Francis Is Telling The Truth on Today's Marriages

Aidan’s mother is Presbyterian but has consistently attended Saturday evening Mass with her husband, Pat, in the thirty-two years of their marriage.  In fact she directed the children’s choir in their parish while Aidan and his sister, Aile were in their middle-and high-school years.  Aidan and Aile each were altar servers in their seventh and eighth grade years and graduated, after Confirmation, into being lectors.  Aidan went to the local Jesuit prep-school; Aile to the “Madames” of the Sacred Heart Day School.  During his college years at the University of Delaware, however, Aidan drifted away from regular Mass attendance.  He also met Katie, like him from the D.C. suburbs, and they began dating.

Katie was also from a devout Catholic home.  She is an only child.  Her parents belong to the Cathedral parish of Saint Matthew in Washington where her mother is an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist.  Katie graduated from Georgetown Visitation before going to the University of Delaware.  When she began dating Aidan she got him back to Sunday Mass.  They dated in Sophomore and Junior year, but Aidan broke it off over the summer between Junior and Senior year.  He was concerned that Katie was overly dependent on her mother, Frances.  Frances would drive two hours every Tuesday to have lunch with Katie at the University and insisted that Katie come home every weekend. 

During their senior year Aidan and Katie slowly rebuilt their relationship and when Aidan decided to go to Law School in Boston, Katie followed to do her Masters in Math at Boston College.  Katie became very involved at the Paulist Center in Boston where she and Aidan regularly attended Mass every Sunday.  Katie was also on the RCIA team and Aidan became involved in fundraising for the center.  In Aidan’s final year of Law School they became engaged to be married.  They moved in together after they were engaged.  Frances flew up to Boston every-other-weekend.   Pat and Joan (Aidan’s mother) were concerned about Frances’ “apron-strings” but Aidan assured them that he could handle it.   They were also concerned that Aidan seemed unable to make up his own mind with determination and worried that the reconciliation between them in their senior year was little more than Aidan’s tendency to “be a nice guy.”  But in the end they felt they had to respect Aidan’s choices. 

Aidan graduated and passed the Bar for Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia.  Pat and Joan hoped “the kids” would move back to Fairfax but Katie had found a job teaching Math and Physics in a Boston High School and didn’t want to move back.  Aidan, on the other hand, was having trouble finding a position with a Law Firm in Boston though through family connections there were a number of positions available in the D.C. area.

They were married that July after graduation in the Cathedral of Saint Matthew in Washington.  Aidan’s uncle, a religious order priest teaching at Catholic U, said the Mass and presided over the marriage.  A reception for 150 followed at the Washington Country Club.  The two families split the cost of the reception based on the proportion of guests each had invited.  By September Aidan and Katie were back in Boston with Katie teaching and Aidan continuing to do interviews for a position in a law firm.  Meanwhile, Aidan took a position in a foreign currency exchange upstart company.  All seemed to be well though when they came back to the DC area at Christmas Aidan spent most nights at his parents in Fairfax, Katie with her family in Chevy-Chase.  They both spent Christmas Eve with Katie’s family and Christmas Day with Aidan’s. 

It was only in April that Aidan told his parents that Katie had left him in January and moved in with Maggie, the girls’ gym teacher in her Boston High School.   Maggie is gay and the exact nature of her relationship with Katie was never clearly defined.  Aidan felt, however, that Maggie had undermined their marriage from when she and Katie had first met and had told Katie that she (Katie) could move in with her if she ever left Aidan.   Katie stayed with Maggie for six months before moving out and getting an apartment of her own.  She told Aidan she wanted a divorce.

Aidan had been seeing a counselor since the breakup and he repeatedly asked Katie to see a marriage counselor with him but she refused.  He went to Katie’s parents to enlist their help—they too told their daughter to get counseling, but Katie refused.  The marriage was over and there was no room, according to Katie, to negotiate.  Pat and Joan were concerned that Aidan may have done something wrong.  Was their any violence?  Was he dealing with any issues?  Substance abuse?  Pornography addiction?  Aile put out what feelers she could among various friends and acquaintances she shared with Katie but could find no reason for Katie leaving Aidan other than “he wasn’t on the career track that would take them where she thought they should go.”  Aidan’s friends all assured his family that he never was abusive in any way and Katie has never alleged that he was.    

