy as optional. Nor should another movement against celibacy be overlooked: the literary one (cf. P. Franche, Le prêtre dans le roman français, Paris 1902, pp. 80-92).

The conduct of the Church 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 Pascendi (7 Sept 1907), of Pius XI Ad catholici sacerdotii (20 Dec 1935).

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

The excellent reasons for the efforts of the popes to establish celibacy are not those mistakenly adduced by Montesquieu, when he affirmed that “otherwise their power would never have risen so high nor endured, if every priest had had a family to care for” (Reflessioni e pensieri inediti, Turin 1943), but those pointed out by St Paul (Hebr. 6, 1). The priesthood is constituted for men in what pertains to God, for the purpose of offering gifts and sacrifices, and only celibacy allows the perfect and total fulfilment of such duties. He who is unmarried is concerned with the things of the Lord and seeks to please him; he who has a wife is also concerned with worldly things and seeks to please his wife, and so is divided. Moreover, he who must continue in souls the work of the Redeemer needs freedom from family cares that would absorb much of his activity. The individual in the priesthood must disappear before the material and spiritual needs of the whole human family, otherwise he risks becoming a mere professional. The priestly ministry, and in particular the direction of consciences, demands unlimited trust in him who exercises it, and this is hardly obtained by the married priest.

Chastity is a virtue that lives in the company of a woman who shares in its confidences.

Objections to chastity do not arise so much from the nobility of its program as from the supposed impossibility of its practice. Chastity, it is said, is impossible, and the claim to master instinct is sheer hypocrisy. The Church has condemned this error in the Council of Trent (Session XXIV, Canon 9). The preservation of chastity is a matter of grace, and the Church has never claimed that nature can triumph over its instincts when left to its own resources alone. If, in particular cases, inveterate habits and rare hereditary traits assign to virtue tasks that are almost superhuman, these are cases of abnormal individuals for whom the priesthood is not suitable. The thesis that seeks to present chastity as harmful to the demands of hygiene and a cause of harmful effects has been firmly rejected by eminent physiologists, who have demonstrated the perfect compatibility of abstinence from sexual satisfaction with both physiological and moral laws. Where nervous disorders occur, this effect is produced only in types with abnormal sexual instincts. Common libel insists on the point: the private life of the priest is not and never has been free from hidden disorders, and in them he seeks what is publicly forbidden to him. But present and past scandals do not constitute the past or the present of the Church. The overall perspective is much brighter, and beyond the shadowy areas, it can reveal its reality formed by saints and heroes.

II. LAITY'S CHASTITY

This chastity has always existed in the Church from the earliest times, because from the beginning Christian communities spontaneously offered fertile ground for the realization of the evangelical counsel given by Jesus Christ. Indeed, this public profession of perfect life, generously devoted to the interests of God, became so frequent in the various Churches that those who practiced it began to appear in society as a distinct class (v. Vercini). History, moreover, has demonstrated with ever-increasing clarity the manifold and effective assistance that celibate laity can render to the Church and to souls through the living example and immediate contact of a life perfectly and entirely consecrated to sanctification, putting it into practice in cases where canonical religious life is impossible or ill-suited, intensively re-Christianizing families, various professions, and civil society, exercising apostolate in manifold ways, and performing functions that place, time, and circumstances prohibit or render impracticable for priests and religious (cf. the constitution *Provida Mater Ecclesia*, 2 Feb. 1947: *AAS*, 39 [1947], pp. 114 ff.). For this reason, to overcome the difficulties and dangers that may be encountered, to meet the frequent and repeated desires of the episcopate and the laity, and in the implementation of this chastity, the Church has moved to recognize the Secular Institutes of the laity (v.).