THE CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 187, 27 October 1876, Page 13

THE CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY.

On Sunday evening last after vespers at St. Joseph's Church, Dunedin, his Lordship the Bishop of the Diocese commenced a course of instructions from ecclesiastical history. The subject chosen for the first lecture of the series was that of the celibacy of the clergy, and after a few introductory remarks the Bishop said he would divide his discourse into three parts. Ist. He would lay before the congregation the state of the question as his study of ecclesiastical history led him to apprehend it in his own mind. 2nd. He would give the authority on which he based his opinions, and thirdly he would state some obi ections that were urged against . the matter. All present understood what the celibacy of the clergy meant. According to the law of the Church those who were admitted to Holy Orders were forbidden to marry, or if already married were obliged to live as if they were not so, and in addition were compelled to lead chaste lives. Ecclesiastical history testified that Ironi the days of the Apostles the higher orders of the clergy, i.e. bishops, priests and deacons, were accustomed to lead a life of celibacy. He was aware that this statement was contradicted by persons who were not Catholics, but it could be shown that their contradiction was groundless. The celibacy of the clergy had been the custom from apostolic times. A custom is not always a law, but this soon hardened into law. St. Peter himself had made a positive Jaw, binding on the clergy belonging to the Church of Kome and all its dependencies in the west, to lead a life of celibacy, bt. Mark, who was the disciple of St. Peter, had extended this law to the Church of Alexandria, of which he was bishop. This law was not enforced in the east, but clerical celibacy was there a custom; a statement which he made on the high authority of Ongen, St. Jerome, Eusebius and St. Epiphanius. If some departures from this custom were to be met with, they were exceptional, and served to strengthen and confirm the rule. For the first three hundred years of the Christian era it is clear that men who embraced the ecclesiastical state in its higher grades never married after they were ordained, and if they had been married before they were ordained, they were obliged, by the law of bt. Peter in the west and by the universal custom in the east, to live separate from their wives. In the year 305, before the termination of the persecutions, in a Council held at Elvira it was canonically declared, that all in holy orders who married or lived with their wives after their ordination were deposed; this proves that a law on the subject must have previously existed, since a law made for the nrst time by the council would have had no retrospective effect. During the first three hundred years Christians had been hunted as if they were wild beasts, it is not, therefore, surprising it they did not leave a superabundance of documents, and it is turther known that many of those actually drawn up by them were burned by their enemies. Still there are sufficient writings remaining to teach us fully what the discipline of the Church was in this particular. The law made by St. Peter waß testified to by Ongen and Tertullian, and this latter had himself been a married man until he was ordained priest in Carthage, when he separated troni his wife. Again, in two letters of Pope St. Siricius, one to the Bishop of Tarragona in 385, and the other to the Bishop of loulouse, that Pontiff alludes to the institution referred to, and declares that all who violate it are to be punished. Innocent 1., in the year 400, again testifies to the same, as do all the Councils of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. At two Councils that were held in Asia Minor in the fourth century, and over which St. Vitalis, who died in the year 320, presided namely that of Ancyra in 316, and that of Neo-Cffisarea in 317, celibacy was imposed upon the higher clergy. A strange provision was made by the fifth canon of the Council of Ancyra. fvA .^ on ' when a *>out to be ordained, declared to the bishop that it was his intention to marry when he was ordained, he might lawfully do so, but unless he thus protested he was obliged to observe the laws of celibacy. The reason of that probably was, that in the first three centuries there existed great difficulty in obtaining men fit to exercise the oihce of the ministry, and it frequently happened that the people seized on some man of exemplary holiness, and insisted on his being ordained. It would no doubt have been considered a hardship had men, who were thus compelled to take holy orders against their will, been obliged in consequence of this to separate from their wives, supposing that they were married, and it may nave been in consideration of their case that the provision alluded to was made by the Council of Ancyra. Socrates and Sozomen declare that at the Council of Nice held in 325, when it was proposed to superadd to the custom already in existence in the east the sanction of positive precept with regard to the matter of clerical celibacy, St. Paphnutius protested against it, and it was not enforced. His lordship had no intention of denying that St. Paphnutius had been present at the Council but it was nevertheless certain that his name did not appear) subscribing any of the decrees. The historians alluded to did! not live until more than lOOyears after the Council of Nice, which had j confirmed the customs previously prevailing. Moreover the eastern bishops who had been present at this Council, on their return thence to their dioceses, began to enforce strictly the obligation of celibacy on the clergy, and more particularly was it then extended throuo-h-out their patriarchates by the patriarchs of Alexandria and Anticch An argument brought from ecclesiastical history against the celibacy of the clergy is that the father of St. Gregory Nazianzen was a priest. There were, however, other priests besides those who were Christians, and this man may have been a pagan, or his case many have formed one of those exceptions foundln the East of a departure from the universal custom observed there, and which have been already alluded to. Other objections from history are equally trivial, and admit of easy refutation. Certain arguments have also been urged from Holy Scripture, -where we are told that St

Peter himself waa married, and whence Borne suppose that all the Tertu £n We^rri c ?;- T S i8 ' however ' was not the opinioVof Tertulhan, who had been born in the second century, and died in the year 216. In his opinion St. Peter only was married, all the 2S3'f W «? ?" Peter se P arafced from «■ wife when called to the apostolate. Such was also the opinion of St. Jerome who, in his controversy with Jovinian and Vigilantius, treats on this subject. Another objection is found in the words written by St. Paul in Ist Cor., ix. 5v. ; but this depends altogether on a mistranslation. The word rendered " wife "in the authorised version is properly woman, and the term "a woman, a sister " means a Christian woman. It was the custom of certain of the apostles, as of Christ himself, to be followed by holy women, who ministered to their wants, bufc St. Paul rejected such assistance, hebein-ofan independent spirit. It is of these holy women St. Paul speaks in the Jpassage alluded to, Jand it has no bearing on the subject Another passage adduced in opposition to the celibacy of the clergy occurs in the epistle to the Philippians iv., 3v., but this also han°4 upon a mistranslation, and cannot be urged with any force ° In conclusion his lordship stated that much more might be said on the subject which would be of deep interest to critics and scholars, but he considered that what he had now said was sufficient tor the purpose he intended to serve, that of making it plain to an ordinary congregation that clerical celibacy had been the rule from the days of the Apostles to the present. The next evening ttoat he should address them he would also choose ecclesiastical history for Ms subject, but he wa3 as yet undecided as to what particular point he should select to speak upon. L