Pat and Joan told Aidan that since the marriage had lasted such a short time, wedding gifts should be returned and this led to an interesting revelation.  Aidan agreed; Katie refused.  But it turned out that Aidan had kept the gifts from his family and friends and Katie had kept hers.  They never established joint finances but each had their own bank accounts.  It turned out that Katie’s parents always had separate finances as well and Katie had refused the idea of joint accounts.  The divorce became final eighteen months after the breakup.

This is a true story.  Some particulars—names and places—have been changed but it is a story from within my own family.  I tell it because I believe Pope Francis is dead on when he says that the idea of permanent commitment escapes the understanding of many—if not most—people today.  Key to this is that I have not exaggerated the Catholicity of either family or the Catholic backgrounds of Katie and Aidan or Katie’s commitment to the Church through her College and Boston years, but note that it was Aidan who fought to keep the marriage.   If these happen when the wood is green, what will happen to the dry? 

Pope Francis’ comments on the instability of modern marriage—and its impact on the validity of the sacrament—stirred up a hornet’s nest among the krazies on the blogosphere, but it is totally consistent with what most of my priest-friends have been saying for years.  Some priests in my acquaintance even say that the Church “should get out of the marrying business.”  I think that would be a sad mistake but there is no doubt that we have a culture problem that is probably beyond the Church’s ability to fix.  I am not sure what the answer is but denial is not part of the solution.  Perhaps the Pope needs to speak out in more detail on this issue so that it is not as easy to retreat into denial.  It certainly explains why he is trying to chart a different course for the pastoral care of the divorced and remarried as the implicit nullity of so many contemporary marriages severely complicates the issue.  

Happy Fourth of July: Religious Freedom and Same-Sex Marriage

A priest friend of mine sent this letter to me and others who are interested in the question of Same Sex Marriage and the Catholic Church. 

This afternoon a couple came to the rectory and asked about getting married.  I turned them down.  It would have been a violation of my conscience to marry them.    No they weren’t a same sex couple—it was a man and a woman.  No, neither of them had been married before and divorced.  Yes, both of them were free to marry.  Yes both of them are baptized Catholics and, I fact, the man is a lector at Sunday Mass and the woman is at Mass more Sundays than not.  But I told them I could not marry them. 

We talked first, of course.  They are lovely people.  I invited them in to the rectory dining room and we had coffee and cookies—I always offer some refreshments to visitors when they come to the rectory; my mother taught me it is rude to have some one in your home and not offer them something to eat and something to drink.   And our housekeeper makes wonderful little petit-fours.  We talked about why they want to marry, how they met, their family backgrounds.  But in the course of the conversation they mentioned that they were not going to have children.  No, there is no problem conceiving.  No, there is no issue of hereditary diseases or congenital birth defects.  No, there are no health problems that either of them is facing.  It is simply a matter of careers.  Janet is a physician—a surgeon actually—and has a very successful practice.  She does not want to alter her career path to be a mother.  Robert is a tenured professor and can’t see himself being a stay-at-home dad.  In what vacation time they have, they are used to travelling.  They both like Opera and usually take a week in Milan for the La Scala season.  They ski Aspen in the winter.  They have some river cruises in Europe they would like to do.  They said that they have nieces and nephews to take to Disney World and to bring to the circus and even to pay their way through college.  They don’t want kids of their own. 

I am not going to say that they are selfish—they really don’t seem to be—but they are self-centered.  They have a vision for marriage but it is not the Church’s vision for marriage.  And so I won’t marry them.

