Clerical Celibacy in Scripture and Tradition

Vicente Carducho, Ordination of John of Matha

In modern dialogue between Catholics, Protestants, and even Orthodox, it’s widely assumed that the Latin West’s discipline of clerical celibacy is a complete medieval novelty. Often impressed by the “ancient ethos” of Eastern Christianity’s married priesthood, interlocutors on all sides tend to look at the Roman Church’s unmarried priesthood as something foreign to the teaching of Scripture and the tradition of the first millennium. However, in this article, I’m going to challenge that perspective. My goal is to demonstrate that the West’s discipline is not contrary to Scripture and the practice of the ancient Church, but rather perfectly harmonious with both.

To begin, what does the apostolic faith actually teach about the relationship between marriage and the pastoral ministry? The majority of Protestants (and even some Eastern Christians) are often quick to answer this question by citing passages like 1 Timothy 3:2-4, which state that a bishop must be “the husband of one wife,” and able to keep “his children submissive.” They’ll point out how Paul even draws a connection between a man’s ability to manage his own household and his qualification for managing the household of God (1 Tim 3:4-5). Non-Catholics especially love drawing attention to the fact that St. Peter, the first pope,¹ was married (Lk 4:38), and that 1 Corinthians 9:5 seems to imply that most if not all of the Apostles had wives too. Nor was this exclusive to apostolic times, we’re informed. As Fr. Christian Cochini has meticulously documented, the first five hundred years of Christianity were full of popes, patriarchs, bishops, priests, and deacons who were all married while serving in ministry.² Indeed, it is an undeniable historical fact that having married men serve as ministers in the Catholic Church goes back to her very apostolic foundation. So doesn’t that already settle the matter? Based on everything that’s just been said, aren’t our non-Catholic friends correct that the Church’s modern prohibition of married priests and bishops actually contradicts the apostolic deposit, and therefore must be done away with?

Like most matters of historical theology, it’s not that simple. Prima facie, this should be quite obvious. Is it really plausible that the Church, starting with Jesus and the Apostles, had absolutely no problem with married clerics whatsoever, until one day, for no legitimate reason, a medieval pope just decided otherwise? That story doesn’t sound quite right, because it’s not. Instead, there’s a very important detail that gets left out of most popular-level discussions about the history of married men in the priesthood, and that detail is this: while clerics may have been allowed to be married in the early Church, they were almost never allowed to live as married men. That is, to be ordained as a Catholic minister in antiquity meant that you left everything behind, including your marital rights.

In the West, this discipline that all clerics are to practice perfect sexual continence, regardless of their marital status, has been official law since at least the 4th century. In a papal decretal entitled Dominus Inter, Pope St. Siricius (or Pope St. Innocent I), declared the following:

Here is what has been decided, first of all, with regard to bishops, priests and deacons: those who have the responsibility of the divine sacrifice, and whose hands give the grace of baptism and consecrate the Body of Christ, are ordered, by divine Scripture, and not only ourselves, to be very chaste; the Fathers themselves had ordered them to observe bodily continence. Let us not omit this point but explain the reason for it: How would a bishop or a priest dare to preach continence and integrity to a widow or virgin, or exhort spouses to the chastity of the conjugal bed, if he himself is more concerned about begetting children for the world than begetting them for God? This is why we read in Scripture regarding these three ranks that the ministers of God are under the obligation to observe purity; it is obvious that this is always a necessity for them; they must either give baptism or offer the sacrifice. Would an impure man dare to soil what is holy when holy things are for holy people?

PL 13, 1184a-86a. P. Coustant, Epistolae, pp. 689-91, qtd in Fr. Cochini, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy, pp. 14-15.

