Celibacy of the Clergy. The ideal of a life of total continence has been upheld in the Christian Church from early times, finding biblical authority in Paul and elsewhere and practical expression in the prestige accorded to the monastic way of life that entails perpetual chastity in the celibate state as one of the vows taken by monks and nuns. Nevertheless, the concept of the celibacy of priests not members of such a community under such vows was developed only gradually. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 a proposal was made to require priests to be celibate, but it was rejected, and the right of priests to marry was re-emphasized at the Council of Trullo in 692. In the Eastern Church the practice has remained unchanged: priests may marry before ordination but not afterwards, and if widowed they may not marry again. Bishops, however, must be celibate and are usually drawn from the monks. In the West, early in the 4th c., enactments were already being made to try to enforce celibacy on all priests. Such efforts were frequently made. The Second Lateran Council (1139) declared the ordination of married priests to be invalid as well as illegal. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) not only decreed against the marriage of clergy but in various ways instituted reforms to try to insure the implementation of the decrees of the Church on this subject. In practice, the concept had remained only an ideal, upheld by comparatively few priests, especially during certain periods in the Middle Ages such as the 10th c. and the 15th c. but to a great extent in other periods too. Concubinage among the clergy was extremely common and the laity more or less became accustomed to it. Some medieval advocates of clerical celibacy went so far as to assert that it was part of divine law. Thomas Aquinas, however, with characteristic perspicacity, held it to be merely a law of the Church ( Summa Theologiae II-IIae, 88, 11), with the implication that it can be changed at any time by papal and/or conciliar authority. Nevertheless, it has remained the Law of the Church: a position specifically upheld by Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus ( 1967) and also by his successor Pope John Paul II, in face of widespread demand within the Church for making it an option, not a requirement. The rule of celibacy, traditionally upheld as an ideal and a token of the priest's total dedication of his energies and powers to God and having also the practical advantage of relieving him of the financial and other burdens of raising a family, is now seen by many as having at best disadvantages, spiritual as well as practical, that outweigh its advantages, if it be not (as many would contend) fundamentally pernicious. Formidable arguments, many of them psychologically obvious, can be levelled against the concept; yet the mystique attached to the notion in the eyes of many, clerical and lay, fosters its maintenance as an integral part of ecclesiastical discipline in the Roman Catholic Church. Since 1549 the rule of celibacy has been abolished for Anglican clergy, leaving the Roman Catholic Church virtually alone in maintaining it. Anglicans as well as the Eastern Orthodox recognize, however, no less than the Roman Catholic Church, the place of monastic and other religious communities in the Church, with the customary vows proper to their special vocation.
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