IN AN interview with a German magazine earlier this month, Pope Francis suggested he would be open to the idea of allowing married men to become priests. Such a change, while momentous, would be a return rather than a break with early Christian tradition: nowhere does the New Testament explicitly require priests to be celibate. During the first thousand years of Christianity, it was not uncommon for priests to have families. The first pope, Saint Peter, was a married man; many early popes had children. How did celibacy enter the Catholic tradition?
Celibacy is one of the greatest acts of self-sacrifice a Catholic priest is called to do, giving up spouse, offspring, and sexual fulfillment for his relationship with parishioners and God. According to the Catholic Church Code of Canon Law celibacy is a “special gift from God” that enables practitioners to follow more closely the example of Christ, who was chaste. Another reason is that when a priest enters the service of God, the church becomes his highest calling. If he had a family, there would be a risk of conflict between his spiritual and family duties. The Vatican considers it easier for single men to engage in church because they have more time for devotion and fewer distractions.
The first written reference to celibacy dates back to 305 AD in the Spanish Council of Elvira, a local assembly of clergymen who met to discuss matters relating to the church. Canon 33 prohibits clerics of the Church – bishops, priests and deacons – from having sexual relations with their wives and having children, but not from entering into marriage. It was not until the ecumenical meetings of the Catholic Church during the First and Second Lateran Councils in 1123 and 1139 that priests were explicitly forbidden to marry. Eliminating the prospect of marriage had the added benefit of ensuring that the children or wives of priests would not lay claim to property acquired throughout a priest’s lifetime, which could thus be retained by the Church. It took centuries for the practice of celibacy to become widespread, but it eventually became the norm in the Western Catholic Church.
Despite the decrees of the Middle Ages, celibacy is still a “discipline” of the Church, which can be changed, rather than a “dogma”, or a divinely revealed truth of God which cannot be changed. As the world changed, the Church found it more difficult to recruit priests. The numbers have plummeted: between 1970 and 2014, the global Catholic population fell from 654 million to 1.23 billion, while the number of priests fell from 420,000 to 414,000.Some future priests do not want to choose between having a life with God and having a family. It is not inconceivable that the time will come when they can have both.
