Medieval Christianity: Celibacy

Celibacy is a worldwide practice that is often adopted, rarely discussed. Now, in Elizabeth Abbott's fascinating and wide-ranging history, it is examined in all its various forms: shaping religious lives, conditioning athletes and shamans, surfacing in classical poetry and camp literature, resonating in the voices of castrati, and permeating ancient mythology. Found in every society of the past, practiced by both the anonymous and the legendary (St. Catherine, Joan of Arc, Leonardo da Vinci, Elizabeth I, Gandhi), celibacy has as many stories as adherents, and Abbott weaves them into a provocative, seamless tapestry that brings history alive.

Heid presents a penetrating and wide-ranging study of the historical data from the early Church on the topics of celibacy and clerical continence. He gives a brief review of recent literature, and then begins his study with the New Testament and follows it all the way to Justinian and the Council in Trullo in 690 in the East and the fifth century popes in the West. He thoroughly examines the writings of the Bible, the early church councils, saints and theologians like Jerome, Augustine, Clement, Tertullian, John Chrystostom, Cyril and Gregory Nazianzen. He has gathered formidable data with conclusive arguments regarding obligatory continence in the early Church.

Either celibacy works for us or it works against us. It brings spiritual life to its fullness or it brings spiritual death: there is no middle ground. True celibates are totally engaged in a relationship with the Divine and given over to the task of realizing the Kingdom in the course of human history. Celibacy is a gift that can only be called forth as a living and creative presence of the Church in the world, when grounded in a life of contemplative prayer and the Evangelical Counsels, freely chosen as an authentic expression of one's life. Celibacy is a radical setting aside of a fundamental human drive - something that can only be accomplished through a living and personal relationship with the God of life. This book will help break through the cliches about celibacy to bring a new basic understanding of his great gift - a gift that is essentially a statement of a spiritual relationship, one that must be engaged and lived in a personal encounter with the God of life.

The author continues her brilliant yet controversial work started in "Finding the Treasure". This new volume examines today's postconciliar, postmodern religious life from the inside, looking at the make-up of religious life's specific identity and how it functions today.

Through a rigorous examinaton of early Church legislation, the author shows that there is a solid basis for the doctrine of clerical celibacy, and that it is not a mere disciplinary matter which the Church could change at will; and he examines how the divergence between the Churches occurred. Readers of this study will learn much about the customs of the clergy in the first centuries of Christianity, and about the development in the Western and Eastern Churches.

This work is a recapitulation of various publications by the author on the celibacy of the priest. Thus the material has been thoroughly revised and amply augmented; only the canonical treatment has been abbreviated, but in such a way as, notwithstanding, to give a complete picture of the discussion on these questions in latter years. The author was led to a detailed study of the matters discussed here by the lectures and conferences on celibacy which for years he had to give to priests and students of theology. For these, therefore in the first place, the book is intended. Most handsome would the profit be, if it can, in addition, contribute even a little to instruction and guidance.

"Many people hold the view that the vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience embody laws or regulations that govern a religious or monastic lifestyle. Diarmuid O'Murchu offers a very different understanding of the vows, based on a much more ancient tradition." "O'Murchu claims that the vows are first and foremost about values and not about laws. And in this provocative work he suggests that the Eastern concept of nonviolence is a core value of the vowed life in all the monastic traditions known to humankind." "At a time when all forms of religious commitment are being questioned, this value-oriented approach is refreshing and reassuring. O'Murchu holds up each vow like a jewel, turns it, lets light shine on it, and presents it with a new glow, a new understanding. Not only vowed religious, but everyone interested in living these core values will appreciate his insightful and challenging views." -- Book jacket.

This study overturns the traditional interpretation of Paul's thinking on marriage and celibacy. By examining established theories about the main influences on his theology, and by reconstructing the Stoic and Cynic discourse on marriage that formed its context, it offers an illuminating reassessment of both Paul's understanding of marriage and his place in the history of Christian asceticism, and provides new information for discussions of Christian sexuality and feminist evaluations of the Bible.

"Priestly Celibacy and Maturity" deals frankly but sensitively with the situation in wich many priests find themselves a few years after ordination:that of realizing that they had not chosen the celibate life freely and maturely but had ,rather, merely accepted it as a legal condition for their ordination to the priesthood .The author-drawing on his long experience both as priest and psychologist- examines the sources of his potentially tragic situation: the negative and inadequate understanding of the spiritual meaning and function of celibacy in its relationship to the total life of the priest.
But the book is constructive as well as critical.Father O'neill's theological and psychological insights lead ,not to a denigration, but to a deeper appreciation of what priestly celibacy should be and too often is not: a splendid spiritual witness of complete surrender to Christ.
Father O'neill not only exposes the negative feelings about celibacy which keep many priests from appreciating its real function in their lives,but he also makes bold,sound suggestions concerning the emotional aspects of the candidate's formation in the seminary,especially confronting the problem of "biased intake"i.e. the celibate life attracts certain types of personalities to the seminaries.He proposes changes in the Church's law for the future regarding the married diaconate as well as a married priesthood that are in the spirit of the Council's recent decisions and reflect the feelings of a good number of the Council Fathers.