According to this 4th century pope and his Roman Synod, that all Catholic ministers are to observe perfect continence isn’t a law that originates with them, but rather with the Apostles themselves. Bishops, priests, and deacons are “ordered by divine Scripture” to “observe bodily continence,” which they do through preserving “the chastity of the conjugal bed,” and refraining from “begetting children.” In the 5th century, this “law of continence” was reiterated by one of the greatest men who ever ascended the Throne of St. Peter, Pope St. Leo the Great:

Indeed, if those who do not belong to the Order of clerics are free to enjoy carnal relations and beget children, we must, in order to manifest what is the purity of a perfect continence, not permit carnal relations even to the subdeacons, “so that those who have a wife be as if they did not have one” and those who do not have one remain single. If it befits this order— the fourth starting from the top—to observe [continence], how much more so the first, second and third must observe it; let no one be deemed apt for the Levitical or priestly dignity or for the supreme dignity of the episcopate if it is found that he has not yet put an end to conjugal pleasure.

Epist. ad Anastasium Thessalonicensem episcopum, IV. PL 54, 672b-73a, qtd in Fr. Cochini, p. 260.

In this letter, St. Leo is not only confirming, but extending what he believes is an ancient and apostolic discipline: that God’s ministers are required to be perfectly continent. Leo believes this law should apply not only to bishops, priests, and deacons, but even to minor clerics like subdeacons! Quite a teaching from the man whom the Eastern Orthodox Church hails as the “Champion of Orthodoxy, and teacher of holiness.”³ Clearly, while married men may have been allowed into the Roman clergy during this time, they were expected to live as though they were not married. This is wildly different from the modern practice of most Protestant sects, wherein married ministers are given a free license to use their marital rights as they please, and are even encouraged to do so.

Nor was it just the Romans who thought this way in the early Church. Around the year 305, the first ever Spanish synod, the Council of Elvira, decreed that it is “good absolutely to forbid the bishops, priests, and the deacons, i.e. all the clerics in the service of ministry, to have relations with their wives and procreate children; should anyone do so, let him be excluded from the honor of the clergy.”⁴ In the year 314, the bishops of Gaul declared at the first Council of Arles, “we exhort our brothers to make sure that priests and deacons have no relations with their wives, since they are serving the ministry every day. Whoever will act against this decision will be deposed from the honor of the clergy.”⁵ In the year 390, the Council of Carthage ruled that “those who are at the service of the divine sacraments, had to observe perfect continence so as to obtain in all simplicity what they asked from God: what the apostles taught, and what antiquity itself observed, we also have to keep.”⁶ Like the Romans, it seems the Spanish, Gauls, and Carthaginians of the 4th century believed that mandatory clerical continence was a discipline that originates with the Apostles.

However, is that actually true? Did this discipline of clerical continence really begin with Jesus and the Apostles, or was it a later “accretion”? In order to answer this question, let’s start by unpacking what St. Paul meant when he said that a bishop ought to be “the husband of one wife” (1 Tim 3:2). This passage is often appealed to by non-Catholics when they argue that clerical continence or celibacy is not only not biblical, but even anti-biblical, since Paul seemingly requires pastors to be married. But if we really want to understand what the Apostle meant by these words, we have to consider what he says just two chapters later about the requirements for another ministry in the Church, the so-called “order of widows”:

Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, being the wife of one husband.

1 Timothy 5:9

In this passage, St. Paul is speaking about the qualifications a woman must have to be enrolled in the order of widows, a proto-monastic group of women that existed in the early Church. His first requirement is that she be at least sixty years old, which he explains is because “the passions” of younger widows “draw them away from Christ” if they don’t remarry (1 Tim 5:11). Clearly, this isn’t intended to be a definitive ban on young women living lives of celibacy, otherwise Paul would be contradicting his own counsel in 1 Corinthians 7:8, “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am.” Rather, Paul’s assumption seems to be that, generally, young widows have already proven themselves unfit for the celibate life (which is why they got married in the first place), and so because “they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1 Cor 7:9). In order to avoid scandal, it seems Paul only wanted to admit women to the order of widows if there was a reasonable expectation they would remain faithfully celibate. This sheds light on St. Paul’s second requirement for being enrolled among the widows, which is that the woman be “the wife of one husband.” This obviously can’t refer to a widow having been monogamous, as polyandry was unheard of in the Greco-Roman world. Instead, being “the wife of one husband” means that the woman never remarried after her husband’s death, which, once again, demonstrates her ability to handle a life of continence or celibacy in the order of widows.

