The Apostle of the Gentiles assures us that he led a single life, and he commends that state to others: “I say to the unmarried, and to the widows it is good for them if they so continue, even as I.”[517]
There is no evidence from Scripture that any of the Apostles were married except St. Peter. St. Jerome says that if any were married they certainly separated from their wives after they were called to the Apostolate. Even St. Peter, after his vocation, did not continue with his wife, as may be inferred from his own words: “Behold, we have left all things, and followed Thee.”[518] Among “all things” must be reckoned the fellowship of his wife, for he could hardly say with truth that he had left all things if he had not left his wife. Our Savior immediately after enumerates the wife among those cherished objects, the renunciation of which, for His sake, will have its reward.[519]
St. Paul declares that “a Bishop must be sober, just, holy, continent.”[520] And writing to Timothy, whom he had consecrated Bishop, he says: “Be thou an example to the faithful ... in charity, in faith, in chastity.”[521] In another place, he enumerates chastity among the virtues that should [pg 401] adorn the Christian minister: “In all things let us exhibit ourselves as the ministers of God in much patience, ... in chastity.”[522]
Although celibacy is not expressly enforced by our Savior, it is, however, commended so strongly by Himself and His Apostles, both by word and example, that the Church felt it her duty to lay it down as a law.
The discipline of the Church has been exerted from the beginning in prohibiting Priests to marry after their ordination. St. Jerome observes that “Bishops, Priests and Deacons are chosen from virgins or widowers, or, at least, they remain perpetually chaste after being elevated to the priesthood.”[523] To Jovinian he writes: “You certainly admit that he cannot remain a Bishop who begets children in the episcopacy; for, if convicted, he will not be esteemed as a husband, but condemned as an adulterer.”[524] Again he says: “What will the churches of the East, of Egypt and of the Apostolic See do, which adopt their clergy from among virgins, or if they have wives, they cease to live as married men.”[525]
St. Epiphanius declares that “he who leads a married life is not admitted by the Church to the order of Deacon, Priest, Bishop or sub-Deacon.”[526]
In the primitive days of the Church, owing to the scarcity of vocations among the unmarried, married men were admitted to sacred orders, but they were enjoined, as we learn from various canons, to live separated from their wives after their ordination.
This discipline, it is true, was relaxed to some extent in favor of a portion of the clergy of the Oriental Church, who were permitted to live with [pg 402] their wives if they happened to espouse them before ordination; but, like the Priests of the Western Church, the Eastern clergy were forbidden to contract marriage after their ordination. It is important also to observe that the unmarried clergy of the East are held in much higher esteem by the people than the married Priests.
It cannot, indeed, be denied that at certain epochs of the Church's history, especially in periods of disordered society, there were too many instances of the violation of clerical celibacy. But the repeated violations of a law are no evidence of its non-existence. Whenever the voice of the Church could be heard it always spoke in vindication of the law of priestly chastity.
Let me now call your attention to the propriety and advantages of clerical celibacy.