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From the earliest days of the Catholic Church celibacy was required upon ordination.
dailycatholic.org/issue/textonly/13newt2.htm
VATICAN (CWN) – The official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano devoted two full pages of its January 15 edition to the question of priestly celibacy. The paper’s coverage indicated that the tradition of celibacy was firmly established in the ancient Church. ** The newspaper’s coverage was based on the work of theologian Stefan Heid, who has studied recent debates on celibacy in light of the traditions established in the early years of Christianity. He concludes that the tradition dates back to the first Apostles-- who, while some (such as St. Peter) were married, observed “perfect continence.” Heid finds, from his study of the earliest Church councils, that the Apostles clearly understood Jesus to call for celibacy among priests, and thus they believed that in order to follow Jesus’ example, they themselves must become celibate. **
The reality is that priestly continence is an Apostolic Norm. From the beginning, continence was required for priest and bishop –
See :
Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy, by Fr. Christian Cochini, S.J.(Ignatius, San Francisco, 1990);
There is no question that Priestly continence was the norm from the beginning and there were no legitimate exceptions.
Here is more testimony to the truth:
Fr. George William Rutler, in an article entitled* A Consistent theology of clerical celibacy *(
Homiletic & Pastoral Review, Feb. 1989), notes that “Virginity and celibacy were not synonymous in the original ecclesiastical institution of celibacy. Those clerics whose marriages were recognized by the Church, and they were many, were expected to abstain from conjugal union after ordination. The new archeology shows that this was the case for all the Eastern Churches in the earliest centuries, and in a mitigated form later. In the Latin Church this was the clear rule throughout the first millenium, culminating in the laws of the Gregorian reform, especially as found in the First Lateran Council of 1123, and the Second Lateran Council of 1139…The discipline of the Second Lateran Council explicitly forbidding marriage after ordination was not an innovation in the observance of continence. Its prohibition of clerical marriage was only a regulation ensuring that the apostolic norm of abstinence would be better observed.”
While not a doctrine, an Apostolic “norm” means rules, including commands and prohibitions; the celibacy required for priests from the apostles was mandatory, and obligatory.
John
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