Celibacy by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 4, 1915

Celibacy

By C. M. S.

“Rome Never Changes”—No. 15.

Celibacy

(Concluded)

MARRIAGE and the Sabbath are the two oldest institutions known to man. God is the author of both. Both were instituted before the fall; and against both the hand of God’s enemy has been raised in bitter and relentless warfare. The history of Satan’s substitutes for marriage, as practiced in different parts of the world, is hardly fit reading for any one who would keep his mind pure. When men forgot God and glorified him not as God, they were given over to their own evil ways. What, among many peoples, was substituted for God’s institution of marriage is enough to make one blush for the race. A few pages of such history is enough to convince the most incredulous. What was substituted for the Sabbath was equally dishonoring to God, because of what was implied in the substitute sabbath—the displacing of God’s great memorial and the patronage of a system of worship founded on idolatry and carnal wickedness. No system of worship was ever more nearly universal than sun worship, or had connected with it rites more grossly demoralizing. He who sought to displace God’s holy memorial Sabbath with a sabbath dedicated to an idolatrous system of worship, and he who cast opprobrium upon the marriage institution by immoral substitutions in the heyday of heathenism, is one and the same person—the archenemy of God and man.

We call attention again to the testimony of the Spirit through Paul, quoted in the previous article, in which it was

declared that “some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; . . . forbidding to marry.” 1 Tim. 4:1-3. It was said concerning this matter that “the Spirit speaketh expressly.” The Spirit spoke expressly because there was a very definite danger threatening the apostolic church. The influences of heathenism were already at work upon the members of the Christian organization, and God, foreseeing the campaign planned by the adversary, published this faithful warning. “Forbidding to marry” was but one of the plans of Satan against the body of Christ. The practice of celibacy was already in vogue among the religious leaders of heathenism. Paganism had its vestal virgins; Rome has its nuns. In the pagan systems of worship, the priests were forbidden to marry; and into the Christian organization that practice was brought by half-converted pagans. Babylon of old was the mother of many strange things, and one of them was celibacy. Concerning this we read:—

Now, while Semiramis, the real original of the Chaldean Queen of Heaven, to whom the “unbloody sacrifice” of the mass was first offered, was in her own person, as we have already seen, the very paragon of impurity, she at the same time affected the greatest favor for that kind of sanctity which looks down with contempt on God’s holy ordinance of marriage. The Mysteries over which she presided were scenes of the rankest pollution; and yet the higher orders of the priesthood were bound to a life of celibacy, as a life of peculiar and pre-eminent holiness. Strange though it may seem, yet the voice of antiquity assigns to that abandoned queen the invention of clerical celibacy, and that in the most stringent form. . . . Every scholar knows that when the worship of Cybele, the Babylonian goddess, was introduced into pagan Rome, it was introduced in its primitive form, with a celibate clergy. When the Pope appropriated to himself so much that was peculiar to the worship of that goddess, from the very same source, also, he introduced into the priesthood under his authority the binding obligation of celibacy. . . . The records of all nations where priestly celibacy has been introduced, have proved that, instead of ministering to the purity of those condemned to it, it has only plunged them in the deepest pollution. The history of Tibet, and China, and Japan, where the Babylonian institute of priestly celibacy has prevailed from time immemorial, bears testimony to the abominations that have flowed from it. The excesses committed by the celibate priests of Bacchus in pagan Rome in their secret Mysteries, were such that the senate felt called upon to expel them from the bounds of the Roman Republic. (Livy, lib. 39, 8 and 18, Vol. V, pages 196-207.) . . . When Pope Paul V meditated the suppression of the licensed brothels in the “Holy City,” the Roman Senate petitioned against his carrying his design into effect, on the ground that the existence of such places was the only means of hindering the priests from seducing their wives and daughters. (Thuanus, Historia, lib. 39, cap. 3, Vol. II, page 483.)—Hislop’s “Two Babylons,” pages 219, 220, Popular Edition, 1907.

We find that in Athens there were virgins “maintained at the public expense, who were strictly bound to single life.” The Scandinavian priestesses of Freya were bound to perpetual virginity—an order of nuns. The vestal virgins of pagan Rome occupied a similar position, and were bound to a single life. Strange as it may seem, we find the same celibate institution in Peru, under the reign of the Incas. These celibate priestesses were known as the virgins of the sun. “One is astonished,” says the historian Prescott, “to find so close a resemblance between the institutions of the American Indian, the ancient Roman, and the modern Catholic.”—“History of Peru,” Vol. I, page 103.

Prescott is at a loss to account for this resemblance, but the prophet Jeremiah furnishes the master key to the mystery: “Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord’s hand, that made all the earth drunken.” Jer. 51:7. Concerning the Babylonian origin of all the religions of heathendom, Hislop says:—

The statement of this text [Jer. 51:7] can be proved to be a literal fact. It can be proved that the idolatry of the whole earth is one, that the sacred language of all nations is radically Chaldean, that the great gods of every country and clime are called by Babylonian names, and that all the paganisms of the human race are only a wicked and deliberate, but yet most instructive corruption of the primeval gospel first preached in Eden, and, through Noah, afterwards conveyed to all mankind. The system, first concocted in Babylon, and thence conveyed to the ends of the earth, has been modified and diluted in different ages and countries. In Papal Rome only is it now found nearly pure and entire. [Italics his.]—“Two Babylons,” page 224.

