Celibacy

“ How many lives would have passed away in obscurity, had not celibacy flung its splendors around them ! How many humble maidens, who would have been only little known married women, became, through the self-sacrifice of celibacy, the love and admiration, not of one poor village or town, but of large cities and entire countries ! ”

“ We shall also see how the church abandoned this standard and now confines the doctrine of celibacy to the unmarried, to the priesthood and the nuns.
Celibacy has been practiced in all ages by a few artists, propagandists and revolutionists in order that their minds may be single to the work which has claimed their lives and all the forces of their beings may be bent in one direction. Sometimes, too, such persons have remained celibate to avoid the burden of caring for a family. ”

“ It were easy to show, to any one that is willing to open his eyes, celibacy, in the course of Christian ages, sending apostles into the Old and the New World, evangelizing the poor, teaching children, building hospitals, taking care of the sick, and, as a ministering angel in families, ever ready with consolation where there is a tear to be dried, or any holy work to be done. Ever since Christ and his blessed Mother gave it a consecration, celibacy has been a source of confusion to those alone for whom, as Bernard says, confusion is glory. ”

“ Paul to Timothy, "A bishop must be the husband of one wife," I consider to be something more than mere advice that Christian pastors should marry. For my own part I have always inveighed against the law of celibacy, and invariably have advised my friends to enter, as early as they prudently might, into the conjugal state. Why should not I then do so, whilst yet in the prime of life?
"What a scandal to the Church," I observed one day to some Romish priests, "is this vow of celibacy among the clergy. ”

“ This alone is sufficient to make one a celibate, and nothing more is required. Religious do not wed; but, specifically, that is all there is in common between them. All celibates are not chaste; celibacy is not necessarily chastity, by a large majority. Unless something other than selfishness suggests this choice of life, the word is apt to be a misnomer for profligacy. And one who takes the vow of celibacy does not break it by sinning against the Sixth Commandment; he is true to it until he weds. ”

“ From what we have just said, it is manifest that, even in the midst of the world, celibacy is not impossible; and, although religious houses offer a secure shelter to chastity, it would be against the experience of all ages, since Christianity came into the world, to say that celibacy cannot be thought of save in a convent. It is well known that in Western Europe many Christian virgins lived in their families. Indeed, in every age and country, numerous virgins have shone out in the world in all the splendor of purity and self-immolation. ”

“ The physiological evils arising from celibacy, and, in lesser degree, from prolonged abstention from marriage, are of the most disastrous nature. Celibacy is necessarily a condition of privation and suffering, since it involves the deliberate and incessant suppression of the most powerful instinct of mankind. The pure and elevating joys of wedded and family life are shut out, and existence is shorn of its most delightful features. ”

“ CELIBACY IS A HAPPIER STATE THAN MARRIAGE. To prefer virginity is not, as St. Jerome observes, a depreciation of marriage. [1] Silver does not cease to be silver, because gold is more precious. It is no injury to a tree to have its fruits preferred to its leaves or roots. As a tree bears fruit, so marriage bears celibacy; [2] and the higher our esteem for celibacy, the more should we make of marriage which gives birth to virgins. ”

“ But a Jewish sect called the Essenes, or some of them, practised celibacy; and you know how Epictetus inculcates celibacy on his Cynics of the first class. These facts, and the [243] pressure of hard times, and Paul’s example, may not only have favoured abstinence from marriage among Christians but also have favoured some tampering with tradition in order to enjoin celibacy. A letter to Timothy speaks of certain heretics as ‘forbidding to marry.’ Perhaps the only safe conclusion about Matthew’s tradition is that no conclusion can be deduced from it. ”

“ Those couples who are unable or unwilling to take upon themselves the responsibility for a new life are thus condemned to celibacy in marriage. Those couples who have once founded their marriage on love must maintain the relationship even without love.
These demands are more ruthless to human nature than those opposed by Luther. Complete celibacy is easier than married celibacy. The needs of the soul are stronger than those of the senses. ”

“ CHAPTER VI. IS IT LAWFUL TO EXHORT OTHERS TO THE PRACTICE OF PERFECT CHASTITY OR CELIBACY. WE can exhort others to what is possible, permitted, and better. Now, with the exception of a few accidental cases, celibacy, which is always possible, is allowed, and is better. Hence, as a general rule, and saving the exceptions, celibacy can be advised. ”

“ Nobody can feel more deeply than I do the immeasurable evils of an enforced celibacy; nobody can feel more deeply the deplorable state of the Church which furnishes only rare and exceptional examples of voluntary celibacy for the sake of Christ. ”

“ If, on the other hand, their celibacy is deliberate, if it proceeds from a desire for independence, neither men nor mothers will forgive their disloyalty to womanly devotion, evidenced in their refusal to feed those passions which render their sex so affecting. To renounce the pangs of womanhood is to abjure its poetry and cease to merit the consolations to which mothers have inalienable rights. ”

“ How far celibacy was practised or encouraged in these communities it is difficult for us now to say. Most of the information we possess comes from men who found it impossible to conceive the idea of a monastic life without the vow of celibacy. ”

“ It has happened many times in human history that individuals have not only been able to conquer this natural craving for a mate, but have set up celibacy as a higher ideal. In its most beautiful expression and sublimest manifestations, the celibate ideal has proclaimed a world-wide love, in place of the narrower human love of home and children. Many saints and sages, reformers and dogmatists have modelled their lives on this ideal. ”

“ He confronts the common objection: if all men embraced celibacy, how would the race be propagated? “Myriads of angels inhabit heaven, yet we believe they are not propagated by matrimony, and it was only by the special provision and will of God, that matrimony itself produced offspring. Sarah was barren till God vouchsafed her Isaac. Marriage was the inferior state to conduct us to the higher; it was to celibacy as the Law to the Gospel, it was a crutch to support those who would otherwise fall into sin, but to be dispensed with when possible. ”

