Our second guest post is by Grania Spingies, a former Catholic, now from Atheist Ireland:
The Curious Case of Catholic Clerical Celibacy
by Grania Spingies
Northern Ireland’s Bishop Edward Daly is trying to get the Catholic Church to accept married priests, mostly because it would boost dwindling numbers of new priests.
His suggestion has little chance of being considered seriously by the Vatican, but thousands of Catholics no doubt agree with him.
I somewhat agree with him myself, mostly because I have always thought that the insistence on celibacy was bizarre and unhealthy.
However he goes on to say “There will always be a place in the church for a celibate priesthood”.
But he doesn’t say why.
It still baffles me that this tradition arose in the first place, especially as Christianity grew out of Judaism which has no such restriction placed on its rabbis. Amongst the justifications I came across during my approximately twenty years as an earnest Catholic is that celibacy focuses the priest’s energy on his work. This strikes me as a particularly weak argument. For one thing, there is no evidence at all that obligatory celibacy results in a higher output of work, and the argument ignores the contradictory evidence from other sects that do have married priests, like the Church of England, in which there is no evidence that the parishes are neglected owing to their priest being married. It also ignores the fact that sexual frustration is hardly conducive to focusing on anything.
A different explanation given for this is that the Church didn’t want to bear the financial burden of the upkeep of a priest’s family. Another is that this was the unintentional result of an early restriction in the Church that people attending Communion were to fast and abstain from sex from midnight before. In early days of the Christian sects, meetings like this were held monthly, but once the ritual became a daily event marriage became a non-viable option for priests.
Whatever reason the faithful now believe to be the correct one, history makes it evident that it was not always a tradition of the Church, it only became (a very unpopular) law in 1139. Technically, it is not even a doctrine of the Church. Even today there are exceptions made – for example, in the case of married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism. In modern Catholicism the primitive notion of chastity and purity still remains, as if virginity conferred a level of sanctity or holiness that even the monogamous heterosexual marriage bed somehow defiles. The Vatican goes on at great length about the virtue of virginity and abstinence (e.g., here and here ) and of the eschewing of sexual intercourse (warning: it makes no sense if you “believe” in reality rather than mythological eschatology).
If anything, the Church’s insistence on celibacy has probably resulted in attracting a percentage of dysfunctional men who found that they couldn’t relate to women in their normal daily lives on any level. The Church gives them a niche where their discomfort with the female gender is regarded as a positive attribute.
It is hardly surprising, then, that the Church is rife with misogyny and paternalism, and is defined by an unhealthy preoccupation with finding ways to convince its members that sex is something that debases humans and should be controlled rigidly.
I think the next time a Catholic suggests we put all homosexuals on an Island and wait for natural selection to eradicate them, I might use a “celebrate priest” variation to suggest we eradicate Catholicism 🙂
I have often thought that one of the reasons that Europe is less religious than other parts of the world (aside from shipping so many fundy nutters to the USA), is that for over a thousand years the most religiously inclined tended to go into the celibate priesthood or an equally celibate nunnery, thus slowly weeding genes for religiosity out of the population. Thus I am in favour of celibacy for the priesthood, it does a nice bit of gentle genetic cleansing.
Interesting thought – in a similar way the Scandinavians exported their most violent youth to Britain & Normandy, making them more violent & leaving the pacific, bicycling nations we love today!
😉
The truth is, as we have seen from some of the terrible abuse cases, that many of them professed celibacy while failing to actually practice what they preached. also, they have accepted Church of England priests who have gone over to the RCs, and some of them are married, so what is the big deal? Celibacy was as you point out, quite a late development. But frankly, who cares – they are just plain wrong headed with their world view anyway. The god stuff…
Nice post Grania. I wonder if the marriage restriction was partly crafty economics ~ in that when the priest died his goods went to the church ?
For fun here’s a list of sexually active popes
What? No Pope Joan?! 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan
Michael
That is exactly what happened. The church’s centrality was often compromised in the early days and priests and bishops outside of the direct influence of Rome felt free to bequeath their fortunes to their heirs. This was money that the Pope was certain he could spend more wisely, and so the rule was born.
