Editing Celibacy (section)

===Catholic Church===
{{See also|Clerical celibacy in the Catholic Church}}
During the first three or four centuries, no law was promulgated prohibiting clerical marriage. Celibacy was a matter of choice for bishops, priests, and deacons.<ref>{{cite book |title=The early church |author=Henry Chadwick |date=1993 |publisher=Penguin Books |location=London |isbn=978-0140231991 |edition=Rev. }}</ref>

[[File:Conventual Franciscan.JPG|thumb|Conventual [[Franciscan]] [[friar]], 2012]]
Statutes forbidding clergy from having wives were written beginning with the Council of Elvira (306) but these early statutes were not universal and were often defied by clerics and then retracted by hierarchy.<ref name="New Catholic Encyclopedia 1967, p. 366">New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol 3, Catholic University of America: Washington, D.C. 1967, p. 366</ref> The Synod of Gangra (345) condemned a false asceticism whereby worshipers boycotted celebrations presided over by married clergy.<ref>The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, 1995, ed. O'Brien, Richard, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, p. 290</ref> The Apostolic Constitutions ({{circa|400}}) excommunicated a priest or bishop who left his wife "under the pretense of piety" (Mansi, 1:51).<ref>New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol 3, Catholic University of America: Washington, D.C. 1967 p. 370</ref>

"A famous letter of Synesius of Cyrene ({{circa|414}}) is evidence both for the respecting of personal decision in the matter and for contemporary appreciation of celibacy. For priests and deacons clerical marriage continued to be in vogue".<ref>New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol 3, Catholic University of America: Washington, D.C. 1967, p. 323</ref>

"The Second Lateran Council (1139) seems to have enacted the first written law making sacred orders a direct impediment to marriage for the universal Church."<ref name="New Catholic Encyclopedia 1967, p. 366"/> Celibacy was first required of some clerics in 1123 at the [[First Lateran Council]]. Because clerics resisted it, the celibacy mandate was restated at the [[Second Lateran Council]] (1139) and the [[Council of Trent]] (1545–64).<ref name="newadvent.org">New Advent, [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03481a.htm "Celibacy of the Clergy"]</ref> In places, coercion and enslavement of clerical wives and children was apparently involved in the enforcement of the law.<ref name="ReferenceA">The Catholic Encyclopedia vol 3, New York: The Encyclopedia Press, Inc., 486</ref> "The earliest decree in which the children [of clerics] were declared to be slaves and never to be enfranchised [freed] seems to have been a canon of the Synod of Pavia in 1018. Similar penalties were promulgated against wives and concubines (see the Synod of Melfi, 1189 can. xii), who by the very fact of their unlawful connexion with a subdeacon or clerk of higher rank became liable to be seized by the over-lord".<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

In the [[Roman Catholic Church]], the [[Twelve Apostles]] are considered to have been the first [[Priesthood in the Catholic Church|priests]] and [[bishop]]s of the Church. Some say the call to be [[eunuch]]s for the sake of Heaven in Matthew 19 was a call to be sexually continent and that this developed into celibacy for priests as the successors of the apostles. Others see the call to be sexually continent in Matthew 19 to be a caution for men who were too readily divorcing and remarrying.

The view of the Church is that celibacy is a reflection of life in Heaven, a source of detachment from the material world which aids in one's relationship with God. Celibacy is designed to "consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to "the affairs of the Lord, they give themselves entirely to God and to men. It is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church's minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a6.htm|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100111024309/https://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a6.htm|url-status=dead|title=Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, 1579|archivedate=11 January 2010}}</ref> In contrast, [[Saint Peter]], whom the Church considers its first [[Pope]], was married given that he had a [[Healing the mother of Peter's wife|mother-in-law whom Christ healed]] (Matthew 8). But some argue that Peter was a widower, due to the fact that this passage does not mention his wife, and that his mother-in-law is the one who serves Christ and the apostles after she is healed.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2013-07-08 |title=Was Saint Peter Married? |url=https://catholicstraightanswers.com/was-saint-peter-married/ |access-date=2022-10-04 |website=Catholic Straight Answers |language=en}}</ref> Furthermore, Peter himself states: "Then Peter spoke up, 'We have left everything to follow you!' 'Truly I tell you', Jesus replied, 'no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much'" ([[Mark 10]],28–30).

