Islam, Judaism, and Christianity
Celibacy was not part of the original practices of Islam, and most of the famous Islamic saints were married. Even among bands of Sufi mystics, such as the dervishes, celibacy was exceptional (see Sufism). Muslims believe that marriage is a gift from God or a kind of service to God. Islamic celibacy, where it exists, is a matter of personal spiritual advancement or enthusiasm rather than sacerdotal purity or institutional control.
Celibacy has played little role in Judaism, in which marriage and raising children are understood as holy obligations. The prophet Jeremiah, who apparently chose not to have children, is the only prophet who did not marry. Even in biblical times, however, there were prescribed periods of sexual abstinence in connection with rituals and sacrifices and the prosecution of holy wars. In post-biblical times, some members of the Essene sect, according to the historian Josephus, rejected marriage, and the medieval Talmudic scholar Ben Azzai remained celibate. Traditionally, unmarried males cannot assume leadership positions in the Jewish community.
Celibacy was first practiced in Christianity as a result of expectations of the apocalypse. The original Christians believed that the kingdom of God was at hand and that in the new age there would be no marriage, since all would be like angels. Some of the followers of Jesus gave up family life in order to devote themselves to proclaiming the coming of the kingdom. St. Paul (c. ad 10–c. 67) commended celibacy, though he recognized the legitimacy of marriage for those who could not follow this higher ideal.
In the subapostolic period (the late 1st and early 2nd centuries) some Christian thinkers took the extreme view that all Christians should renounce marriage. More moderate positions were developed to defend marriage against the view that the flesh and all matter were evil and to defend celibacy against the widespread sexual license of the times. Many writers held that marriage was good but that celibacy was better.
The pre-Christian idea that sexual activity was particularly wrong for those who officiated at the altar was assimilated by Christians, and it thus became common for ordained men to give up sexual relations with their wives. The regional Council of Elvira in Spain (c. ad 306) decreed that all priests and bishops, married or not, should abstain from sexual relations. The ecumenical Council of Nicaea (ad 325) declined to make such a prohibition but did forbid priests to live with women other than their mothers, sisters, or aunts. The position of the Eastern churches was made clear by the decrees of the Quinisext Council in 692: bishops must be celibate, but ordained priests, deacons, and subdeacons could continue in existing marriages.
The subsequent history of celibacy in the Western church is a bit more complicated and reveals the ambivalence found in Paul. The monastic tradition and its celibate lifestyle were adopted in the Western church in the 4th century. In the later part of that century, the Church Fathers, especially Saints Ambrose and Augustine, endorsed celibacy in their writings and personal lives. Although it was not as rigorously enforced in the early Middle Ages, the practice of clerical celibacy was promoted as part of the Carolingian reform of the church in the 8th and 9th centuries. Official church teachings continued to emphasize the importance of clerical celibacy, though as late as the 10th century many priests and even some bishops had wives.
As part of their attempt to restore the independence and integrity of the clergy, the supporters of the Gregorian reform movement of the 11th century sought to enforce clerical celibacy. Their efforts were made part of church law at the first and second Lateran Councils (1123 and 1139), which abolished clerical marriage and thus established the official and still-existing position of the Roman Catholic church.
The issue of clerical celibacy arose again in the 15th and 16th centuries, when the church became increasingly secularized and numerous clerics, including Pope Alexander VI, fathered children. Although the Roman Catholic church remained committed to the ideal of clerical celibacy, the churches of the Reformation—the Lutheran church, the Church of England (Anglican Communion), the Reformed church, and others—rejected it. Indeed, the leader of the Reformation, Martin Luther, renounced his vow of celibacy, married the former nun Katherina von Bora, and raised a family with her. Opposition to clerical celibacy remained the norm in Protestant countries after the Reformation. In the 18th century, however, Ann Lee, the founder of the Christian millenarian sect known as the Shakers, established celibacy as the standard for all members of her church. About 1845 monastic orders began to reappear in the Church of England, and about a century later small Protestant monastic groups were founded on the continent of Europe.
Clerical celibacy once again became a cause of ferment in the Roman Catholic church during and after the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). The council permitted a married diaconate. After the council, the number of priests seeking to leave the priesthood to marry vastly increased, and many European and American Catholics began to urge that celibacy for priests be made optional. Nevertheless, Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the traditional rule on clerical celibacy in his encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (June 23, 1967). The pope returned to the New Testament texts: for the sake of Christ and the coming kingdom of heaven, the priest must be totally free of domestic responsibilities; he must witness by his way of life to the transcendent reality that fills and grips him. Paul’s teachings on clerical celibacy were reaffirmed by Pope John Paul II.
In the early 21st century, revelations that thousands of priests in Australia, Europe, and the United States had committed acts of child molestation prompted calls for reconsideration of the rule on clerical celibacy. Although the church hierarchy resisted these pleas, it did eventually take steps to ensure that such crimes would not be committed again. Meanwhile, some defenders of the church publicly emphasized that celibacy does not lead inevitably to pedophilia, noting that the vast majority of priests had honoured their vows.