The Church requires her Priests to be pure in body as well as in soul, and to “present their bodies a living victim, holy, well-pleasing unto God.”514
Our Savior and His Apostles, though recognizing matrimony as a holy state, have proclaimed the superior merits of voluntary continency, particularly for those who consecrate their lives to the sacred ministry. “There are eunuchs who have made themselves such for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. He who can take it, let him take it.”515 Our Lord evidently recommends here the state of celibacy to such as feel themselves called to embrace it, in order to attain greater perfection.
St. Paul gives the reason why our Savior declares continency to be a more suitable state for His ministers than that of matrimony: “He who is unmarried careth for the things of the Lord—how he may please God. But he who is married is solicitous about the things of the world—how he may please his wife—and he is divided.”516
Jesus Christ manifestly showed His predilection for virginity, not only by always remaining a virgin, but by selecting a Virgin-Mother and a virgin-precursor in the person of St. John the Baptist, and by exhibiting a special effection for John [pg 400] the Evangelist, because, as St. Augustine testifies, that Apostle was chosen a virgin and such he always remained.
Not only did our Lord thus manifest while on earth a marked predilection for virgins, but He exhibits the same preference for them in heaven; for the hundred and forty-four thousand who are chosen to sing the New Canticle and who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth are all virgins, as St. John testifies. (Apoc. xiv.)
The Apostle of the Gentiles assures us that he led a single life, and he commends that state to others: “I say to the unmarried, and to the widows it is good for them if they so continue, even as I.”517
There is no evidence from Scripture that any of the Apostles were married except St. Peter. St. Jerome says that if any were married they certainly separated from their wives after they were called to the Apostolate. Even St. Peter, after his vocation, did not continue with his wife, as may be inferred from his own words: “Behold, we have left all things, and followed Thee.”518 Among “all things” must be reckoned the fellowship of his wife, for he could hardly say with truth that he had left all things if he had not left his wife. Our Savior immediately after enumerates the wife among those cherished objects, the renunciation of which, for His sake, will have its reward.519
St. Paul declares that “a Bishop must be sober, just, holy, continent.”520 And writing to Timothy, whom he had consecrated Bishop, he says: “Be thou an example to the faithful ... in charity, in faith, in chastity.”521 In another place, he enumerates chastity among the virtues that should [pg 401] adorn the Christian minister: “In all things let us exhibit ourselves as the ministers of God in much patience, ... in chastity.”522
Although celibacy is not expressly enforced by our Savior, it is, however, commended so strongly by Himself and His Apostles, both by word and example, that the Church felt it her duty to lay it down as a law.
The discipline of the Church has been exerted from the beginning in prohibiting Priests to marry after their ordination. St. Jerome observes that “Bishops, Priests and Deacons are chosen from virgins or widowers, or, at least, they remain perpetually chaste after being elevated to the priesthood.”523 To Jovinian he writes: “You certainly admit that he cannot remain a Bishop who begets children in the episcopacy; for, if convicted, he will not be esteemed as a husband, but condemned as an adulterer.”524 Again he says: “What will the churches of the East, of Egypt and of the Apostolic See do, which adopt their clergy from among virgins, or if they have wives, they cease to live as married men.”525
St. Epiphanius declares that “he who leads a married life is not admitted by the Church to the order of Deacon, Priest, Bishop or sub-Deacon.”526
In the primitive days of the Church, owing to the scarcity of vocations among the unmarried, married men were admitted to sacred orders, but they were enjoined, as we learn from various canons, to live separated from their wives after their ordination.
This discipline, it is true, was relaxed to some extent in favor of a portion of the clergy of the Oriental Church, who were permitted to live with [pg 402] their wives if they happened to espouse them before ordination; but, like the Priests of the Western Church, the Eastern clergy were forbidden to contract marriage after their ordination. It is important also to observe that the unmarried clergy of the East are held in much higher esteem by the people than the married Priests.
It cannot, indeed, be denied that at certain epochs of the Church's history, especially in periods of disordered society, there were too many instances of the violation of clerical celibacy. But the repeated violations of a law are no evidence of its non-existence. Whenever the voice of the Church could be heard it always spoke in vindication of the law of priestly chastity.
Let me now call your attention to the propriety and advantages of clerical celibacy.
