A Follow Up With Some Thoughts On Mandatory Celibacy

Rereading my last post several hours after it went up I came across a statement that unfortunately is very unnuanced and which I want to correct.  I had mentioned that Archbishop Laud, like many churchmen before and since “could make celibacy look like an option for holiness rather than a cover for psychological struggles.”  This sounds as if I do not think there is a positive value for clerical celibacy or that celibacy is indicative of a psychological disorder when in fact I believe that in a mature, or maturing, individual celibacy can indeed be “an option for holiness” and is totally compatible with a healthy psyche.  I do not believe, however, that celibacy, especially when it is not a choice one can freely make and still follow one’s vocational pursuit, is automatically healthy much less holy.  I know many priests and religious who are profoundly holy and mentally healthy; I also know many whose psychosexual development is severely arrested to the detriment of their own spiritual welfare and of the welfare and even safety of those with and to whom they minister. 

The celibacy of the clergy is part of a very ancient tradition.  While celibacy as a canonical requirement for ordination can be traced in the western Church back to the Councils of Elvira (306) and of Orange (441), it would be centuries before it became universal law in the Western Church.  There are a number of factors that contributed to it.  First there developed a very negative attitude towards human sexuality and there were various decrees insisting that priests abstain from sexual intimacy with their wives for a set period (usually 1-3 days) before celebrating the Eucharist.  It was, thus, a purity requirement.  Secondly, with the rise of monasticism in the fourth and fifth centuries, it became more and more common to choose bishops from among the monks—who were celibate—and not infrequently these monastic bishops did not have a positive appreciation of marriage or marital sexuality.  That may explain, to a certain degree, the decision at the aforesaid Councils.   Through the early Middle Ages celibacy became more and more expected of the clergy and the problem of hereditary churches—churches and church property passing from priest-father to priest-son to priest-grandson—would lead to proscription’s against clerical marriage.  This problem was limited more or less to the Western Church.  In the Eastern Churches after the fifth century bishops were invariably monastics and ecclesial preferment was limited to celibates, but the pastoral care, especially in rural churches, was entrusted to married priests and deacons.  In fact, most priests in rural parishes of the west were married as well, it was just that the Church did not recognize their marriages nor the legitimacy of their children which barred the children from themselves being ordained or inheriting property—thus solving the inherited church problem.  It was not uncommon for the secular clergy even in the large cities, and even for bishops and archbishops, to be in what today we would call a common law marriage.  While the Reform Canons of the 11^th century “Gregorian Reform” outlawed clerical marriage—and declared all such marriages to be invalid—it was only in the 16^th century reforms of the Council of Trent that there was any significant enforcement of clerical celibacy.  And even then—and now—it is not entirely successful as there are priests and even bishops who are for all practical purposes in a somewhat less than formal marriage.  Only recently I came across the story of a priest who has just retired from active duty as an Army Chaplain who has been civilly married at least twice with the knowledge of both his military and ecclesiastical superiors.  Some years back during a trip to Africa I was invited to lunch with a Bishop with whom I am acquainted.  His wife and three teenage children were all at the table.  Their presence was not explained to me in anyway but the priest-friend who accompanied me that day confirmed my surmises.  Both these men are highly effective ministers and neither is particularly “liberal” in their theological views. Those who do not know their particular stories would undoubtedly consider them both to be “good priests.”  While I must admit that I have found the chaplain to be a man for whom I personally do not have respect, it is not because of his marriages per se but rather what I perceive to be a general lack of integrity; I can’t but stand in awe of the Bishop whose selfless work in building a strong Church under the most challenging of conditions, I have seen over many years.  More to the point of this posting, whatever the irregularity of life of either of these two men, my dealings with them have shown them to be psychologically mature and well-integrated men. 

On the other hand, I have seen some of the grossest psychological and spiritual immaturity on the part of some priests who conform to celibacy.  I remember an American priest I knew in my Rome days—he was a confessor at Saint Peter’s where he was known for his rigid penances and the somewhat prurient questions with which he would interrogate penitents, going far beyond not only what is required but what is allowed a priest to ask a penitent.  Younger members of his Religious community learned to give him great distance as he had a tendency to “violate boundaries” in his relationships with them.  He was considered a saint by those outside his community but those who lived with him found him controlling, sly, untruthful, and manipulative. 