And guess what.  No one is going to make me marry them.  No one is saying that I don’t have the freedom, as a priest, to decide which marriages I will celebrate and which ones I won’t.  It is not a matter of “discrimination.”  No one is to say that I am anti-DINK (Double Income No Kids).  Yes, they will get married.  I am sure some judge somewhere will do the honors.  Or maybe my friend, Celia, the local Methodist pastor across the road. I wish them luck.   I really don’t care if Janet rents the local K of C hall for her bridal shower.  I don’t see that as betraying the Church.  I will not be upset if Bill Rogers—the guy who runs the bakery in town—does the wedding cake.  I will still give Bill communion if he bakes the cake.  And I will still hire Mike—our parish web-designer—if he does the photography for their wedding.  In fact, I hope Janet and Robert keep coming to Mass.  I won’t stop them from coming to communion.  I hope Robert returns to his lectoring at Mass once the fuss is over and people get used to it. I won’t go to the wedding, of course, but if their parents have any qualms about it I will assure them that they should go.

What I am saying here is that I don’t get the religious freedom tocsin that some people are sounding.  Civil Marriage and Christian Matrimony are two separate things—though they often coincide.  I am not interested in Civil Marriage.  When Gladys and Dan came last year and asked if I would celebrate their Marriage without them having to have civil recognition of their marriage (it was an estate issue that would have seriously hurt them financially), I agreed without hesitation.  My job is to witness Christian matrimony.  If the State of Virginia wants to recognize that marriage it is fine with me, but I really don’t give a rat’s behind. On the other hand, let the State of Virginia recognize which marriages it chooses; I only bless those that are in line with the Catholic Church.  And you know, nobody is giving me any grief about that.  My religious freedom isn’t being threatened one iota. 

I certainly think we need to be vigilant about our liberties—all our liberties—as well as about the common good in our society.  But I also think that the screaming about Religious Freedom is simply a mask for the most gross and unacceptable bigotry.  There was a day when in Virginia—and many other “southern” States, a clergyman had to post a bond (usually about 500.00 in 1960 money—or about 2500.00 in today’s money) in order to be licensed to perform marriages.  Why?  He would lose the bond if he performed a marriage in Commonwealth of Virginia between a “person of the white race” and a “person of color.”  Where were the Catholic voices then when the Civil Law contradicted the teaching of the Church?   We need to be mighty careful not to be on the wrong side of history—by which I mean the wrong side of what is right and just—on the issues of who should be able and who should not be able to contract a civil marriage.  

Some Historical Reflections on Marriage, Divorce, Eucharist in the Catholic Tradition