Economics has long been a concern, indeed the chief concern of the Catholic Church.
Another reason why Henry II of England is a hero of mine – he stood up to the church.
I thought that early church writing rejected all sex as evil. Marriage was simply a lesser evil for those who couldn’t live up to the standard. I.e., God doesn’t want you to do this, but if you must do it, at least confine yourself to marriage.
Under this understanding, a celibate priesthood is just a natural expectation based on the concept of a higher standard of behavior (for priests). The people may lie, but you don’t, you’re a priest. The people may be violent, but you shouldn’t be. The people might have sex, but you shouldn’t.
“Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” — 1 Corinthians 7:8
I’ve read that the rule was originally a reform to break wealth and power of an inherited priesthood, where both priestly property and local power passed from father to son. The lack of a legitimate heir meant that the church hierarchy kept and controlled both in the long term.
I don’t how much evidence backs this up, though.
I think allowing RCC priests to marry would be a healthy thing — that is, if there are going to be priests at all. As it is, the profession seems to be a magnet for those men who are uncomfortable with their own sexuality, and all too often this repression comes is acting act in the sexual abuse of children and other vulnerable people.
Sorry, I meant that last line to read,
I’m in the middle of Fukuyama’s _The Origins of Political Order_, and he makes the same point. It’s the same reason that the Ottomans, for example, used the Janissaries. If someone with a lot of power doesn’t have children, that power can revert to the state. It’s sort of a primitive way of implementing the rule of law.
Is it good?
I have read it and it is very interesting. The basic idea is that how a society develops is largely dependent on which groups in society hold the most power. Spoiler Alert; greedy plutocracies are bad!
Thanks – may give it a go when in paperback…
My understanding (from a long-ago course in medieval European history, among other things) is that it was primarily economic: a celibate priest can’t leave accumulated property to his children. It probably reduces the temptation to skim donations, money from sales of indulgences (entirely legitimate at the time), and the like.
Yes, celibate priests may still have lovers and children, but they don’t have legitimate children with a claim to inherit, or permission to acknowledge the children as heirs.
This seems a bit odd here and now, when “bastard” is an epithet almost without a referent, just meaning “I don’t like that person,” and when we’re warned to make wills to be sure that our spouses and children will inherit in the ways/percentages we want.
I know! Celibacy makes priests better marriage counselors!
You may jest but there are in fact catholic priests who work as – church approved – marriage and relationship counsellors!
I thought premarital counselling with a priest was required to have a Catlick wedding.
Yep. And the squickiest thing I ever went through was the “sex talk” given by a middle-aged priest before about 50 or so couples, all of whom were attending the mandatory “counseling” session.
The man made sex seem positively boring. Even as he listed the various acts that were “approved” – as long as the primary mission was ‘insert penis into vagina to make a baby’.
Ah — that explains it. Your confusion, that is.
The Cult of Jesus is no more Judean than the Cult of Orpheus is Thracian. Indeed, both are profoundly hostile to their allegedly-native origins; in both, Jewish Jews and Thracian Thracians are caricatured as evil old-guard villains, and the only good Jews and Thracians are those who reject the traditional and embrace the radically different new way of the favored demigod.
As were so many of the popular demigods of that time, both Orpheus and Jesus are cast in the mold of Osiris / Dionysus — the archetypal death / rebirth / salvation sun god of Mediterranean agrarianism. But that didn’t prevent the prejudices of key influential founders from taking hold; indeed, one might almost suggest that the religion was little more than a tool to further said prejudices.
And it doesn’t take much reading of the less-inauthentic Pauline epistles to discover that Paul was exactly that sort of misogynistic woman-fearing asshole who would perfectly pattern the modern profile of a pedophile priest.
It’s my understanding, not backed by references, that a driving force behind the medieval adoption of priestly celibacy was inheritance. A priest with a family would leave his fortune to the family, and that money and power would continue with the family. A priest without a family would leave everything to the church, and further the money and power of the church.