The fuss that some priest have created in refusing communion to those whom they suspect—even with good reason—of not conforming to Church teaching regarding human sexuality: abortion, masturbation, same-sex relationships, etc., and even more their self-righteousness in defending their position when summoned by their bishops or criticized by their parishioners, indicates a probable lack of psychosexual integration. Indeed, the choice of judgment over compassion might well be an indication of an arrested spiritual—and probably psychological—development.       

Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s I have vivid memories of how much many of the clergy drank and how common alcoholism was among priests.  In retrospect I wonder how much of this was triggered not simply by the loneliness of celibacy for those not called to it, but by the lack of psycho-sexual maturity that mandatory celibacy fosters.

At the same time I write this, I think back on my school days and a Jesuit who taught me junior religion and senior Latin.  He was a man of exceptional kindness and compassion, a man who could look into a person’s soul and see beyond all the superficial crap right to the best of what is in the human heart.  I also think back on a priest friend of my parents—a Diocesan priest—who was the epitome of priestly modesty and discretion, but in a way that was overwhelmingly joyful.  He never drank anything stronger than tea but could sit at the piano for hours making you laugh and making you cry with music ranging from Ragtime to Verdi.  This was a man who for all his natural dignity and grace, was not above doing the laundry for a shut-in or frying up some ham and eggs for a homeless man. Celibacy can be one man’s manna and another man’s poison.  It is clear from experience that just because a man is given a vocation to the priesthood, he is not necessarily given the vocation to celibacy.  And there are more than enough men there who have opted for celibacy but who have not the “shepherd’s heart” that is a sign of an authentic priestly vocation.  

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.     

Celibacy--Or Why Father Gets Cranky

Saint Jerome, an early propoinent of clerical
celibacy.  This statute stands in front
of St Catherine's Church, Bethlehem

Before we proceed to the Gregorian Reformation, we need to take a diversion on the topic of celibacy.  Our most recent entry spoke of Sylvester II attempting to impose celibacy on the Catholic clergy, and the idea of a celibate clergy go much further back, but it will become a central issue in the Church only at the time of the Gregorian Reform. 

     In the Apostolic and sub-apostlic eras (33 AD-100 AD) celibacy was a  highly admired but not required virtue for Christians of whatever status or ministry in the Church.  This was rooted in several saying of Jesus recorded in the Gospels and in the writings of the apostles, most notably Paul.  We do not know the marital status of any of the apostles except Peter who had been married, though as it is his mother-in-law and not his wife who is mentioned (and she is never mentioned) in the text whether he was married or a widower at the time of his encounter with Christ is not known.  It is generally taken from his writings in favor of remaining unmarried that Paul was not a married man, though there is a tradition going back as far as Eusebius that he was married but did not bring his wife with him on his missionary journeys.  The author of 1 Timothy says that a bishop should be married but once and have control over his children.  This text would indicate that married men became priests and bishops (in the sub-apostolic Church the distinction between these two ministries was not as precise as it is today).  However, by the fourth century Church fathers such as Jerome and Ambrose—neither of whom were married and Ambrose was a bishop, Jerome was not) were claiming that while married men had become bishops in the early Church they were obligated to refrain from conjugal intimacy (aka sex) with their wives once having assumed the office.  This is not anywhere in the scriptural text or any other source I know of from the first century so I am not inclined to think it holds up historically.  On the other hand, the oral tradition could have conveyed this condition through the two centuries separating these Fathers of the Church from the authorship of 1 Timothy.

      More likely an explanation for this interpretation, however, is the fact that in those two intervening centuries a very negative attitude towards human sexuality had begun to develop in the Christian community.  Tertullian (160-220), though himself married, wrote against sexual relations, and Origen (184-253) went so far as to castrate himself taking the admonition of Jesus that should an organ of the body be an occasion of sin, it should be cut away and cast off.  We also get in this period, the 3^rd and 4^th centuries, the rise of monasticism and its discipline of celibacy.  Indeed the number of men (and to a far lesser extent, women) who embraced the monastic life in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in the late third and throughout the fourth centuries cannot be over estimated; certainly fourth century monastics in the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa would number over a hundred thousand and possibly three or four times that number.  As Christianity spread and monasticism spread from the deserts of Egypt and Syria-Palestine to the metropolitan centers of the Empire and westwards as far as Iberia and even Ireland, celibacy became linked with holiness in the Christian mind.  It became a frequent, but not universal, practice to choose a bishop from among the monks, and thus the celibates.   Nevertheless, the vast majority of clergy and even bishops were married men throughout this period. 