The Catholic approach to marriage and the termination of marriages is a bit more complex than those who say that the 2000 year tradition of the Catholic Church has had a consistent theology of marriage and has never allowed for divorce.  Theologians often make this mistake because they look at the theological tracts which set an ideal but overlook the civil law tracts and the secular literature which portray a reality that only too often is different from that ideal.  John Boswell, the late Yale historian who wrote about same-sex marriage in the Middle Ages (and offers a strong but not convincing argument that such unions were blessed by the Church) somewhat cynically points out that in the ancient and medieval worlds marriages were arranged because of property, in the middle were about having children and ended up being about love and contrasts this with the modern experience where marriages are arranged because of love, in the middle are about having children and end up being about property.  Cynical, but far too often, true.  Divorce is a fact in modern life and we as Church are going to have to deal with it.  Much like the phenomenon of same-sex attraction, another feature of modern life with which many are too uncomfortable to acknowledge, marital breakup has always been a part of society and while often swept under polite society’s rug, cannot be denied and must no longer be ignored. 
Let’s begin with the obvious.  There is a clear and absolute prohibition of divorce in the New Testament.  Mark (10:2-12), the oldest gospel and presumably the most accurate in its relaying the original words of Jesus, declares without qualification that any man or woman who divorces and then marries another, commits adultery.   Luke (16:18) repeats this absolute and unqualified prohibition.  Matthew, (5:31-32; 19:3-12) repeats it but with a qualification that permits a man to divorce his wife for reasons of (presumably her) unchastity but warns that whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.  Matthew also states that a man who divorces his wife for reasons other than unchastity forces her to commit adultery since the woman in that society would be all but required to seek a new marriage for economic and sociological reasons.  There was simply no place in Near Eastern society of the time for an unmarried woman other than a widow whose sons were obligated to shelter and protect her.  A woman whose husband had divorced her was legally a non-person and had no means of support except remarriage, concubinage, or prostitution. 
In addition to the gospels, Paul in 1 Corinthians (7:12-15) makes it clear that when the marriage of two Christians fail, they must either remain single or be reconciled.  If, on the other hand, one partner or the other is not a Christian and leaves the Christian partner, then the marriage is dissolved leaving the Christian free to marry.  The Christian partner, however, must not be the one to leave the marriage.  Paul makes it clear that this is not divine law—indeed his is not an exception consistent with what Jesus said—but his judgment, and it is the foundation for the so-called Pauline Privilege or Privilege of the Faith that even today permits a non-sacramental marriage to be dissolved.   This linking of indissolubility to sacramental marriages (marriages between two Christians) rather than to marriage itself is a significant shift away from the Gospel Teaching found in Mark and Luke.   
The teaching of the New Testament is pretty clear and, except for Matthew’s fudging it in his gospel, pretty consistent.  Marriage, or at least the marriage of two Christians, is indissoluble.  But that does not mean there was a clear theology of marriage from the first days of the Church.  Most Catholics are surprised to learn that the Church did not require a Church ceremony or the blessing of a priest for sacramental validity until as late as 1917.  Marriage was officially enumerated among the Sacraments only at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215—though that does not mean that various theologians had not spoken of it as a sacrament or that marriages before 1215 were not sacramental.  It was only in the 1215 Council that the Church definitively listed which rites were sacraments.  But the history of Councils and papal decrees is much more complex than one would think from reading the Christian scriptures. Divorce and remarriage were common in the Graeco-Roman world in which ancient Christianity found itself transplanted from Judaism.  Divorce, for that matter, was not difficult in the Judaism of Jesus’ day which is what triggered Jesus insisting that the separation of spouses was not part of God’s original plan but a concession made by Moses because “of the hardness of your hearts.”  Christians in the pagan societies that comprised the Roman Empire strived to live by different moral standards than those set by the culture and marital fidelity was among the chief values they set for themselves.  Indeed adultery was one of only three sins that were judged sufficiently grave to require absolution before the sinner was reconciled to the community and could again partake of the Eucharist. Compared to their writing on Baptism and Eucharist, or even martyrdom for that matter, the Fathers wrote comparatively little on marriage.  Athenagoras of Athens (c.190) and Clement of Alexandria (c 215) give witness to the common belief of their time that not only was marriage indissoluble in this life, but also in eternity and thus second marriages—even for those who were widowed—were at the least to be discouraged if not outright banned.
Clement actually gives us a rare positive view of marriage where he sees the family as the domestic church, the two or three (husband, wife, child) gathered in Christ’s Name where Christ is present in their midst. Most of what one finds in the Fathers about marriage is negative.  It is certainly not as pleasing to God as is virginity and married life is filled with troubles that distract us from God and the work he has set before us.  Paul’s magnificent insight of the relationship of the husband and wife being a visible sign of the relationship of Christ and the Church is overlooked.  Probably because there was no liturgical rite associated with marriage in these early centuries—wedding customs more or less followed the cultural patterns of the times—most Christians lacked a consciousness of its sacramental nature. That is not to say that they did not value it or did not live it well, but they most likely were not as conscious of its sanctity in the same way we are today.  At its best it probably seemed to be a concession to the weakness of human nature—and that is certainly the way that much of the patristic literature portrayed it.  That did not mean, of course, that divorce and remarriage were sanctioned. 
One important voice, however, that does record some openness to the issue of divorce was Tertullian.  Writing against Marcion sometime around the year 200, Tertullian declared that since Jesus himself (in the Gospel of Matthew) had given the exception of unchastity as an allowable reason for divorce, that there was no absolute prohibition of divorce; and implies that since the prohibition is not absolute there might be other reasons as well.  I think we need to be careful with his argument, however, for several reasons.  First, of course, is that his argument ignores Mark and Luke where the prohibition is absolute.  Secondly Tertullian was not writing about divorce but about Marriage, which Marcion and his disciples condemned as a corruption of our human nature.  (No wonder that the sect died out.) Since Tertullian was opposed to second marriages for those who were widowed, one cannot extrapolate from his support for divorce that he argued to permit remarriage for the divorced.  
The mass influx of converts that resulted from the Barbarian invasions of the fourth through the tenth centuries brought the Western Church face to face with a variety of cultures that all but swamped the barque of Peter on a number of levels, not least of which were marriage and family customs.  The Germanic tribes represented by the Franks, the Goths, the Visigoths, the Lombards and others had their traditional marriage laws and customs and were slow to give them up.  Most disturbing was the ease in which their magnates set aside one wife in favor of another whose family connections were politically more advantageous.  This led to a period in the early Middle Ages (the 4^th- 8^th centuries) in which divorce and second, third, fourth and fifth marriages was just a factor of political life despite the Church’s efforts to introduce its moral code.  It would also lead in the central Middle Ages  (the 9-11^th centuries) to the development of annulment processes which were more often a matter of politics than of remedying canonical irregularities. 