There’s also the fact that controlling people’s sexuality is an amazingly powerful psychological weapon. If you can control a person’s most basic desires, you can make that person do almost anything. Orwell described this phenomenon in 1984.
Cheers,
b&
According to Margaret Barker, a bible scholar of some repute, Christianity did indeed have Jewish roots but the roots were in a polytheistic form of Judaism that ended during the reign of Josiah.
As for priestly celibacy, however, given the date at which it became law according to Grania’s note above, Christianity and Judaism had diverged so much by that time, that I think any influence of Judaism had largely disappeared and there would be no reason to suppose that rabbinic non-celibacy would be at all relevant. I’m sure there’s a good analogy with common ancestry and a branching evolutionary tree, but I can’t quite put it into words.
To clarify:
Traditions start at their origins, and in the prevailing culture that surrounded the emerging cult at the time there was no required celibacy for religious leaders.
Fast forward through the next ten centuries and there was still no apparent tradition of celibacy in the Church.
At the time that it became de rigueur, it seems that it was an artificially imposed restraint based on economy perhaps and also eschatological beliefs.
Right, and by the time celibacy was imposed, Christianity was so “un-Jewish” in its structure, that it would not be meaningful to judge the requirement against the non-celibacy of Judaism.
I get your point Ben, but there are a couple of factors here: the Christian cult certainly did arise in Judea and spread from there. Also you may be awarding one Saul of Tarsis a great deal more influence and authority than he ever had in his lifetime.
The new Christian cult was disparate and became fairly widely spread. Each group tended to have its own sacred texts, its own beliefs and practises and chose their own leaders. Paul was a preacher amongst a host of other preachers, albeit a fairly ambitious one, and one whose writings were later selected to be included in what was to become “The Bible”, although that didn’t happen until many centuries later.
Also there is some disagreement among scholars whether his teachings were really opposed to Judaism. Some argue that his ideas were completely in line with Judaism of his day, and a case has even been made by at least one scholar, Daniel Boyarin, that his teachings were attributable to Hellenistic Judaism. It shouldn’t be that surprising, he was after all a Jew himself, even if he did switch teams so to speak later on in his career. Considering that his actions landed him in much the same sort of trouble as it did the putative Jesus with local Jewish religious authorities, some enmity was going to arise in the end.
In any case, the early Church certainly did not expect celibacy from its leaders, some even had women officiating at ceremonies. It was only a millennium later that the idea of a celibate clergy became the norm.
I think it’s fair to discount the influence of foundational Christianity on a policy made a millennium later — but then, of course, one also should discount the influence of an even earlier and explicitly rejected tradition.
As to the anti-Semitic nature of Christianity…well, start by remembering the “brood of vipers” epithet and the withering of the fig tree (an ancient symbol of Torah).
Then, brace yourself and re-read Mein Kampf. Pay special attention to the extensive well-sourced and in-context Biblical support Hitler claims. He makes the case undeniable. You can follow up with Martin Luther whose writing on the subject was even more prolific.
What little Judaism there is is exotic local color, nothing more. At its core, Christianity is diametrically opposed to Judaism in almost every way theologically conceivable.
Cheers,
b&
“theologically conceivable”
Isn’t that a form of pleonasm?
Consider it instead a bit of extra emphatic redundant verbiage for effect.
Cheers,
b&
It’s an old trick to co-opt the attractive elements from an older religion — in this case, the ancient credentials, scriptures, moral code and seemingly pure monotheism of Judaism — and pretend to be the new owner of the tradition. To pull off the theft, the new religion has to discredit the old one.
IMO, there is a great deal of non-Jewish material in early Christianity, and one can argue that most of it is not compatible with Judaism at all.
I thought celibacy owed its origins to the ascetic desert dwelling hermits who proliferated in Egypt, & was part of the gnostic tradition.
There were many ‘pagan’ ascetic cults around, such as the Pythagoreans. I think the early Christian cults took a lot from them.
Well, if you take THAT path, celibacy is probably of a lesser concern.