      Sometime in the first decade of the fourth century (probably in 306 AD) nineteen bishops and  twenty-four priests along with an unknown number of deacons and laity gathered at Elivra (modern day Granada) in southern Spain to discuss needed legislation for the Church in Baetica (modern day southern Spain).  They passed legislation prohibiting Christians from marrying Jews or pagans socializing with Jews as an attempt to keep the Christians apart and distinct from non-Christians.  They also forbad a bishop to reconcile to the Church a person who had been excommunicated by another bishop.  Also it was forbidden to give communion to those who had lapsed from the faith during the recent persecution of the Emperor Diocletian, even when the lapsed person was dying.  The Council forbad the use of images in churches.  And finally it declared that bishops, preists, and deacons, even those married, were to abstain from sexual relations under threat of being deposed from their ministries. 

      At the very end of the fourth century a Council of North African bishops meeting at Carthage made the same ruling for the North African Church.  In 385 Pope Siricius responded to those who claimed that since the priests of the Old Law had been permitted marriage and having children, priests of the New Covenant also had this right by reminding those critics of celibacy that because the Priesthood of the Old Law depended on being a descendent of Aaron, it was necessary for priests to beget children in their bloodline, but that the Priesthood of Christ demanded continence. 

      Hilary of Arles convoked the Synod of Orange (France) in 441 and like the Elivra Synod it dealt with a wide variety of ecclesiastical issues including unction of the sick, right of asylum and, once again—celibacy which it mandated for all the higher clergy (bishops, priests, and deacons).  It also cited a synod of bishops at Turin in Northern Italy which had apparently mandated celibacy in 401. 

      These various synods were all local and did not have universal jurisdiction.  There was a proposal for clerical celibacy at the Council of Nicea (325), the first Ecumencial Council, but it was rejected at the insistence of one Paphnutius who himself was celibate but who felt that mandatory celibacy would place too heavy a burden on many priests and be an occasion for them to fall into sin.  Nevertheless many of those at the Council felt that once a man had assumed the duties of the altar, married or not, he should practice continence and one of the canons implies that the clergy, married or single, should live celibate lives.

       In the end, all this legislation had little effect.  Priests and even bishops were still chosen from among the married and had families.  In the Eastern reaches of the Empire, it was the norm for parish priests to be married and have a family, though they were expected to refrain from sexual intimacy with their wives for a period of time, usually one to three days, before celebrating the Eucharist.  In the West—especially in the reaches of northern Europe where rural clergy were normal farmers Monday through Saturday and assumed the vestments for Mass on Sundays before heading back to the plow on Monday, marriage and family were almost as much an economic necessity for the priest as for any other man whose farming demanded help in the fields at sowing and harvest.  The monks practiced celibacy—and hopefully (at least for the most part) chastity as well—but there was a radical division between the monastic clergy in their abbeys among their books and long ceremonies and the parish clergy whose life was not so different from their parishioners .
More to come on this topic.   

Roots of the Reformation XIV: A Historical Take on Anti-Clericalism and the Protestant Reformations.

The medieval English Church at
Dartmouth in Southern England

I mentioned in our last entry that anti-clericalism is a very important monitor of danger for the Church.  Distrust of or discontent with the clergy undermines the Church as an institution and alienates people from the practice of the faith.  I want to look at this from a historical perspective.