With this in mind, let’s take another look at 1 Timothy 3:2. According to the nearly universal patristic witness, the above given interpretation of widows being wives “of one husband” applies equally to St. Paul’s requirement that a cleric be “the husband of one wife.” In other words, rather than monogamous marriage being the Apostle’s requirement for pastoral ministry, the earliest Christians agreed that what’s actually required is that the man never remarried after his wife’s death, which demonstrates his ability to handle sexual continence. This was the interpretation given by Origen of Alexandria (A.D. 185-253), who, in the 3rd century, wrote that the “qualification” for clerics laid down by St. Paul was, “a man who has been once married rather than he who has twice entered the married state.”⁷ Tertullian of Carthage (A.D. 160-240) likewise affirmed in the same century that the Apostle, “suffers not men twice married to preside over a Church,” since second marriages are “obstructive to holiness.”⁸ In the 4th century, St. Jerome (A.D. 342-420) attests that, “[Paul] does not say: Let a bishop be chosen who marries one wife and begets children; but who marries one wife,” even going on to declare, “You surely admit that he is no bishop who during his episcopate begets children.”⁹ St. Ambrose of Milan (A.D. 339-397) further explains:

The Apostle… lays down that [a bishop] should be the husband of a single wife, not in order to exclude him from the right of marriage (for this is beyond the force of the precept), but that by conjugal chastity he may preserve the grace of his baptismal washing; nor again that he may be induced by the Apostle’s authority to beget children in the priesthood; for he speaks of having children, not of begetting them, or marrying again.

St. Ambrose, Epistle 63, 63.

According to these ancient witnesses, St. Paul’s letter to St. Timothy didn’t intend to prescribe a married priesthood, but rather a continent priesthood. Just as widows had to have been “the wife of one husband” in order to demonstrate their ability to handle sexual continence in the order of widows, so too did bishops have to be “the husband of one wife” in order to demonstrate their ability to handle continence in the pastoral ministry. And don’t think that this view was exclusive to the West. In the 4th century, St. John Chrysostom (A.D. 347-407), an Eastern Saint known for his praise of marriage, interpreted 1 Timothy 3:2 in a way that some might find surprising:

If then he who is married cares for the things of the world [1 Cor 7:33] and a Bishop ought not to care for the things of the world [cf. 1 Tim 3:2-3], why does he say the husband of one wife? Some indeed think that he says this with reference to one who remains free from a wife. But if otherwise, he that has a wife may be as though he had none [1 Cor 7:29]. For that liberty was then properly granted, as suited to the nature of the circumstances then existing. And it is very possible, if a man will, so to regulate his conduct. For as riches make it difficult to enter into the kingdom of Heaven, yet rich men have often entered in, so it is with marriage.

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 10 on First Timothy.

According to Chrysostom, the overall message of 1 Timothy 3:2-3 is that clerics shouldn’t be concerned about “the things of the world,” and yet, he notes that Paul says elsewhere that married men are concerned about the things of the world (1 Cor 7:33). From this, the Saint reasons that it would be fitting for pastors to either be celibate (“remain free from a wife”), or continent if they’re already married (“he that has a wife may be as though he had none”). Although this isn’t presented as a binding precept, St. John Chrysostom nonetheless falls perfectly in line with the interpretation of, “the husband of one wife,” given by the fathers cited above.

For the entire patristic tradition, then, rather than positively prescribing a married priesthood, 1 Timothy 3:2 actually demonstrates the intimate connection between continence or celibacy and the pastoral ministry. The passage reveals that Christian ministers ought not to be out getting married and having children, as is so common among Protestant sects today. Instead, like his monastic counterparts, a Christian minister is expected to be wholly devoted to “the things of the Lord, [and] how to please the Lord,” rather than, “the things of the world, [and] how to please his wife” (1 Cor 7:32-33). Thus, if we take the fathers as authoritative interpreters of Scripture, we must conclude that, while the Apostles may not have required clerical celibacy as the Church does today, they did require a kind of clerical continence. Since the days of the Apostles, a cleric, whether married or not, was expected to refrain from sexual activity during his pastorate. And the Apostles were no hypocrites. According to these same patristic sources, they too practiced what they preached on this matter.

