Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/465

CELIBACY. 397 CELIBACY. Church, and upon .-I'vcml liililical texts. Cath- olic writers make a careful distinction between the principles upon which tlie law of celibacy is lounded and tlie changes which have taken place in its application. These principles are: (1) That the dergj may seive tiod with more free- dom and with undivided lieart, and (2) that lieing called to the altar, they may embrace the holier life of continence. This does not imply, it is declared, that matrimony is not a holy state, but simply that celibacy is a state of greater perfection." Matt. xix. 12, 1. Cor. vii. 32-40. and Rev. xiv. 4 are cited in support of this contention : while the reference in I. Tim. iv. 3 is taken as clearly directed aiiainst Manich;ean reprobation of marriase in general. It does not follow, how- ever, that the Church is absolutely bound to im- pose a law of celibacy upon its clergy. In Apostolic times there seems to have been no legislation in regard to clerical celibacy, save in the one instance in which it was required of a bishop that he should have been only once married. In the Second Century the veneration for the virginal life had become widespread, and a continent life for the clergy was regarded as proper to the ecclesiastical ollice. at least in its major orders. The rule for clerics not to marry after ordination seems to have been in force from very early times, for we find Paph- nutius, an Egyptian bishop at the Council of Nicjea (325), while resisting the imposition of a law of continence upon all clerics, declaring the ancient traditional law forbidding clerics to mar- Ty after ordination to be sufficient. That this was the recognized practice of the early Church seems well established. The Apostolic Constitu- tions forbid bishops, priests, and deacons to marry, and the twenty-seventh Apostolic canon contains the same prohibition. The Council of Xeo-Cfpsarea (between 314 and 32.5) decreed that a priest who married after ordination should he degraded to the lay state. A deacon could marry only if he had stipulated for such liberty at the time of his ordination, as provided for by the Council of . cyra in 314. The Council of f^lvira 1.30.T) legislated against the marriage of all those who served the altar in any way, requiring of bishops, priests, and minor clerics a life of con- tinence, even if they had been already married. It was the application of this law throughout the entire Church against which Paphnutius pro- tested at the Council of Xic:ra. Xevertheless, it soon afterwards prevailed in the West. We find it so declared in a letter of Pope Siricius (384). addressed to Ilimerius. Bishop of Tarragona. The Third Synod of Carthage (307) embodied it in its canons. Pope Innocent I. laid it down in his letter to Exuperius. Bishop of Toulouse, who had consulted him in regard to it. Saint Jerome (iifininst Jovininn) declares that a priest who has '"always to oflTer sacrifice for the people must pray, and therefore always abstain from mar- riage." Leo. and Cregory the (ireat, and the Eighth Council of Toledo renewed the prohibi- tions against the marriage of suhdeacons. The strict enforcement of the law of celibacy in the pontificate of Gregory VII. has occa- sioned much dispute. Protestant writers gener- ally, such as Mosheini. Potter, and Ranke. con- demn the action of Oregorv as an innovation upon ancient discipline. Catholic writers defend this pontiff, and hold that Gregory's legislation was but the application of the ancient discipline with renewed vigor. There is no doubt that in Gregory's time concubinage was largely prev- alent. His immediate predecessors, Leo IX., Xicholas II., and -Mcxander 11., issued stringent decrees against it. But it was Gregory who most vigorously and successfully enforced this legis- lation. Priests living in concubinage were for- bidden to say mass or even to serve at the altar; the faithful were warned not to hear their mass, and deposition was to be the punishment of priests who refused to obey. A series of .synods from the beginning of the Twelfth Century de- clared the marriage of persons in holy orders to be not only unlawful, but invalid. It was now laid down that if persons in minor orders married they forfeited the privileges of the clerical state. However. Boniface VIII. (1300) permitted them to act as clerics, if they had been married only once and then to a virgin, had episcopal permis- sion, and wore the habit of clerics. The Council of Trent renewed this law and again decreed the marriage of clerks in holy orders null and void. In the Western Church at the present time holy orders can be conferred on a married man only on the con<lition that his wife vohnitarily and fully consents to a separation, and herself makes a vow of chastity. The law of celibacy has never been so strin- gently applied in the East as in the West. Soc- rates (4.50) states that the same law of oehliacy which prevailed among the Latins also obtained in Thessaly, JIacedonia,.and Aehaia. In 020 the TruUan Synod enacted a decree which required married bishops to separate from their wives and forbade all clerics to marry after entering upon the subdiaconate. In the X'intli Century a law of Leo the Wise permitted suhdeacons. deacons, and priests who had married after receiving or- ders to remain in the ranks of the clergy, but not to exercise any fimcticms pertaining to their office save in matters of administration. The Russian Church has modified the ancient Greek canons prohibiting priests and deacons from marrying after ordination. Up to the time of Peter the Great a priestly widower was obliged to enter a monastery, but this monarch allowed a second marriage, and pcnnitted the man to be employed in a seminary or episcopal chancery. Among the I'nited (Jreeks. Ruthenians. Maronites. and such other followers of the Oriental rites, in conununion with Rome, the following is the dis- cipline: (1) A bishop cannot, after his conseera- . tion. either marry again or cohabit with the wife married before ordination. If he has a wife liv- fiig she must retire to a distant nunnery, and there be supported by her late husband. (2) Priests and deacons may. in accordance with the Trullan canon, keep the wives taken before their ordination, but they nuist abstain from marital intercourse for some time bef(ue ofl'iciating at the altar. Pope Clement VIII. (I5!)2-Ifi05) ordered this abstinence to be if possible for seven, or at least for three days. (3) Priests and deacons cannot marry after ordination. Such was the decree of Benedict XIV. issued May G. 1742. Any such attempt at marriage was pronoimced null and void. But in the case of converts from schism who were already in holy orders, the same pontiff decreed that the Holy See might permit the retention of a wife taken after ordination. Celibacy has no doctrinal hearing in the Ro- man Catholic Clnirch. and is regarded as purely a disciplinary law, though as of prime im-