One of the characteristics of the Churches that sprang out of the series of sixteenth-century Reformations that we call “Protestant” is the amount of control the laity exercise in Church matters.  Indeed for the most part in the Churches of the Reformation the distinction between laity and clergy is all but obliterated.  The roots of this declericalization was not doctrinal but rather a reaction to the abuses of clerical power in the late medieval Church.  Doctrines such as “The Priesthood of All Believers” which stamp most Protestant Tradition arose because of the strong anti-clerical mood in European society.  In other words, the doctrines were primarily a reaction to the exaggerated clericalism of the medieval Church.  And—by the way—we Catholics must remember that those doctrines are not heretical but at most an exaggeration of the authentic Apostolic Tradition which we call “The Baptismal Priesthood”  or the “Priesthood of the Faithful” which is rooted in the New Testament and in the Fathers and is celebrated in the official Liturgy of the Catholic Churchy, most notably but not exclusively in the rites of the Sacrament of Baptism.       

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries there was a serious rise of anti-clericalism in Europe and in retrospect we can see how it made the Catholic Church vulnerable to the Reformers as well as paved the way for the Churches of the Reformation where the authority of the clergy was almost invariably replaced by strong lay control.  Calvin’s Geneva is one such example.  While John Calvin was the preacher and theologian for the Reformed Church in Geneva, actual power was exercised not by Calvin but by the town council which had determined that the Catholicism would be replaced by the Reformed Religion.  The Council often went against Calvin in its decisions about Church polity.  The laity, not the clergy, would chart the path for the Church.  This was true in most Reformed and Evangelical Churches—the clergy could persuade and encourage in their preaching, but decisions of Church polity were ultimately in the hands of the laity.  In England from the time of Elizabeth I onwards, Parliament would make decisions regarding Church polity.  Even the Queen had to concede certain points of theology and practice to the anti-clerical parties (The Puritan faction) in Parliament in regard to the approval of the Book of Common Prayer that was issued in her reign.  The bishops had a voice, but they did not have final word and into the twentieth century you had a predominately lay body, Parliament, not all of whom by any means were Anglican, making decisions about worship and other matters internal to the Church of England.  

We have gotten somewhat ahead of ourselves here.  Let’s get back to the period of history immediately before the various Protestant Reformations.  We had spoken some time back about John Wycliffe (see entries for April 27^th and 28^th 2011).   Wycliffe’s followers in England were very distrustful of the clergy.  Wycliffe, though himself a priest and holder of several fairly lucrative benefices, had preached against clerical wealth and privilege.  It was at this same time the Geoffrey Chaucer in England and Giovanni Bocaccio in Italy had drawn scathing portraits of the clergy in their varied literary works.  Friars were seen to be greedy and womanizers; monks, fat and lazy sodomites.   The secular clergy were seen as nickel and diming people with fees for every imaginable service they rendered.  How truthful were these caricatures?   Well, there were good monks and friars and priests, but the caricatures would not have worked in the various poems and narratives if there had not been some truth to them.  It was a time marked by some strong reform movements in the religious orders, but also by religious who refused to embrace the necessary reforms.  In other words, like today, you had good priests and not-so-good priests. 

Celibacy then, as today, is a tricky issue to speak of.  Popular mythology often points the medieval clergy as satyrs, totally ignoring the demands of celibacy.  The fact of the matter is that the secular clergy were pretty much ignoring celibacy, but they were not necessarily promiscuous.  Church law from the eleventh century onwards had forbidden the clergy to marry.  This was mostly a matter of preventing Church property from passing out of Church ownership to the heirs of the priest.  Children, by law, had rights of inheritance only if they were legitimate.  Prohibiting the clergy to marry rendered the children illegitimate and prevented them from suing for a share in their father’s estate.  Church properties were preserved for the Church.  The celibacy legislation worked fairly well in despoiling children and widows of their claims but despite the law of the Church, many priests continued to marry and have children.  The marriages were not usually solemnized—i.e. “blessed” in Church—but neither were many medieval marriages, especially among the more common folk.  What we call “common-law” marriages were taken much more for granted in the Middle Ages, especially among the peasantry and the working classes.  Weddings were mostly for the nobility and, after the twelfth century, the bourgeoisie.  Many priests lived in a stable relationship with one woman, having children by her and raising their children together.  This would have been especially common in both rural areas and on the fringes of European society—Scandinavia, Scotland, Ireland, where priesthood was often a part-time occupation combined with farming and where the collaborative work of family life was almost a requisite for survival.   This is not to gloss over clerical sexuality.  Clerical concubinage (a prelate, priest, or major cleric having a mistress), as differentiated from such common-law relationships, was by no means unknown in the cities and towns and among the hierarchy.  The stability of these relationships varied from the same sort of common-law marriages of rural clergy to the successive monogamy of a series of mistresses.  And, of course, there were those among the clergy and hierarchy, as there are in every place and time and profession—promiscuous swine to take whatever opportunity presents itself for sexual gratification.   Popes were rarely in a position to clean up this mess as more than a few were sexually active themselves. 

