Case for clerical celibacy: its historical development and theological foundations.

The author, a German Cardinal living in Rome and an expert on the history of Canon Law, demonstrates that celibacy for bishops, priests and deacons goes back to apostolic times, not to the twelfth century, as some have argued. Celibacy here means abstaining from "sexual relations with their wives and the pro-creation of children" (Council of Elvira, 307). The African Council (390-391) affirmed celibacy as a universal custom of the Church. The decrees of these early Councils, held only after the persecutions of Christians had ceased (in 312), are confirmations, not innovations, of customs established from the very beginning in both West and East. As St. Jerome, who lived in Jerusalem, pointed out in 406 AD, celibacy was the praxis of the Eastern Church and of the Egyptian Church as well.

All major clerics, i.e., bishops, priests and deacons, were obliged to live in perpetual continence from the day of their ordination. From the end of the fourth century onwards, the records show that Popes and Synods began to publicly refute claims of those who argued otherwise and demanded the removal of those whose practices offended against this tradition.

From the beginning of the fifth century more and more candidates for the priesthood were not married, when chosen. But through the centuries the Church has had special difficulties defending celibacy whenever heresies flourished, such as Arianism, or when certain developments took place such as the ecclesiastical benefice system (11th-12th centuries). The Council of Trent (1545-1563) repeated the teachings of the past; it also refused to declare that the law of celibacy was a purely ecclesiastical, disciplinary, law.

Cardinal Stickler devotes Chapter Three to the Eastern Church. He points out that a common legislation in disciplinary matters never existed in the East in the early centuries. When Emperor Justinian II convoked the Council of Trullo (in Constantinople) in 691, the practice of married priests and bishops had become dominant in that region. This led the Council to modify the rulings of the earlier African Council as they were integrated into their own, allowing for periodic (rather than perpetual) continence for those times they served at the altar, and for marriage before ordination for priests and deacons. Bishops continued to be selected from among the celibate only.

Modern interpreters admit the modifications. However, they claim that the Byzantine Church had the right to adapt her discipline to the needs of the day. The claim that the post-Trullo Byzantine tradition was an older, more authentic tradition than the Western one, is simply incorrect.