I’m afraid it definitely makes one focus on something! or should I say: on ONE thing.
😉
Indeed!
I was going to quote that and facetiously answer, “choirboys?”
But, seriously, do we see as high an incidence of paedophilia among the Anglican clergy as among Catholic priests?
(Of course, it’s not necessarily that celibacy begets paedophilia!)
/@
With the church’s (at least the RC one) emphasis on trying to cover up these cases, there is probably not enough data to answer that question.
But if I had to guess …
I read somewhere that the part of the brain that “lights up” during sexual ecstasy is the same area affected by religious fervor. So, to keep the focus on religion, sex must be forbidden.
Isn’t that like St. Teresa of Avila?
I mean the religious ecstasy… that or some other psychoactive substance such as a mushroom of a certain variety. Recall the recent jokeing interviewer with the Dalai Lama (just search Dalai Lama interview joke)…
As I understood it Grania (you can correct me if I’m wrong), is that Christ was supposedly a virgin and a male. So for them to be Christlike they are supposed to be celibate. But of course we know better. It is rumoured that Christ was married to the Mary Magdalene.
Also to deny sex to all priests, monks and nuns has produced the worldwide cruelty and sickness of bullying and paedophilia and pederasty, as well as nuns being walled up alive for getting pregnant from the monks.
There is certainly less abuse in the Anglican tradition, but of course humans will always stray.
The general idea of all churches is to have control of all things that come naturally. Then they can make you feel guilty, when you (in their eyes) slip. Funny how differtent rules apply when a priest goes astray. The sooner Canon Law is replaced with passing on paedo priests to the secular arm of law, the better. Putting a priest in pastures new only puts more temptation and new victims in their way.
The current Catholic Church is the way it is only because it suppressed other sects that were more tolerant. Call something heretical and punish anyone who dissagrees with the accepted way.
The sooner all Churches buckle up or perish, the better. How they have the cheek to tell us that they are our moral guide, goodness only knows?
As you rightly say celibacy is a bizzare and unhealthy (for all concerned) system.
Thank goodness the Church doesn’t have the power it used to have.
Islam is probably at the same state that Christianity was 500 years ago, and so must not be ignored.
Nice article Grania.
True. Christ was also famously a Jew. Somehow that prerequisite seems to have been discarded.
True, and it was Paul who insisted that gentile followers of Christ need not live by Jewish ‘law’. (He appeared to have clashed with Peter over this: just read about that in Bart Ehrman’s latest book “Forged”)
Christ could not have been a Jew.
For one: he is entirely fictional.
Au contraire, mon ami.
Jesus is Jewish the exact same way that Luke Skywalker is a Jedi Knight, Harry Potter is a boy who lived, and Hamlet is a filled pastry.
Cheers,
b&
While quite a few stories about and ascribed to him have been proven fictional, most biblical scholars, including agnostic ones, appear to accept a ‘historical Jesus’.
Oh, boy. Here we go again.
First, in order to have any meaning, the “historical Jesus” must be defined. Who was he? How are we to distinguish him from all the other men with the same name who lived in Judea in the first century?
Second, for the claim to have any merit, there must be credible positive supportive evidence. Can you offer up even one such example?
Lacking either — and, most commonly, both — there is no more reason to think there was an historical Jesus than there was an historical Thor. Indeed, the two propositions are equally absurd.
Cheers,
b&
Then they are accepting a premise for which there is zero extant contemporary evidence in favour, and metaphorical tonnes of evidence against.
It is hardly my problem that these silently un-enumerated “most biblical scholars” are a special combination of:
* wilfully ignorant
* gullible
* liars
* mental midgets
* wishful ‘thinkers’
* with no other skills than bible-studies
* one-trick hacks
* scared shitless by the literal hierarchy
They are just plain WRONG, my friend.
Pure and simple.
There acceptance of an historical Jesus is pure academic fraud.
.. and then there’s the old joke about some monks who were discussing the very origins of the celibacy concept and finally one of them was sent down into the cellars where the very old sources for all their ages of scripture copying were being kept, to search for clues.