“ Celibacy is a state regarded by primitive people as unnatural, or as contrary to moral law, and according to such a conception, avoidance of celibacy must be provided for by an adjustment of the marriage customs. ”

“ Considering how many persons, even now, through merely unselfish (not to speak of religious) motives, sentence themselves to celibacy, it should not appear improbable that a more highly evolved humanity would cheerfully sacrifice a large proportion of its sex-life for the common weal, particularly in view of certain advantages to be gained. ”

“ Therefore many persons have adopted celibacy and observe the Apostolic Tradition: “The best of men in latter days will be those who are light of back,” i.e. who have neither wife nor child. It is the unanimous opinion of the Shaykhs of this sect that the best and most excellent Ṣúfís are the celibates, if their hearts are uncontaminated and if their natures are not inclined to sins and lusts. ”

“ They dare to affirm that the law of perpetual celibacy has been divinely revealed, although it is contrary to manifest testimonies of Scripture, which command that to avoid fornication each one should have his own wife, 1 Cor. ”

“ Ever since the beginning of Religion, the doctrine of celibacy has never been literally followed except by those individuals who were suffering from religious mania, a disease which is almost always co-existent with disturbances or irregularities of the sexual system, and which like them is a manifestation of a morbid state, proceeding from the same pathological modifications in the condition of the brain. ”

“ Hitherto celibacy has meant conventual life for women; to-day it means something entirely different, and it is this difference that we ought to consider. This is all the more necessary, because many among us still fail to grasp the true significance of the new movement for the emancipation of women; many are still under the yoke of old opinion, and they fail to recognize the more healthy nature of the new type of celibate women as compared with that of former days. ”

“ In many nations it is and has been considered a disgrace to bear no children, and in other nations celibacy has been raised to the rank of a virtue of the highest order. The ascetic character of the African portion of the early Christian Church, as already remarked, introduced the merits of celibate life into its teaching. ”

“ A curious kind of celibacy, met with among various peoples at different stages, is the enforced celibacy of persons devoted to religion. This evidently depends upon the notion that sexual intercourse is impure—a notion which seems to have grown up originally from the instinctive feeling against intercourse between members of the same family or household.
In the courtship of almost all animal species the male plays the most active part, and has generally to fight with other males for the possession of the female. ”

“ But it is good, that is, either abstracting from circumstances there are many things in which the state of celibacy has the advantage above the marriage state; or else at this juncture, by reason of the distress of the Christian church, it would be a convenience for Christians to keep themselves single, provided they have the gift of continency, and at the same time can keep themselves chaste. The expression also may carry in it an intimation that Christians must avoid all occasions of this sin, and flee all fleshly lusts, and incentives to them ”

“ Among certain Indians men sometimes marry at the age of nine or ten years, generally between fourteen and eighteen; the girls between nine and twelve. In some comparatively civilized nations the celibate is so much despised that they go as far as marrying the spirits of departed children! Among the Greeks, celibates were punished, and among the Romans they were taxed heavily. Celibacy becomes more rare the further we go back in the history of the human race; celibacy increases with the corruption of morals. ”

“ The lives of those who are nobly celibate, or nobly married, are in themselves so moving a plea, that few who have been closely in contact with them are left untouched. It is the ideal realized that is the best defence of the ideal. But let us admit that, too often, the actual marriage is a very pitiful comment on our morality, and celibacy either a mere pretence or a very mean and pinched reality. What answer then shall we give to the rising generation which questions us—"On what do you base your moral standards?" ”

“ The notion of the greater sanctity of celibacy was derived, not from the teachings of our Lord or the apostles, who recognized the essential purity of marriage; but probably, as Milman suggests, from the early heresy of the Gnostics, of which this doctrine was a prominent characteristic. [867] “There was no enforced [Pg 523] celibacy during the first three centuries,” says the judicious Bingham. [868] Indeed, marriage was regarded as enjoined on bishops, elders, and deacons, by the counsel of St. Paul. ”

“ Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.” ”

“ The author's very irrelevant digression upon the Catholic doctrine of celibacy adds one more to the numberless instances in which respectable writers criticise rashly without understanding their subject. He says, (p. 109,) "We know very well that theorists of extreme classes, who have noted the decrease in the number of marriages in high life, are inclined to rejoice at it, and for opposite reasons: the one class because they think celibacy to be the higher condition." ”

“ The Injunction of Celibacy.―In accordance with a hint given by the Spanish Provincial Synod of Elvira in A.D. 306 in its 32nd canon, the Œcumenical Council of Nicæa in A.D. 325 was inclined to make the obligation of celibacy at least for the Ordines Majores a binding law over the whole church. But on the other hand the Egyptian bishop Paphnutius, a confessor and from his youth an ascetic, stoutly maintained that the fellowship of married persons too is chastity. His powerful voice decided the matter. ”

“ Celibacy cannot be considered a normal life for a normal adult individual. There are, of course, persons with some constitutional peculiarity upon whom celibacy imposes no hardship; in fact, persons of this type, often the very finest kind of people, too, are predisposed, for reasons already stated, to celibate lives. ”

“ Thus great religious teachers have often emphasised the value of a celibate life as a means of furthering religious devotion, and nearly all have treated it with marked respect. The reason given for this is that marriage involves a greater absorption in material or worldly [276] cares, while celibacy leaves one free to full devotion to the spiritual. But the bottom reason for it is that sexual and domestic feelings, lacking their proper outlet in marriage and family life, run with greater force in the outlet provided by religion. ”