page_title: Celibacy
section_title: Catholic Church
hierarchical_section_title: Celibacy / Christianity / Catholic Church
caption_attribution_description: Português: Congresso Clariano (Canindé (Brasil), 9 a 11 ago. 2012)
context_page_description: Celibacy is the state of voluntarily being unmarried, sexually abstinent, or both, usually for religious reasons. It is often in association with the role of a religious official or devotee. In its narrow sense, the term celibacy is applied only to those for whom the unmarried state is the result of a sacred vow, act of renunciation, or religious conviction. In a wider sense, it is commonly understood to only mean abstinence from sexual activity.
  Celibacy has existed in one form or another throughout history, in virtually all the major religions of the world, and views on it have varied. Judaism strongly opposes celibacy. However, the priests of the Essenes, a Jewish sect during the Second Temple period, practised celibacy. The Romans viewed celibacy as an aberration and legislated fiscal penalties against it, with the sole exception granted to the Vestal Virgins. The Islamic attitudes toward celibacy have been complex as well. Several Hadiths indicate that Prophet Muhammad denounced celibacy, but some Sufi orders embrace it.
  Classical Hindu culture encouraged asceticism and celibacy in the later stages of life, after one has met one's societal obligations.
context_section_description: During the first three or four centuries, no law was promulgated prohibiting clerical marriage. Celibacy was a matter of choice for bishops, priests, and deacons.
  Statutes forbidding clergy from having wives were written beginning with the Council of Elvira (306) but these early statutes were not universal and were often defied by clerics and then retracted by hierarchy. The Synod of Gangra (345) condemned a false asceticism whereby worshipers boycotted celebrations presided over by married clergy." The Apostolic Constitutions (c. 400) excommunicated a priest or bishop who left his wife 'under the pretense of piety"’ (Mansi, 1:51).
  "A famous letter of Synesius of Cyrene (c. 414) is evidence both for the respecting of personal decision in the matter and for contemporary appreciation of celibacy. For priests and deacons clerical marriage continued to be in vogue".
  "The Second Lateran Council (1139) seems to have enacted the first written law making sacred orders a diriment impediment to marriage for the universal Church." Celibacy was first required of some clerics in 1123 at the First Lateran Council. Because clerics resisted it, the celibacy mandate was restated at the Second Lateran Council (1139) and the Council of Trent (1545–64). In places, coercion and enslavement of clerical wives and children was apparently involved in the enforcement of the law. "The earliest decree in which the children [of clerics] were declared to be slaves and never to be enfranchised [freed] seems to have been a canon of the Synod of Pavia in 1018. Similar penalties were promulgated against wives and concubines (see the Synod of Melfi, 1189 can. Xii), who by the very fact of their unlawful connexion with a subdeacon or clerk of higher rank became liable to be seized by the over-lord". Celibacy for priests continues to be a contested issue even today.
  In the Roman Catholic Church, the Twelve Apostles are considered to have been the first priests and bishops of the Church. Some say the call to be eunuchs for the sake of Heaven in Matthew 19 was a call to be sexually continent and that this developed into celibacy for priests as the successors of the apostles. Others see the call to be sexually continent in Matthew 19 to be a caution for men who were too readily divorcing and remarrying.
  The view of the Church is that celibacy is a reflection of life in Heaven, a source of detachment from the material world which aids in one's relationship with God. Celibacy is designed to "consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to "the affairs of the Lord, they give themselves entirely to God and to men. It is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church's minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God." In contrast, Saint Peter, whom the Church considers its first Pope, was married given that he had a mother-in-law whom Christ healed (Matthew 8).
  Usually, only celibate men are ordained as priests in the Latin Rite. Married clergy who have converted from other Christian denominations can be ordained Roman Catholic priests without becoming celibate. Priestly celibacy is not doctrine of the Church (such as the belief in the Assumption of Mary) but a matter of discipline, like the use of the vernacular (local) language in Mass or Lenten fasting and abstinence. As such, it can theoretically change at any time though it still must be obeyed by Catholics until the change were to take place. The Eastern Catholic Churches ordain both celibate and married men. However, in both the East and the West, bishops are chosen from among those who are celibate. In Ireland, several priests have fathered children, the two most prominent being Bishop Eamonn Casey and Father Michael Cleary.
  The classical heritage flourished throughout the Middle Ages in both the Byzantine Greek East and the Latin West. Will Durant has made a case that certain prominent features of Plato's ideal community were discernible in the organization, dogma and effectiveness of "the" Medieval Church in Europe:
  "The clergy,
caption: Conventual Franciscan friar, 2012
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