It is neither the purpose nor is it the scope of this book to debate the relative merits of a celibate priesthood. This is not to say this issue is unworthy of serious reflection and discussion in the church.Rather,our purpose is to concentrate on the meaning of celibacy itself as a charism in,of, and for the church.It is hoped ,however,that what is said here will contribute in some positive way to the thinking of those who discuss the value of celibacy for the church.Their discussion must embrace three aspects of the issue: what is best for the priest himself,the faithful.and the proclamation of the Gospel.To focus attention only on one of these factors of the "celibate equation" would be an injustice to the other two.
Should celibacy ever become optional in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church,the options have to be clear to those who are being asked to make that choice.That choice,by the way,is not just the priest's to make,for it is also a choice that must be made by the faithful.As a charism of relationship,celibacy requires that both parties to that relationship are willing to assume responsibility for it.This means that the other party,the faithful,needs to be educated about the nature of celibacy as well as prospective candidates for the priesthood,not to mention those already ordained.what is said in these pages,therefore,is directed toward the laity, religious,and clergy alike.

Whether people defend or attack it, celibacy remains one of the most controversial and least understood aspects of Catholic priestly life. In this careful study, Fr. Paul Stanosz gives us a fresh approach to the issue. By interviewing seminarians and their instructors, he shows the variety of reasons that young men are drawn to priesthood and celibacy. He also makes us aware of the tremendous challenges such men face once they leave the supportive environment of their seminary community to begin their lives as diocesan priests.

In this book, Annemarie Kidder offers the theological basis for what so many Christians experience in their own lives. By examining the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, early church writings from the East and West, and later commentators, she develops a theology of the single life applicable to both women and men, Protestant, Episcopal, and Catholic. This book is a must-read for all single Christians, both those who feel called to remain single and those who, for whatever reason, find themselves single for long periods of time.

This stimulating book, written by a laywoman, has been long-awaited by all who wonder if celibacy is outdated and will certainly awaken the interest of those who have never given much thought to the subject. We have acquired a greater sense of the historical in the Church and are less ready to mistake features for essentials. For example, is celibacy merely the product of historical evolution? But the author claims that her work is neither a scholarly investigation, historical research nor theological speculation merely reflections gathered over a long period of meditation on the subject.

Mandatory celibacy for Catholic priests has been the norm for almost 900 years. Now the clergy sexual abuse scandal and the rapidly declining number of priests have pushed many of the faithful to the point of questioning this tradition. To this sometimes tense discussion of sex and power, priest and theologian Cozzens brings his signature calmness, his own gifted experience of celibate life, and his talent for distilling the spiritual truth of the human condition. Cozzens explores priestly celibacy as source of power and burden of obligation, as spiritual calling and gift of the Spirit. He examines the ancient and contemporary experience of married clergy in the Eastern churches and the Roman rite church. It is time, he concludes, to set celibacy free from canonical mandate to become what it is meant to be: a graced way of life for some, but not all, of the church's ordained ministers.

Once we understand, says von Hildebrand, how the mystical body of Christ is deeply and indissolubly bound up with the blessedness and greatness of the form of the visible church, and yet how radically it differs from all merely natural formal communities, then a person must also come to understand the greatness of the priesthood and that it presupposes the formal structure of the Church, and how all attempts to free the priesthood from its roots in Church law, ultimately lead to a destruction of the nature of the priesthood.

This book aims first and foremost to explore the historical development of medieval law dealing with sex,both within and outside of marriage.Because of the nature of the sources and the way in which the law itself developed.I have chosen to combine two rather different books into one.The first five chapters survey the development of Christian ideas about sex and society up to the midtwelfth century.Although these chapters are based upon wide reading in the published primary sources,I have relied heavily on the work of specialists in the history of late antiquity and the early middle ages,as my notes make plain.Chapter six through nine,dealing with the classical period of the cannon law,constitute the core of the book.Much of the material in those chapters(and especially in Chapters seven and eight)comes from unpublished manuscript summas,commentaries and glosses,as well as from printed texts.The scale of treatment in those four chapters in that they are based primarily on published sources and draw largely on studies by specialists in the period.The book thus comprises a monograph (Chapter 6-9) wrapped in a survey(Chapters 1-5,10-11),with a final segment(Chapter 12) that summarizes the whole thing and draws conclusions from it.-Preface.