An hour later he returned.
Ash white and slowly shaking his head.
And he responds to his anxious brothers’ “And, and, and?”, with a sigh and says:
“It actually says ‘celebrate'”
I read that the reason for Celibacy in the Catholic priesthood was so that no one would be able to inherit anything from the priest. That way the money, and whatever was retained by the church.
I don’t doubt that the real reason for celibacy is power over the priests (as several have stated, to keep them from passing inheritance along), but I’d always thought the theological contortions (erm, reasons) were based on 1 Corinthians, chapter 7:
Rick, there were some ascetic Christians who took that approach straight away (some even castrating themselves!), but the ‘mainstream’ church (IMO, probably a later invention of the 3rd or 4th century) didn’t enforce it for clergy until much later (11-12th century).
The Orthodox churches never did enforce it, although as I understand it, an Orthodox priest cannot marry or re-marry after his ordination.
I always figured that the church wants celibate priests so that they follow orders only from the church and not from their wives. The church hates competition.
Celibacy of is also practiced among Buddhist and Hindu monks and holy men, and in some other faiths as well. Pet theory here, nothing more, is that our unconscious discomfort with intelligence in others extends to the genes of the intelligent. Literate and learned clergy might be a target for theological castration in any illiterate culture. Holy folks were needed to pass on religious wisdom, but they were otherwise a threat.
We fear and run from intelligence in others because it potentially challenges the hunches, superstitions and prejudices each of us works all our lives to build, survive and mate by and which, before the invention of written knowledge in very recent times, were essential to reproductive success.
Our literature often portrays the brilliant as deranged, murderous and too crippled to reproduce, while our fictional heroes rarely think deeply before they act. A significant proportion of American voters are ready to cast their presidential ballots for people who have a thin grasp of science. It’s often the intelligentsia who go first in absolute governments. Etc.
Again, pet theory, just throwing it out there.
In addition to preventing passing down of monies and property, I was told that an unmarried priest could give his undistracted attention to the Church and congregation. His attention would not be divided by marital issues, bills, and school activites.
As for blaming child rape on celebacy…that seems unwarranted. A peson drawn to children in that way would not suddenly be changed by being married.
I don’t think anybody’s claiming that priestly celibacy causes pedophilia. But it might provide cover for it by giving pedophiles a respectable social role other than “that creepy bachelor up the street”.
I think a strong argument could be made, though.
These priests don’t have any sanctioned outlet for their sex drives. Normal clandestine sex outlets, such as adultery and prostitution, would leave them especially vulnerable to blackmail; therefore, their only remaining choices are to truly remain celibate or to rape people they can be confident they can control. Ergo, nuns and children — which is exactly what we see.
That, and there’s the fact that the church has such a well-oiled and finely-honed mechanism in place to facilitate keeping pedophile priests near a ready supply of fresh victims and away from law enforcement tells us that it’s a practice that the Church silently endorses.
Basically, among those who’ll take any sex at all, including rape, over no sex at all, priestly celibacy coupled with Canon law pretty much guarantees pedophilia. Or, another way to look at it, is that it turns cuckolds and johns into kiddy diddlers.
Cheers,
b&
Ben, if you didn’t have sex for a decade, would that suddenly make you want to have sex with 8 year olds?
This ‘represssion = pedophilia’ argument sounds an awful lot like the fundie argument that without fear of God we would all go rape and pillage. Hint: if it’s bad logic when they use it, its equally bad when we use it.
There are plenty of cases of people who spend extended periods of time apart from their preferred sex partners who eventually take advantage to whatever they can get. Sailors “turning” gay, prison rape, and shepherds with sheep are all infamous examples spring to mind.
A man who would “get it on” with his livestock if he lived alone in the sticks would be a prime candidate for giving children some “special” tutelage after a similar period of time as a priest.
And I doubt the interval is anywhere near a decade.
Cheers,
b&
It seems to me that pondering this question (‘does celibacy cause child molestation’) some people are making too much of the sexual attraction part of the equation.