Pope Gregory II declared in 726:

You have asked what is a husband to do if his wife, having been afflicted with an infirmity, is unable to have sexual intercourse with her husband. It would be good if he could remain as he is and practice abstinence.  But since this requires great virtue, if he cannot live chastely, it is better if he marry.  Let him, however, not stop supporting her, since she is kept from married life by her infirmity and not by some detestable fault. 

This is a pretty dramatic departure from the New Testament standards for marriage and, to be fair, while it is a comparatively early statement, it is quite exceptional in the long list of papal decrees regarding marriage.  Certainly by the canon law reforms of the 12^th century there was a consistent teaching on the indissolubility of marriage and there are any number of cases of matrimonial ruptures being referred to the Holy See for annulment.  The ill-fated marriage of Lothair II and Teutberga caused an annulment dispute from 857 until Lothair’s death in 869.  The fifteen-year marriage of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine was annulled (on pretty shaky grounds) by the Archbishops of Sens, Rouen, Bordeaux, and Reims with the blessing of Pope Eugenius III in 1152.  Annulments were the Catholic way around the prohibition of divorce and were the things of royalty and the upper nobility where marriage and politics were linked; common folk could not get annulments and did not seek them but simply changed beds. 
Before we continue on, we should also look at the medieval Irish Church.  Despite the beloved mythology, Saint Patrick did not bring Christianity to Ireland.  By the time Patrick arrived in Ireland in the mid-fifth century the nation was already well on the way to being Christianized.  Current thinking places the introduction of Christianity to Ireland in the fourth century with monks from Egypt seeking solitude and refuge at what was then the edge of the known world. Patrick, and his predecessor, Palladius, were sent a generation later by Popes anxious to snap the Egyptian connection and bring the Irish Christians into the mainstream of the western Church.  It was a highly unsuccessful effort.  Until the 12^th century and the work of Saint Laurence O’Toole as Archbishop of Dublin, the Irish Church was all but independent of Rome and highly idiosyncratic in its practices.  It would take several postings to give an idea of just how much the Irish Church differed from the rest of Western Christendom but in regards to marriage suffice it to say that Brehon Law recognized ten different types of marriage between a man and a woman.  Moreover, polygamy was common and polyandry was not unknown. Divorce was acceptable by mutual consent and was not infrequent.  The Irish Church was not organized by dioceses but by the ancient clan system and authority was not exercised by bishops but by the familial abbot—or sometimes abbess—and thus it was not always easy for the Church to super-impose its ideals over the ancient clan traditions. Indeed, the social deviances of early and central medieval Ireland led to the Bull, Laudabiliter, the papal blessing for the English to come over and straighten things out in Ireland in 1171. 
As to what was happening in England and on the European continent during the early and central Middle Ages (c.350-1100), remember that the vast majority of people—98% of the population—were peasants who worked the land.  Their lives were simple and their education was nil.  Their priests were most often simply peasants themselves who had learned a little bit of Latin and who farmed their lands from Monday through Saturday in an effort to feed their own families. They had not gone to seminary.  They knew nothing of canon law.  Much of the time they did not even understand much of the Latin they read at the altar.  Marriage in this world was informal at best.  Church ceremonies were for the nobles.  In some cases, a blessing may have been given at the Church door upon a newly married couple, but formalities were, by and large, few.  We really don’t know what the success rate of marriages was for the working classes and no one bothered to keep records.  There does seem to have been considerable stability in the families but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a turnover in who was sleeping next to whom at night. Life-expectancy was low and women in particular often died very young, leaving their husbands to find a second or even a third wife.  In such cases where a man is noted as having a second or third wife we should not necessarily presume that he was widowed.  Where marriage was less than formal it is not unreasonable to think that partners at times simply up and left—or were thrown out for various reasons from adultery to infertility. 
