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To begin with, Jesus designated
St. Peter, a married man, to be the first pope. Priests had married in
Judaism (the priesthood itself was a hereditary profession), and it
would seem that Christ accepted this part of the tradition in his choice
of Peter. Although St. Paul believed that spreading the Gospel was
easier for a man who didn’t have a family to provide for, he still
mandated that bishops, elders and deacons be only “the husband of one
wife.” (Even then, polygamy among all ranks of the clergy persisted,
and by the third century bishops alone were required to be monogamous.)
The change began with the Council of Elvira in Spain
in about 306, which prohibited bishops, deacons and priests from
marrying. Shortly thereafter, the early church fathers began to
stigmatize sex as sinful in their writings. St. Ambrose
(340-397) wrote, “The ministerial office must be kept pure and
unspoiled and must not be defiled by coitus,” and the former libertine
St. Augustine (354-430) even went so far as to consider an erect penis a
sign of man’s insubordination
With the advent of the Dark Ages around 500,
the upheavals in society saw a decline in clerical discipline and with
it, a return to marriage and even the keeping of concubines by priests.
During this time, the wealth of the church was also
increasing, a development not lost on Rome. Many priests were
leaving church lands to their heirs, and others handed
down land of their own through primogeniture. The Holy See saw
that a return to the celibacy rule would result in a
real-estate bonanza, and in about 1018 Pope Benedict VIII put
teeth in the Elvira decree by forbidding descendents of priests to
inherit property. Later, in the 11th century, Pope Gregory VII, who had
assumed vast power by declaring himself
the supreme authority over all souls, went even further by proscribing
married priests from saying mass; he also forbid parishioners from
attending masses said by them. Scholars believe that the first written
law forbidding the clergy to
marry was finally handed down at the Second Lateran Council in 1139.
Dissent persisted, though. At two 15th-century church
councils, supporters of clerical marriage attempted to
reintroduce the practice but were defeated by hard-liners, who
tried to rewrite history by asserting that celibacy was
apostolic in its origins. The law finally became official
doctrine at the Council of Trent in 1563, and Rome’s position on
the issue has remained essentially unchanged since then.
But as the current crisis in the church has
shown, the controversy just won’t die. When
reached for comment, Father Edward Deimeke, a spokesman for the Roman
Catholic Diocese of Albany, acknowledged that the institution of
celibacy was a “human rule” which could be altered, as opposed to a
moral absolute (like the church’s stance on abortion). He also allowed
that a majority of the priesthood, as well as the laity in America,
favored the right of priests to wed. Perhaps
the sentiment of those advocating a change in the church’s policy is
best summed up in the words of St. Paul: “It is better to marry than
to burn.”
List of Metroland Stories by Glenn Weiser
©2002 by Glenn Weiser. All rights reserved. |