Child molesters are divided* into situational child molesters and preferential child molesters. The preferential ones are those we call pedophiles. They are specifically attracted to children. Situational child molesters are different. Their thinking is something along the lines “as it is there I can just as well use it for my sexual gratification.” (I chose the pronoun deliberately). Situational child molester is attracted to children in a way masturbating man is attracted to his hand. Their victims are selected by availability, not attraction.
* I don’t know by whom. FBI? Forensic psychologists? Google didn’t tell me
More so than, say, Protestant televangelists or gay Republican congressmen?
My unsubstantiated guess is that sex between priests and adult parishioners happens much more often than between priests and children, but we don’t hear much about it because frankly as scandals go it’s pretty small potatoes, certainly not enough to make the national news. So I’m not really buying the notion that pedophilia is the safest outlet for priests’ frustrated sexual urges.
You may be right.
But the thing that sets the Church apart from all other organizations is its long-standing (ancient?) pattern and practice of helping priests find new victims by the parish-full and of shielding priests from prosecution. They only do that that I’m aware of for priests who rape children and nuns, not for adulterous priests. I think those facts speak more to my guess than yours.
(Of course, it’s a complicated mess, and I’m sure there would be scads of examples supporting both theories; the question only makes sense in the aggregate. If there’re a few hundred priestly adulterers in the country, you might initially think you’d be vindicated. But if it turned out that there’re also a couple thousand child-raping priests (that’d be a few percent of the total), then the scales would tip.)
Cheers,
b&
In modern Roman Catholicism, the reason for celibacy, though a prerequisite for priesthood, is considered a “discipline” and not a teaching of the Church, and appears to be more symbolic and gestural.
From an extensive Wiki page on celibacy among Christian clergy:
The underlying assumption here is that carnal knowledge in any way is degrading and inferior to the innocence of virginity. Like Ben Goren said upthread we have Paul, who by some accounts was married, to thank for this warped tradition.
“… the Church’s insistence on celibacy has probably resulted in attracting a percentage of dysfunctional men who found that they couldn’t relate to women in their normal daily lives on any level. The Church gives them a niche where their discomfort with the female gender is regarded as a positive attribute. It is hardly surprising, then, that …”
Is there evidence of that? Is there even any evidence that Catholic priests are more misogynist than the average Catholic male (and not just more visible, say)? Even if they were, it wouldn’t necessarily imply that they were attracted to the church because of it. It could simply be that the church fosters misogyny, and they’re closer to the church.
The rest of the article was good, but the end seems like unfounded speculation.
Actually, Christianity grew out of the Essenes, a Jewish mystical and apocalyptic sect that, according to Josephus (c. late 1st century) was celibate. They expanded only through the conversion of new members. The Essenes themselves (or their progenitors) were around probably a couple centuries before Christianity, though their history is foggy and their actual founding date is completely unknown.
I think things are a bit more complicated than “grew out of” would imply. After all, the Dead Sea Scrolls are entirely silent on Christianity (and Jesus), so it couldn’t have been very influential within the sect.
Rather, I think it better to observe that the first century Mediterranean was a melting pot of very fluid religious development and that there was a lot of cross-fertilization going on. The Essenes were undoubtedly a significant influence on early Christianity, but Christianity itself is unmistrakably and unapologetically Hellenistic.
Then there’s the bit about the Logos that Johannine Christians imported wholesale from Philo. The very heart of Christian philosophy, and I don’t think the Essenes would have bought into it.
Cheers,
b&
Christianity came out of them, not the other way around. So it makes sense that an Essene library (only part of which has been catalogued and translated) wouldn’t have mentioned them.
However, the Scrolls do include fragments of the Book of Enoch, which (in its full surviving text) describes the holy trinity, a Jesus-like figure called the Son of Man, a war in heaven over our souls, and the apocalypse led by that Son and his followers. Surely those were more critical to Christian theology than the Logos, which is only mentioned in the last of the four Gospels.