Strange as it may seem to us, the question of admitting those in irregular unions to communion is an entirely separate question from divorce.  Most people, whether in sound marriages or second unions, did not go to communion.  Ever. Reception of Holy Communion by the laity, especially the peasantry, had all but died out between the seventh and the tenth centuries due to the rigorous fasts required, the profound sense of personal sinfulness that was inculcated in the faithful, and an extraordinarily “High Christology” that encouraged a superstitious fear of Christ in his Eucharistic Presence.  In 1215 the Church had to require that the faithful receive Holy Communion annually. The fact that you need a law to make that happen means that it is not happening and that is why you make the law.  So while divorce (at least informal divorce) and remarriage (at least informal remarriage) was probably not rare it did not impact the communion question, at least until the time for the person in an irregular union to summon the priest for viaticum.  The exclusion of people from Holy Communion was not an issue in the Medieval period.  It was not rare for Pope or Bishops to place entire cities under interdict and the complaint was not that the living could not receive Holy Communion but that the dead could not be buried and Masses could not be offered to free them from purgatory.  Nowadays things are very different, of course.  The regular and frequent communions desired by Pope Saint Pius X have radically changed our Catholic culture.  We cannot conceive of going to Mass and not receiving Holy Communion.  There are some in the Church today who think that frequent communion has lessened our appreciation for the Sacrament.  But the 20^th and 21^st centuries have seen the greatest number of Catholics receiving the Eucharist since the sixth century and the collapse of the ancient Christian world.  The problem with frequent communion, however, is that those who are not free to receive the Sacrament—whether for the need of absolution or because they are not in full Communion with the Catholic Church—experience themselves as excluded and even shunned. None of this provides an answer to the questions facing the upcoming Synod on the possibility of admitting those in non-canonical marriages to Holy Communion.  The Church has lived with divorce and remarriage before, but not had the face the challenge, at least on a general scale, of admitting the remarried to Holy Communion.  This much we can do, however, and in fact must do.  We need to stop pretending that the challenge of integrating the divorced and remarried into the life of the Church does not exist.  It has existed in the past.  In the recent past, at least, we have not done well with it, and we must design a future for the Church that permits all people to find a place in the family of God without judgment or condemnation by the clergy or by their peers. I think it also means that we need to be far more proactive in supporting programs that help Catholics develop and live sound familial lives.  Marriage Encounter has been one wonderful way of “forming” couples and families in the vocation of Christian Marriage. We need to give Marriage Encounter, Teams of Our Lady, and other couple-based programs strong encouragement in our parishes.  But we also need to do far more. And the problem is not limited to married couples.  We presume that once baptized as an infant and catechized for First Communion, a Christian has all the tools he or she needs to live a life of discipleship when in fact there is a need to bring the principle of a life-long ongoing formation in Christian living into the lives of all those who sit in the pews Sunday after Sunday and then go about their lives through the week trying—or maybe not trying—to be Disciples.  I wish I could say that the clergy need to take this task as their own but my experience is that they are most in need of being called to discipleship.  It isn’t enough to read one’s Office and say one’s Mass—the fire needs to be rekindled from top to bottom in the Church today.  