First—The Priest is the representative of Jesus Christ. He continues the work begun by his Divine Master. It is his duty to preach the word, to administer the Sacraments, and, above all, to consecrate the Body and Blood of Christ and to distribute the same to the faithful. Is it not becoming that a chaste Lord should be served by chaste ministers?
If the Jewish Priests, while engaged in their turn in offering the sacrifice of animals in the Temple, were obliged to keep apart from their wives, should not the Priests of the New Law, who offer daily the sacrifice of the Immaculate Lamb, practise continual chastity?
If David and his friends were not permitted to eat the bread of Proposition till he had avowed that for the three preceding days they had refrained from women,527 how pure in body and soul should be the Priest who daily partakes of that [pg 403] living Bread of which the bread of Proposition was but the type; and if the people at Mount Sinai were forbidden to come near their wives for three days before receiving the Law,528 should not they whose office it is to preach the Law at all times abstain altogether?
Thorndyke, an eminent Protestant Divine, in his work entitled, Just Weights and Measures, makes the following observation: “The reason for single life for the clergy is firmly grounded, by the Fathers and canons of the Church, upon the precept of St. Paul, forbidding man and wife to depart unless for a time, to attend unto prayer (I. Cor. vii. 5). For, Priests and Deacons being continually to attend upon occasions of celebrating the Eucharist, which ought continually to be frequented; if others be to abstain from the use of marriage for a time, then they always.”529
Second—Writers frequently discuss the secret cause of the marvelous success which marks the growth of the Catholic Church everywhere in spite of the most formidable opposition. Some ascribe this progress to her thorough organization; others to the far-seeing wisdom of her chief pastors. Without undervaluing these and other auxiliaries, I incline to the belief that, under God, the Church has no tower of strength more potent than the celibacy of her clergy. The unmarried Priest, as St. Paul observes (1 Cor. vii.), is free to give his whole time undivided to the Lord, and can devote his attention not to one or two children, but to the entire flock whom he has begotten in Christ Jesus, through the Gospel; while the married minister is divided between the cares of his family and his duties to the congregation. “A single life,” says Bacon, “doth well with churchmen; for, charity [pg 404] will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool.”530
Third—The world has hitherto been converted by unmarried clergymen, and only by them will it continue to be converted. St. Francis Xavier and St. Francis de Sales could not have planted the faith in so many thousands of souls if they were accompanied on their journeys by their wives and children. Of all the gems that adorn the priestly diadem, none is so precious and indispensable in the eyes of the people as the peerless jewel of chastity. Without this pearl the voice of a Hyacinthe “becomes as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal;” with it, the humblest missioner gains the hearts of multitudes.
Everybody is aware of the numerous conversions to Christianity effected by St. Francis Xavier in Japan in the sixteenth century. After the lapse of many years from the death of St. Francis, when a French squadron was permitted to enter the Japanese ports, a native Christian, named Peter, having learned that French Priests were on board, put their faith to the test by proposing to them these three questions: “Are you followers of the great Father in Rome? Do you honor Mary, the Blessed Virgin? Have you wives?” The French priests having satisfied their interrogator on these points, and especially on the last, Peter and his companions fell at the missioners' feet, exclaiming with delight “Thanks, thanks! they are virgins and true disciples of our Apostle Francis.”531
A contemporary writer has wittily remarked that “perhaps the most ardent admirer of hymeneal rites would cheerfully admit that he could not [pg 405] conceive St. Paul or St. John starting on a nuptial tour, accompanied by the latest fashions from Athens or Ephesus, and the graceful brides whom they were destined to adorn. They would feel that Christianity itself could not survive such a vision as that. Nor could the imagination, in its wildest moods, picture the majestic adversary of the Arian Emperor attended in his flight up the Nile by Mistress Athanasius, nor St. John Chrysostom escorted in his wanderings through Phrygia by the wife of his bosom arrayed in a wreath of orange-blossoms. Would Ethelbert have become a Christian if St. Augustine had introduced to him his lady and her bridesmaids?”532
We frequently hear of unmarried Bishops and Priests laying down their lives for the faith in China and Corea and imprisoned in Germany. Heroic sacrifices such as these are, however, too much to be expected from men enjoying the domestic luxury and engrossed by the responsibility of a wife and children.
