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Aug 24, 2016 · The best anyone can do is offer what little evidence there is from the Bible, church history and Church documents. Jesus Christ was celibate. Jesus never married, He had no children. Several of the Apostles were married, but by many accounts they left their families to follow Jesus Christ.
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The belief that religious figures should be celibate began long before the birth of Christianity. Ancient Druid priests were thought to have been celibate and Aztec temple priests were expected to remain sexually abstinent. Other pre-Christian sects mandated that the people chosen for their sacrificial offerings must be pure, meaning that they had ...
Jesus lived a chaste life and never married and at one point in the Bible is referred to as a eunuch (Matthew 19:12), though most scholars believe that this was intended metaphorically. The implication was that Jesus lived a celibate life like a eunuch. Many of his disciples were also chaste and celibate. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthian...
The practice of priestly celibacy began to spread in the Western Church in the early Middle Ages. In the early 11th century Pope Benedict VIII responded to the decline in priestly morality by issuing a rule prohibiting the children of priests from inheriting property. A few decades later Pope Gregory VII issued a decree against clerical marriages. ...
The Church was a thousand years old before it definitively took a stand in favor of celibacy in the twelfth century at the Second Lateran Council held in 1139, when a rule was approved forbidding priests to marry. In 1563, the Council of Trent reaffirmed the tradition of celibacy.
Several explanations have been offered for the decision of the Church to adopt celibacy. Barry University's Ed Sunshine told Knight-Ridder that the policy was initiated to distinguish the clergy as a special group:\\"A celibate clergy became the paradigm of separation from the sinful world.\\" A.W. Richard Sipe, a former priest and author of Sex, Pri...
The Catholic Church distinguishes between dogma and regulations. The male-only priesthood is Catholic dogma, irreversible by papal decree. The ban on marriage is considered a regulation. As Knight-Ridder put it,\\"That means the pope could change it overnight if he wished.\\"
\\"We may be on the eve of great changes, but it is not easy to anticipate a change so radical as that which would permit the abolition of celibacy. The traditions of the past must first be forgotten; the hopes of the future must first be abandoned. The Latin church is the most wonderful structure in history, and ere its leaders can consent to such ...
Henry Charles Lea, An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church (J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1867). (To access an online edition of the book, published by MOA (Making of America) click here (allow several minutes to download the text). Erik R Seeman;\\"'It is better to marry than to burn': Anglo-American attitudes toward celibacy,...
Celibacy in the Catholic Church: The Catholic Bishops' Conference of India website, http://www.cbcisite.com/.
Historical origins. Medieval Christendom. Reformation period. Celibacy in the present-day Church. Celibacy of deacons. Celibacy of priests. Debate on celibacy of priests. Since the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis. Exceptions to the rule of priestly celibacy. Lack of enforcement. Eastern Catholic churches. See also. References. Further reading.
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Sep 5, 2018 · How views on priestly celibacy changed in Christian history. Published: September 5, 2018 6:36am EDT. The recent report of widespread sexual abuse by priests in Pennsylvania has fueled...
Oct 28, 2002 · The History Behind Celibacy and the Priesthood. John W. O’Malley October 28, 2002. Why and how did the celibate state became a requirement for ordination? (iStock) Before this year many...
Given the history of how mandatory clerical celibacy arose in the Roman Catholic Church (except in several of the Eastern Rites), we can examine the spirituality which undergirds the regulation. The Second Vatican Council's "Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests" ("Presbyterorum Ordinis," 1965) asserted: "Perfect and perpetual continence ...
In the patristic era, clerical celibacy, strictly speaking meant the inability to enter marriage once a higher Order had been received. The first legislative expression of this is found in the eastern councils of Ancyra (314), c. 10, and Neocaesarea (ca. 314-325), c. 1, for deacons and priests respectively.