We learn from Josephus that the pagan practice of celibacy was adopted first by the Essenes. (“Wars of the Jews,” book 2, chap. 8, sec. 2.) It was then taken up by the early heretics, and became, in the Middle Ages, the rule in the corrupted church. Throughout the first three centuries there was no such thing in the Christian church as compulsory celibacy. It was not until A. D. 305 at the Spanish Council of Elvira, that a decree was promulgated forbidding priests to marry; but this decree did not command those already married to put away their wives. The first canon of the Council of Neocæsarea declared, “If a priest marries after he has been ordained, he ought to be degraded.”—Du Pin, Vol. I, pages 593, 594. The eighth canon reads: “If a clergyman’s wife commit adultery, he ought to divorce her upon pain of being deprived of his ministry.”—Id., page 597. The proposition of enforcing celibacy was brought up in the Council of Nice; but an Egyptian bishop, Paphnutius, opposed the proposition so eloquently that it was left “to the judgment of those so disposed, by mutual consent to leave their wives.”—Gelasius, “History of the Nicene Council,” lib. 2, cap. 39, Conc. II, 246, 248, Paris, 1671-2. Sozomen, who compiled his history of the council about 443, bears similar testimony (Sozomen, lib. 1, cap. 23), as do also Socrates and Du Pin. Paphnutius warned the council that the passing of such a decree was very likely to hurt the church and result in unchastity. Socrates, in his “Ecclesiastical History” (lib. 2, cap. 43) bears this plain testimony:—

There have been among them [the clergy] many bishops who have had children by their lawful wives during their episcopate.

Sozomen, writing of Spyridion, Bishop of Trimiton, in Cyprus, says: “He was married and had children.”—Lib. I, cap. II. Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene, refused to separate from his wife, and declared, “I hope and pray that we may have many and virtuous children.”—Milman’s “History of Christianity,” page 453, N. Y., 1841. From Bede we learn that Gregory the Great, Pope of Rome, who died in 605, was the great-grandson of another Pope, namely, Felix, who was Bishop of Rome early in the sixth century. (Eccl. Hist., lib. 2, cap. 1.) There was much diversity, both in opinion and in practice, during the centuries that followed, until the matter was finally settled by the Council of Trent (session 24, canon 9).

Leo IX, who was elected in 1048, began the work of actually enforcing celibacy among the various orders of the priesthood. During the synod held at Rome in the year 1074 by Gregory VII, it was decreed that no priest should marry, and that such as were married should either abandon their wives or relinquish the priesthood. This decree was not acquiesced in with any degree of grace or alacrity, but was opposed on the part of many with most violent and sturdy denunciation, and it took the canons of the Council of Trent to put an end to the active opposition and put that pagan seal indelibly and universally on the Roman Catholic Church. The Council of Trullo, held in the tower of the emperor’s palace, A. D. 692, in its thirteenth canon, prohibits “the separation of presbyters, deacons, or subdeacons from their wives, or binding them to chastity before they are ordained.”—Du Pin, Vol. II, page 24, Dublin, 1724. In the ninth century the wives of priests were openly acknowledged, and were known as priestesses. It is recorded that the priest’s wife took her place near her husband and not far from the altar; and the wife of the bishop claimed precedency over a countess. See Michelet’s “History of France,” Vol. I, pages 193, 194. N. Y., 1869.

Many of the clergy of Gregory’s time (1074) looked with contempt upon his decree regarding celibacy. The attempts, up to that time, to bring celibacy universally into the church, had already resulted in much confusion and immorality. The priests of his time were living either with faithful wives or with women who were not their wives. The laws enacted by Gregory’s synod were accompanied with the most ferocious threatenings. Some of the clergy “yielded, pretending that it was right, for the sake of gain and vain boasting, but many added adultery to incontinence. Moreover, few regarded continency.”—Matthew Paris, at A. D. 1074. Others declared that Gregory contradicted the Saviour and Paul; that he would compel them to bid defiance to the dictates of nature, and live like angels while they were still men. See Du Pin, Vol. II, page 212. Some declared plainly, “We prefer abandoning our bishoprics, our abbeys, and our cures; let him keep his benefices.”—Michelet’s “History of France,” Vol. I, page 195. Du Pin gives a vivid insight into the bitterness of the contention. He shows that at Cambray this bitterness burned so fiercely that a man who said that married priests should not celebrate mass or perform any divine office, and that no man ought to aid them in such duties, was cast into the flames and consumed. (Vol. II, page 213.) “The Archbishop of Mentz held a synod at Erfurt to persuade his priests to give up their wives; his efforts filled them with anger, and they threatened to depose or kill him. Such was their wrathful and rebellious obstinacy that he found it convenient to defer the obnoxious measure for a time.”—“The Papal System,” Cathcart, page 255. These citations, coupled with the decree of the Council of Trent, demonstrate that Rome has changed, notably and radically, in this matter of the celibacy of the clergy; and the history of that institution in the church demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that that institution has hurt the church, just as Paphnutius declared it would.

The reason assigned for enforcing this practice upon the priesthood was that celibacy was a holier state than marriage. Tertullian extolled virginity to the sky, and exhausted language in vilifying marriage and praising celibacy. Jerome, it is said, “growled at the very name of matrimony, and discharged against the institution, in all its bearings, torrents of vituperation and sarcasm. The duty of a husband, he declared, was “incompatible with the duty of a Christian.” Siricius, the Roman Pontiff, called marriage filthy, and characterized married persons as “carnal and incapable of pleasing God.” Bellarmine declares that marriage “carnalizes the whole man, soul and body.” A faction of the Council of Trent defined marriage as “a state of carnality.” See Edgar’s “Variations of Popery,” pages 487-507.

The Roman Church has thus fastened the stigma of impurity upon an institution which God himself established, and calls an unchaste thing what the Holy Spirit has declared “honorable in all.” A human invention that had been dragged through the pollutions of paganism for many centuries was thus placed above the first ordinance instituted by Jehovah himself and practiced by his prophets and apostles. In view of such testimony and such facts, what becomes of the boast that Rome never changes?

C. M. S.