As to the main point, I think it’s unarguable that Christianity is entirely syncretic. Which of its sources one considers the most important would reflect more on that person’s thoughts about Christianity than about the actual relevance. The pantheon and back-story from Judaism, Jesus’s biography from Greek paganism, rituals from Mithraism, Philosophy from Hellenism by way of Philo, and eschatology from millennialist Essenes as you point out — it’s a real grab bag, as mixed as it gets.
The particular point about the Scrolls, of course, is that they were written at the alleged time by the very people who would have been participants in the place it is said to have happened, and they noticed everything but Jesus and the Gospel stories.
Cheers,
b&
I’d go so far as to say that nearly all of Christianity’s theological beliefs come from the Essenes, and I determined that by reading Enoch and counting the similarities. (Christian morality and the gospel stories, however, seems to be a mixture of Greek philosophy and Greek interpretations of Jewish traditions.)
As for your point about the Scrolls failing to mention Jesus, that has more to do with the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth than the origin of Christianity. Even if the historicity is false, the religion still came from somewhere and there are a lot of very specific correlation to the Essenes and the Book of Enoch. But as I pointed out earlier, the Dead Sea Scrolls do in fact describe a figure theologically almost identical to Jesus.
A major reason the church established the policy of celibacy was that the remains of the western Roman Empire was not centrally-organized anymore. It was broken up into kingdoms and chiefdoms, and the church played the role of central authority via it’s influence on these disparate kings. The church didn’t want familial structures getting in the way of hierarchical church authority. By ensuring that clergy couldn’t own property nor pass their property or position in the church on to their offspring, it kept the pope and the central church bureaucracy in firm control over all of western Christendom. Recall that Europe’s kings after the fall of the western Roman Empire derived their power via familial and clan ties, and those ties determined the transfer of power as well. The church wanted to keep that in check.
There was no such equivalent need in the eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine), which lasted another 1000 years, as that half of the church was always under the control of the emperor. There was no Rome nor a need to keep a check on familial and clan ties in the east.
Of course when celibacy was finally enforced in the 1100s in the west, there was a huge backlash by the priests who had families. They rioted in some places. They quit the clergy in others. It was by no means popular, as the church was now forcing clergy to abandon their wives and children.
There’s a great discussion of this whole episode in Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book “Christianity: The First 3000 Years” published last year.
How to become a married catholic priest
1.Join the church of england
2.Become a rector
3.Marry
4.Rejoin the catholic church
“However he goes on to say “There will always be a place in the church for a celibate priesthood”.
But he doesn’t say why.”
Well one one level there will always be a place in society in general for people who choose to be celibate, so why not priests?
Society generally rarely gives self-identifying celibates a special place, at least, not outside of religion.
Moreover, allowing Catholic priests to marry in no way suggests that all priests would be expected to marry or start trawling OkCupid.com in their spare time.
The Bishop was directly acknowledging the Church’s beliefs that celibates are better humans than non-celibates.
Christianity developed differently in the East and in the West, so I think the confusion about celibacy in the Jewish tradition is misplaced. Eastern Orthodox priests can marry and needn’t be celibate. Official Roman Catholic doctrine is allowed to change over time, so it’s not surprising when things like this come up historically and stay.
Anyway, it’s supposed to be as much a form of asceticism as anything else, but there’s one more interesting thing — according to some church doctrine, the division of humanity into sexes was a consequence of the fall, not of creation. The story goes that when Jesus was resurrected, “he” was resurrected as a sexless human (since he would have overcome all the consequences of the fall — death, sex/gender, etc.). It’s thus up to ascetics in general — and so priests in particular — to imitate “his” sexless form.
Fine example of how even a little theologian ‘thinking’ gets one into hot water (or rather, to pure nonsense) really fast: define ‘sexless’ here!
Does that constitute any physical changes to his body as compared to its state BEFORE he was resurrected?
Did he still have a fully intact penis and what did his chromosome make-up look like?
If ‘sexless’ simply means ‘not having sex’, yeah then I’m buying it: not many people have sex in the first few days after their death. Resurrected or not.