But does not St. Paul authorize the marriage of the clergy when he says: “Have we not power to carry about a woman, a sister, as well as the rest of the Apostles?”533 The Protestant text mis-translates this passage by substituting the word wife for woman. It is evident that St. Paul does not speak here of his wife, since he had none; but he alludes to those pious women who voluntarily waited on the Apostles, and ministered to them in their missionary journeys.
It is also objected that the Apostle seems to require that a Bishop be “the husband of one wife.”534 The context certainly cannot mean that a Bishop must be a married man, for the reason [pg 406] already given, that St. Paul himself was never married. The sense of the text, as all tradition testifies, is that no candidate should be elected to the office of Bishop who had been married more than once. It was not possible in those days always to select single men for the Episcopal office. Hence the Church was often compelled to choose married persons, but always with this restriction, that they had never contracted nuptials a second time. They were obliged, moreover, if not widowers, to live separated from their wives.
Others adduce against clerical celibacy these words of St. Paul: “In the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error, ... forbidding to marry.”535 This passage, however, alludes to the Ebionites, Gnostics and Manicheans, who positively taught that marriage is sinful. The Catholic Church, on the contrary, holds that matrimony is not only a lawful state, for those who are called to embrace it, but that it is also a Sacrament, and that the highest degree of holiness is attainable in conjugal life.
Some go so far as to declare continency impracticable. Our dissenting brethren in the ministry are so uxoriously inclined that, perhaps, for this reason they dispute the possibility, as well as the privilege, of Priests to remain single. But in making this assertion they impugn the wisdom of Jesus Christ and His Apostle, who lived in this state and recommended it to others; they slander consecrated Priests and nuns, and they unwittingly question the purity of their own unmarried sisters, daughters and sons. How many men and women are there in the world who spend years, nay, their whole lives, in the single state? And [pg 407] who shall dare to accuse such a multitude of incontinency?
Nor should any one complain of the severity of the law of clerical celibacy, since the candidate voluntarily accepts the obligations after mature consideration.
Finally, it cannot be urged against celibacy that it violates the Divine precept to “increase and multiply;” for this command surely cannot require all marriageable persons to be united in wedlock. Otherwise, bachelors and spinsters would also be guilty of violating the law. The number of men and women consecrated to God by vows of chastity forms but an imperceptible fraction of the human family, their proportion in the United States, for instance, being only one individual to about every four thousand. Moreover, it is an incontrovertible fact that the population increases most in those countries in which the Catholic clergy exercise the strongest influence; for there married people are impressed with the idea that marriage was instituted not for the gratification of the flesh, but for the procreation and Christian education of children.
Matrimony is not only a natural contract between husband and wife, but it has been elevated for Christians, by Jesus Christ, to the dignity of a Sacrament: “Husbands,” says the Apostle, “love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and delivered Himself up for it, ... so also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.... For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall adhere to his wife and they shall be one flesh. This is a great sacrament: but I speak in Christ and in the Church.”536
In these words the Apostle declares that the union of Christ with His Church is the type or model of the bond subsisting between man and wife. Now the union between Christ and His Church is supernatural and sealed by Divine grace. Hence, also, is the fellowship of a Christian husband and wife cemented by the grace of God. The wedded couple are bound to love one another during their whole lives, as Christ has loved His Church, and to discharge the virtues proper to the married state. In order to fulfil these duties special graces of our Savior are required.
The Fathers, Councils and Liturgies of the [pg 409] Western and the Oriental Churches, including the Coptic, Jacobite, Syriac, Nestorian and other schismatic bodies, which for upwards of fourteen centuries have been separated from the Catholic communion, all agree in recognizing Christian marriage as a Sacrament.