When it comes to the issue of which Apostles were married, there’s actually a great diversity of opinion among the fathers. The only points of agreement seem to be that St. Peter was married (since this is in Scripture), St. John was not (since the fathers couldn’t fathom our Lord entrusting our Lady to a non-virgin), and St. Paul was either celibate or a widower.¹⁰ However, a point of absolute unanimity in the patristics is that, regardless of which Apostles were married, all of the ones who were observed perfect bodily continence. For example, when commenting on 1 Corinthians 9:5,¹¹ St. Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-215) taught that the Apostles “took their wives with them not as women with whom they had marriage relations, but as sisters, that they might be their fellow-ministers in dealing with housewives.”¹² Tertullian of Carthage interpreted St. Paul’s words in a similar manner, “Those women taken along by the apostles are not described by [Paul] as wives, but simply as women who were at their service, just like those who followed the Lord.”¹³ In his famous refutation of Jovinian, St. Jerome follows Tertullian’s view that, in 1 Corinthians 9:5, “the Apostle was talking about other holy women who... must not be seen as wives but, as we have said, as women who assisted [the Apostles] with their goods.”¹⁴ The great Church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea (A.D. 260-339), also had no doubt that the original disciples of Christ “abandoned their goods and what they held to be dearest to them—their wives, their children, their families—to practice poverty.”¹⁵

Where were these fathers getting this idea from? Were they just making up “apostolic continence” because they thought sex was bad? No. Consider that, from Scripture alone, we only know for sure that St. Peter was married. This is noteworthy because, in the story of the rich young man, after hearing Jesus’ teaching that “only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 19:23), it was St. Peter who replied, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (Matt 19:27). Jesus then answered, “everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (Matt 19:29). Peter, the only for-sure married Apostle, expressly tells us in Sacred Scripture that he left “everything” behind to take up the apostolic ministry, and immediately thereafter, Jesus assures him that everyone who has left “houses,” “wife,” and “children” for His name’s sake will be repaid in full. This is almost certainly how patristic writers like Eusebius came to believe that the disciples abandoned “their wives, their children, [and] their families.”

To be sure, we can glean from Matthew 8:14-17 that St. Peter wasn’t entirely removed from his family’s household during our Lord’s three year ministry. However, these words still have to mean something: “See, we have left everything and followed you.” There must be some way in which Peter left his “wife” and “children” behind in order to embrace his apostolic call. Although it’s not explicit, an expectation of continence for the Apostles makes sense here, which, as shown above, was the unanimous belief of the fathers. It’s even more likely given that this exchange between Jesus and Peter happened immediately after our Lord told His disciples:

There are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.

Matthew 19:11-12

What makes this teaching significant is that it’s very likely a reference to Isaiah 56:3-7, which prophesies an eschatological priesthood that consists of “eunuchs” and “foreigners” whose “burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar” (Isa 56:7). For Isaiah, this meant that there was going to be a radical change in the Lord’s priesthood. Whereas the old covenant priesthood depended on genealogical descent from the tribe of Levi, and specifically the line of Aaron, in the new covenant, “eunuchs,” those without the ability to procreate, will be eligible for the holy priesthood. As I’ve shown before,¹⁶ a major theme in Isaiah is the transformation of virginity and celibacy from curses to blessings. This is why the messianic seed is prophesied to come from a virginal womb (Isa 7:14), and why it’s promised that “the barren woman” will “have more children than the married woman” (Isa 54:1). All of this is because, as our Lord told the Sadducees, “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matt 22:30). Virginity and celibacy are eschatological signs of the resurrection, because not having descendants to carry on your name demonstrates your belief that, somehow, you will survive death and be able to carry it on yourself. This is almost certainly why the Lord Jesus lived a celibate life—something that was highly unusual for a young man in first century Judea. It was a symbolic gesture meant to demonstrate that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:2).