…and if he no longer had a wang to wave, why didn’t he heal the holes in his hands? Amd wouldn’t that have made a better demonstration to Thomas than colonic cuddling?
b&
Wouldn’t it be the liver/kidneys?
You don’t (want) know how deep the thrusting was….
b&
Nice alliteration.
I wish churches could stop obsessing over sex. Or obsessing in general.
.. or would just stop.
“……celibacy focuses the priest’s energy on his work.”
I think that this explanation is, in fact, the best one. It explains the entire freakin’ culture of this delusional gang of morons.
It has freed them to concentrate on the fine art of buggering little boys, swindlin’ the flock, bird goggin’ the highest donor’s wife and daughter and, of course, the ever-so-popular art of stealin’ as much lucre as you can from the collection plate offerings just after your minions counted it all up.
~Rev. El
This is a delightfully witty thread which I would love to show to my believing, English xian friends. However, even my non-RCC English xian friends do not have the necessary ‘GSOH’ made possible by humility combined with intelligence.
I am not the least bit interested in what’s best for the bloody catholic church. I am very sorry for anyone caught in their lies and manipulations, but I do not see how anything short of complete destruction for the whole damned bureaucracy can free the world from this pernicious bullshit. I look forward to the day when the Vatican is world’s largest museum, dwarfing both the Louvre and the Hermitage in scale of opulence, and in how much better off the people are without their erstwhile inhabitants.
Amen.
While we’re at it, there’re lots of lovely churches in town that would make outstanding concert halls and theaters, and most have spaces that would be great for either schools or convention centers.
Let’s retrain the clergy as social workers, and the congregations can become the artists and teachers using the spaces. Top it all off with weekly poetry slams and sing-alongs, and we’d be golden.
Cheers,
b&
Always confused me, my great grandfather was a Catholic priest, no complaints from me.
Maple,
He may have joined the priesthood after fathering children and then becoming a widower. I have a great-aunt that became a nun after her husband died and the kids were grown.
Just a thought…
Interesting article yesterday by Susan Henking in Religion Dispatches where she interviews Judith C. Brown ~ the author of Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy [OUP, 1986] ~ the book still sells well today.
(subscribing)
It’s worth noting that the Bible expressly states that deacons, priests and bishops should not be celibate; see 1 Timothy 3 and Titus, both of which require that a candidate for any of these offices must be “the husband of one wife”, and that they must have a record of managing their own households and children well.
(Translation note: the word “presbyter” is usually translated “elder”, but is the origin of the word “priest”. “Episkopos” (bishop) means “overseer” and is sometimes translated as such.)
Don’t go confusing the poor bastards with actual facts and reality!
Next you’ll be regaling these pædophilic-priests-in-palaces with Titus 1:10-11
the real reason is that they want to be more than mariaged people in the sense that without a woman and children they are save not to have misery within mariage like sick children, handicaped or sick wife, etc. They also don’t do anything to help brothers, sisters or parents of their family. In one word they are in fact completely sellfish. But there is another reason for not be maried, becaus when you have a wife, these person has the same right to say something that she don’t like and most of the time they cut exaggeration who is most of the time a male feature, and it is that they don’t like because religion is a exaggeration by themselve.
“I’ve read that the rule was originally a reform to break wealth and power of an inherited priesthood, where both priestly property and local power passed from father to son. The lack of a legitimate heir meant that the church hierarchy kept and controlled both in the long term.
I don’t how much evidence backs this up, though.”
Right, as many others here have pointed out. How can someone write an article on the topic and miss what is standard knowledge?
Note that “nepotism” literally refers to “nephews” and arose in the context of “nephews” (euphemism for bastard children) of Popes inheriting the Papacy.
Apart from the historical reason, one can also note that sex and religion in general don’t mix. As pointed out above, other religions have celibacy as well. In Christianity, Adam and Eve fucking in the Garden of Eden is the root of all evil. Christianity’s own existence is based on a dislike of sex. Note that the forbidden fruit (never explicitly named in the Bible) is believed to be the banana in Mexico.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.