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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 1879675" data-attributes="member: 5328">There is a discussion of the issue in the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03481a.htm" target="_blank">Catholic Encyclopedia</a>.The upshot is that various authorities such as popes and councils have been enjoining bishops, priests, deacons, and subdeacons to celibacy since at least the 4th century AD. But a serious attempt to impose this as law throughout the Latin Rite did not occur until the Hildebrandtine Reforms c. AD 1059-1123. This made the marriage of the higher clergy illegal (but not invalid), and imposed sanctions on teh children and wives of clergymen (ie. excluding the children from the clergy, or from succeeding to their fathers' benefices).The marriages of the higher clergy were not declared invalid by clear and explicit legislation until the Fourth Lateran Council AD 1215. Until that date clergymen could still marry (though they were forbidden to do so).The Catholic Encyclopaedia does not say so, but the celibacy of the clergy was a Roman custom and at odds with the custom of other parts of western Christendom. In some parts of France there were until the Hildebrandtine Reforms hereditary parishes, canonries, and bishoprics. The rise and spread of the power of the popes led to increasing standardisation from AD 800 onwards, a process that was not complete until AD 1215 or so. As part of this standardisation, the power of the pope to appoint bishops replaced the other systems: heredity, election by the canons, election by the congregation, and nomination by the benefactor who created the church. Some historians have seen the celibacy of the clergy as a scheme on the part of hte pope to bring the clergy under their sway by cutting off their roots in the community. But I think that on the whole it seems more likely that the reformers of 1059-1123 were trying sincerely to correct genuine abuses, such as hereditary parish priests with no training whatsoever. The celibacy of the clergy (a) seemed right and proper to people with a background in Rome, where it was a custom of long standing, and (b) seemed necessary to eradicate hereditary church offices, which observably promoted blatantly unfit priests and prelates.</blockquote>

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