All this is simply a way of making clear that there was not much to admire in the clerical state.  There were fine priests of course; priests beloved and admired by their congregants for their devotion and pastoral service.  Then too there were priests admired and loved by their parishioners who had common-law wives and children and whose parishioners did not see anything wrong with that.  There were priests who were celibate and who were loved and admired by their parishioners.  And there were priests who were celibate but whose parishioners disdained them, even hated them, because while celibate they still begrudged their congregants good pastoral care. 

It was common practice for priests to hold lucrative posts called benefices.  The benefice might be the pastorate of a wealthy church that paid a hefty salary.  The benefice might be a position at the Cathedral.  The benefice might be the chaplaincy at a hospital or a school.  When the salary was sufficiently high, or the priest held several high-income benefices at the same time, he might pay out of his salary a “vicar” to do the actual work.  Priests might often live in a degree of luxury, a high degree of luxury, and do little or no work.  None of this helped clerical reputation and by the early sixteenth century clergy were often held in contempt.

The Church in the Middle Ages had become incredibly wealthy.  Over the centuries immense amounts of land had been left in wills and bequests to monasteries, parish churches, cathedral chapters, schools, and other religious institutions.  Unlike family lands which were always being both added to and divided by dowries and divisions among heirs, (and bequests to churches), the Church did not pay dowries nor did it leave lands by bequest to others.  Thus the Church and its various institutions only increased in wealth and property.  It was always the receiver, never the giver.  Of course, it did pay salaries, and not only to clergy but to vast numbers of servants and workers required to maintain the various institutions.  It also spent huge sums hiring stonemasons, carpenters, glaziers, smiths and others in the vast construction projects of the Middle Ages.  It made heavy purchases in everything from beer, wine, food, and clothing for its clergy and employees to silks, gold and silver and jewels, organs, incense and other requirements for services.  In other words, the Church was a vital part of the economy.  In addition to its lands and the revenues its properties generated in rents and leases, the Church depended on the non-voluntary contributions called tithes of everyone from small tenant-farmers to powerful merchants.  It was required by Church law and enforced by the civil officials called reeves that the Church got ten percent of your income.  As the Church grew richer—in some places owning up to a third of the land in a kingdom—and more opulent in its display of wealth, many—especially in the merchant class—began to resent that they had to pay these tithes when the Church seemed to be so wealthy.  With the rise of the urban business classes, people began wanting to reinvest their spare capital in order to make more money yet.  They were not happy in seeing their hard earned money going to an institution that seemed to have so much already.     

Another reason for the lack of respect of the clergy is that in the early and central Middle Ages, that is from the eighth through the thirteenth centuries, the priest was most often among the best educated, or even in some places, the only educated person, in the town or village.  Even where the priest was no more educated than the peasants he served, his guardianship of the Sacred and his control of the Rites was seen as giving him a quasi-magical power.  But from the twelfth century on, with the economic revolution in Europe that created a strong and vibrant middle class, the educational level in European society rose fast.  Laity began to read and study—and develop areas of expertise such as law and economics.  Educationally the clergy began to meet their peers among their congregants.  Even in the rural areas reason began to replace superstition and magic.  No longer did the word of the priest have authority simply because he was a priest.  His words were weighed for their value as they corresponded to the knowledge and insight of his listeners.  An individual priest might be respected for his intelligence and wisdom but by no means was such respect automatic; much less would respect be given simply because a person was a priest.  In fact, people did not hesitate to question the opinion of a priest and counter with their own insights from their experience and from common sense.   It was a new age and not all the clergy recognized that their control over the faithful had eroded.