As such, by desiring His priestly ministers to be those who have left “houses,” “wife,” and “children,” those “who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,” i.e. those who observe continence, our Lord was showing that He had come to fulfill Isaiah 56’s prophecy about the new priesthood. He had come to establish the eschatological kingdom of God on earth, in which, per Isaiah, virginity and celibacy are now blessings. The kingdom in which the Lord’s priests can truly “lay aside all earthly cares,” and give themselves entirely to the service of the altar. This interpretation is confirmed just two chapters later, when, after clearing out the tables of the old Temple to make way for the Eucharistic tables of the new Temple (the Church), our Lord explicitly quoted the rest of Isaiah 56:7, “my house shall be called a house of prayer” (Matt 21:13).

So where does all of this leave us with respect to the Latin discipline of clerical celibacy? For starters, what’s written above demonstrates that this discipline is not contrary to divine revelation. Far from contradicting God’s Word, requiring all priests and bishops to be celibate is perfectly harmonious with the teaching of Scripture as interpreted by the Holy Tradition of both East and West. Secondly, although even the Latin Church recognizes that priestly celibacy is a discipline that could, in theory, change, she nonetheless affirms that the indissoluble link between sexual continence and the pastoral ministry comes from the Apostles. Thus, while the Church’s disciplinary expressions of this apostolic tradition may vary, they still must express it in some way. For the Latin Church, this means celibacy for priests and bishops, and conditional celibacy for deacons (no remarriage after his wife’s death). For the Eastern Churches, this means celibacy for bishops, and conditional celibacy (and continence) for priests and deacons.¹⁷ Clerical celibacy isn’t just a disciplinary issue, which is why Pope St. Paul VI approvingly quoted Pope St. John XXIII as saying:

It deeply hurts Us that... anyone can dream that the Church will deliberately or even suitably renounce what from time immemorial has been, and still remains, one of the purest and noblest glories of her priesthood. The law of ecclesiastical celibacy and the efforts necessary to preserve it always recall to mind the struggles of the heroic times when the Church of Christ had to fight for and succeeded in obtaining her threefold glory, always an emblem of victory, that is, the Church of Christ, free, chaste and catholic.

Pope St. John XXIII, Second address, Jan. 26, 1960: AAS 52 (1960), 226., qtd. in Pope St. Paul VI, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, 37.

The Church certainly does have the authority to make disciplinary changes, even if those disciplines originate with the Apostles themselves (as clerical continence does). But it must always be remembered that changeable disciplines exist to express the unchangeable faith. When it comes to celibacy or continence, the unchangeable faith teaches that those who embrace this way of life are important witnesses to the reality of God’s kingdom on earth. The faith also teaches that, because of this, the Church’s ministers ought to reflect the “angelic life” in at least some way. This is why the Catholic Church celebrates the discipline of clerical celibacy, has enthusiastically defended it throughout the ages, and (most likely) always will.

1. For evidence that St. Peter was, in fact, the first pope of the Catholic Church, see my article, “St. Peter: The Rock of the Church.”

2. Fr. Christian Cochini, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy, part 1, chapter 5.

3. Saint Leo the Great, Pope of Rome - Troparion, Tone 8.

4. Council of Elvira, Canon 33, qtd in Fr. Cochini, p. 159.

5. First Council of Arles, Canon 29, qtd. in Fr. Cochini, p. 161. For a discussion of the authenticity of this canon, see Fr. Cochini, pp. 161-168.

6. Council of Carthage +390, Canon 3, qtd. in Fr. Cochini, p. 267.

7. Origen, Contra Celsum, III, 48.

8. Tertullian, Ad Uxorem, I, VII.

9. St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus, 1:34.

10. For an exhaustive treatment of what the fathers believed about which Apostles were married, see Fr. Cochini, Chapter 4.

11. For a more in-depth exegesis of 1 Corinthians 9:5, see Stefan Heid, Celibacy in the Early Church: The Beginnings of a Discipline of Obligatory Continence for Clerics in East and West, pp. 24-29 [E-pub].

12. St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata III, 53.

13. Tertullian, De monogamia, 8.

14. St. Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum, I, 26.

15. Eusebius, Demonstratio evangelica, III, 5.

16. See my article, “Virginity and Monasticism.”

17. For more on the development and innovation of the Eastern Church on this discipline, see Phillip Campbell, “The Quinisext Council in Trullo and Priestly Celibacy,” Unam Sanctam Catholicam, Feb 23, 2015.