Celibacy 2: Keeping Father from Being Dad

Pope Saint Gregory I
great-great grandson of Pope Felix III

Curiously enough, in the early centuries of the Church we have a number of instances where popes are the descendents of previous popes—all because even popes were—or had been—married.   As the Middle Ages dawned, however, it seems that few or no popes were married at the time of their papal ministry.   Felix III (pope from 483-492 ) was great-great grandfather of Pope St Gregory I; however we know that Felix was a widower when he became Pope.  Pope Saint Hormisdas (514-523) was the father of Pope Saint Silverius (pope from 536-537).  Silveius was born before Hormisdas received priestly ordination . Pope Damasus (366-384) was the son of a bishop; it is unclear whether or not his father had been in Orders at the time he was born.    
      Frankly, neither the legislation nor the actual practice regarding celibacy was standardized during the transitional period from late antiquity (4^th century) through the early Middle Ages (7^th century).  As we saw yesterday any number of regional synods had mandated celibacy for bishops and priests and sometimes for deacons, but the authority of these councils was limited and it seems that even where this authority held, the canons were not always enforced.  Certainly in this transitional period celibacy becomes the normal—but not universal—practice for bishops.  John Chrysostom was judge for the trial of one bishop, Antoninus of Ephesus, who was accused of having first separated from his wife but who, after being consecrated bishop, returned to cohabit with her.  The “Council in Trullo” (recognized in the East as an Ecumenical Council, but not in the West) legislated that the wife of man made a bishop should be veiled as a nun and sent to a convent.  That same Council, however, not only permitted priests, deacons and subdeacons to keep their wives but to maintain conjugal relations with them.  This pretty much became and remained the ecclesiastical discipline of the Eastern Churches. 
       The Western Church, on the other hand, continued to move towards mandatory celibacy for bishops, priests, and deacons.  In the ninth century various German synods mandated not only that priests had to abstain from conjugal relations with their wives, but they could  no longer cohabit. 
       As if the restriction on sexual relations with their wives did not impose sufficient burden on clergy, the restriction on cohabitation made life even more difficult for priests, especially in rural areas.  Wives had far more practical roles than sex partners.  Wives ran the household, prepared the meals, made the clothes, kept the fowl and animals that provided milk, eggs, and food.  (Even in town, people kept animals.)  Wives made the cheese, the beer, and the bread.  They smoked the meats and fish.  It was difficult for a man, even a priest, to live without a wife, so many of them did not.  The law was often ignored not for reasons of human concupiscence but for domestic economy.     
       Marriage in the early and central Middle Ages was often a somewhat informal arrangement.   While some, particularly the nobility, might have a marriage “blessed” with a religious ceremony, marriage was most usually celebrated according to varying local customs.  The husband might call on his intended at the home where she lived with her parents, present her with certain gifts, and then lead her back to his house.  Or the father of the woman might bring his daughter, veiled and dressed in her finest, to the house of her husband-to-be and place her hand in his.  A dinner following or a breakfast the next morning for family and friends would be more common a celebration than a ceremony in church.  Sometimes, often, people just began to cohabit with the understanding that they were husband and wife.  With these less than formal arrangements, no one much noticed should a clergyman take a wife.  
         There is a widely accepted view that in the Middle Ages priests were, if not highly promiscuous, then given to concubinage.  This is understandable given the references in the canons to clergy keeping concubines.  But I think it is a misperception.  What the canons call concubines we should probably think of as wives.  Yes, the clergy were not permitted to be married.  This meant both that a priest could not marry nor could a married man be ordained and continue to live conjugally with his wife.  That was the law.  But we should see that the majority of priests in the early and central Middle Ages (and later) were in fact married despite the laws.  The Church referred to their wives as “concubines” and to the marriages as “concubinage,” but they and the society in which they lived—the people around them, their parishioners and fellow priests if not their bishops—understood the relationship to be marriage.  We are not speaking, for the most part, of men who are serial monogamists, moving from one “mistress” to another, much less of men who are adulterers or otherwise promiscuous.  There were some who were adulterers or who were sexually active with a variety of partners, of course, but the majority seem to have been in stable relationships in which they begot and raised children as good and loving parents.  The lack of a formal Church Service to inaugurate the relationship would not have troubled people as most marriages in this period lacked formal liturgical blessing. What was needed for marriage in this period was mutual consent and offspring and that requirement was met.  What will be crucial is to see why the Church refused to recognize these marriages and the legitimacy of the offspring.  It won’t be about sexual purity; it will be about property.