Usually, only celibate men are ordained as priests in the [[Latin Church]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Canon 1037 |url=https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P3R.HTM |publisher=Vatican |work=1983 [[Canon law (Catholic Church)|Code of Canon Law]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080218110036/https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P3R.HTM |archive-date=18 February 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Canon 1031 |url=https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P3Q.HTM |publisher=Vatican |work=1983 [[Canon law (Catholic Church)|Code of Canon Law]]|access-date=9 March 2008}}</ref> Married clergy who have converted from other Christian denominations can be ordained Roman Catholic priests without becoming celibate.<ref>{{cite web |last=Cholij| first=Roman |title=Priestly Celibacy in Patristics and in the History of the Church|url=https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cclergy/documents/rc_con_cclergy_doc_01011993_chisto_en.html |publisher=Vatican |year=1993}} A priest who is married at time of ordination continues to be married, with full obligation to all expectations of the marriage, but cannot remarry and remain in the practice of the priesthood.</ref> Priestly celibacy is not ''doctrine'' of the Church (such as the belief in the [[Assumption of Mary]]) but a matter of discipline, like the use of the vernacular (local) language in Mass or Lenten fasting and abstinence.<ref name="Catholic.com Article">{{cite web|title=Celibacy and the Priesthood |url=http://www.catholic.com/library/Celibacy_and_the_Priesthood.asp |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081205100019/http://www.catholic.com/library/Celibacy_and_the_Priesthood.asp |archive-date=5 December 2008 }}</ref> As such, it can theoretically change at any time though it still must be obeyed by Catholics until the change were to take place. The [[Eastern Catholic Churches]] ordain both celibate and married men. However, in both the East and the West, bishops are chosen from among those who are celibate.<ref>{{cite web | last =Niebuhur | first =Gustav | title =Bishop's Quiet Action Allows Priest Both Flock And Family | work=The New York Times | date =16 February 1997 | url =https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07EEDD133FF935A25751C0A961958260}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title = 1990 Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium, Canons 285, 373, 374, 758| publisher=Libreria Editrice Vaticana |year= 1990| url = http://www.gwo.cz/pravda/1990_Code_of_Canon_Law.htm}}</ref> In Ireland, several priests have fathered children, the two most prominent being bishop [[Eamonn Casey]] and [[Michael Cleary (priest)|Michael Cleary]].

[[File:Carmelitas de la comunidad de Nogoyá.jpg|thumb|Discalced Carmelites from Argentina, 2013]]
The classical heritage flourished throughout the Middle Ages in both the Byzantine Greek East and the Latin West. When discerning the population of Christendom in medieval Europe during the Middle Ages, [[Will Durant]], referring to Plato's [[The Republic (Plato)|ideal community]], stated on the ''oratores'' (clergy):<ref name="Durant">{{cite book |first=Will |last=Durant |year=2005 |title=Story of Philosophy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=suLI7RoaBEEC&pg=PA34 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=978-0-671-69500-2}}</ref>

"The clergy, like Plato's guardians, were placed in authority not by the suffrages of the people, but by their talent as shown in ecclesiastical studies and administration, by their disposition to a life of meditation and simplicity, and (perhaps it should be added) by the influence of their relatives with the powers of state and church. In the latter half of the period in which they ruled [AD&nbsp;800 onwards], the clergy were as free from family cares as even Plato could desire; and in some cases it would seem they enjoyed no little of the reproductive freedom accorded to the guardians. Celibacy was part of the psychological structure of the power of the clergy; for on the one hand they were unimpeded by the narrowing egoism of the family, and on the other their apparent superiority to the call of the flesh added to the awe in which lay sinners held them".<ref name="Durant"/>

With respect to clerical celibacy, Richard P. O'Brien stated in 1995, that in his opinion, "greater understanding of human psychology has led to questions regarding the impact of celibacy on the human development of the clergy. The realization that many non-European countries view celibacy negatively has prompted questions concerning the value of retaining celibacy as an absolute and universal requirement for ordained ministry in the Roman Catholic Church".<ref name="Catholicism 1995, p. 291">The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, 1995, ed. O'Brien, Richard, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, p. 291</ref>