Hence the Council of Trent, speaking of Matrimony, says: “Christ Himself, the Institutor and Perfector of the venerable sacraments, merited for us by His passion the grace which might perfect that natural love, and confirm that indissoluble union, and sanctify the married; as the Apostle Paul intimates, saying: ‘Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church, and delivered Himself for it;’ adding shortly after: ‘This is a great sacrament, but I speak in Christ and in the Church.’ (Ephes. v.) Whereas, therefore matrimony, in the evangelical law, excels in grace, through Christ, the ancient marriages; with reason have our holy Fathers and Councils and the tradition of the universal Church always taught that it is to be numbered among the sacraments of the new law.”537
The Gospel forbids a man to have more than one wife, and a wife to have more than one husband. “Have you not read,” says our Savior, “that He who made man in the beginning made them male and female? And He said, for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. Wherefore they are no more two, but one flesh.”538 Our Lord recalls marriage to its primitive institution as it was ordained by Almighty God. (Gen. ii.) Now, marriage in its primitive ordinance was the union of one man with one woman, for Jehovah created but one helpmate [pg 410] to Adam. He would have created more, if His design had been to establish polygamy. The Scripture says that “man shall adhere to his wife,”—not his wives. It does not declare that they shall be three or more, but that “they shall be two in one flesh.”
Hence Mormonism, unhappily so prevalent in the United States, is at variance with the plain teachings of the Gospel, and is consequently condemned by the Catholic Church. Polygamy, wherever it exists, cannot fail to be a perpetual source of family discord and feuds. It fosters deadly jealousy and hate among the wives of the same household; it deranges the laws of succession and primogeniture and breeds rivalry among the children, each endeavoring to supplant the other in the affections and the inheritance of their common father.
Marriage is the most inviolable and irrevocable of all contracts that were ever formed. Every human compact may be lawfully dissolved but this. Nations may be justified in abrogating treaties with each other; merchants may dissolve partnerships; brothers will eventually leave the paternal roof, and, like Jacob and Esau, separate from one another. Friends, like Abraham and Lot, may be obliged to part company. But by the law of God the bond uniting husband and wife can be dissolved only by death. No earthly sword can sever the nuptial knot which the Lord has tied; for, “what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”
It is worthy of remark that three of the Evangelists, as well as the Apostle of the Gentiles, proclaim the indissolubility of marriage and forbid a wedded person to engage in second wedlock during the life of his spouse. There is, indeed, [pg 411] scarcely a moral precept more strongly enforced in the Gospel than the indissoluble character of marriage validly contracted.
“The Pharisees came to Jesus, tempting Him and saying: Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? Who, answering, said to them: Have ye not read that He who made man from the beginning made them male and female? And He said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together let no man put asunder. They say to Him: Why, then, did Moses command to give a bill of divorce and to put away? He said to them: Because Moses, by reason of the hardness of your heart, permitted you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another committeth adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away committeth adultery.”539 Our Savior here emphatically declares that the nuptial bond is ratified by God Himself, and hence that no man, nor any legislation framed by men, can validly dissolve the contract.
To the Pharisees interposing this objection, if marriage is not to be dissolved, why then did Moses command to give a divorce, our Lord replies that Moses did not command, but simply permitted the separation, and that in tolerating this indulgence the great lawgiver had regard to the violent passion of the Jewish people, who would fall into a greater excess if their desire to be divorced and to form a new alliance were [pg 412] refused. But our Savior reminded them that in the primitive times no such license was granted.
He then plainly affirms that such a privilege would not be conceded in the New Dispensation, for He adds: “I say to you: whosoever shall put away his wife and shall marry another committeth adultery.” Protestant commentators erroneously assert that the text justifies an injured husband in separating from his adulterous wife and in marrying again. But the Catholic Church explains the Gospel in the sense that, while the offended consort may obtain a divorce from bed and board from his unfaithful wife, he is not allowed a divorce a vinculo matrimonii, so as to have the privilege of marrying another.
This interpretation is confirmed by the concurrent testimony of the Evangelists Mark and Luke and by St. Paul, all of whom prohibit divorce a vinculo without any qualification whatever.
In St. Mark we read: “Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another committeth adultery against her. And if the wife shall put away her husband and be married to another she committeth adultery.”540
The same unqualified declaration is made by St. Luke: “Every one that putteth away his wife and marrieth another committeth adultery; and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.”541 Both of these Evangelists forbid either husband or wife to enter into second wedlock, how aggravating soever may be the cause of their separation. And surely, if the case of adultery authorized the aggrieved husband to marry another wife, those inspired penmen would not have failed to mention that qualifying circumstance.
[pg 413]Passing from the Gospels to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, we find there also an absolute prohibition of divorce. The Apostle is writing to a city newly converted to the Christian religion. Among other topics he inculcates the doctrine of the Church respecting Matrimony. We must suppose that as an inspired writer and a faithful minister of the Word he discharges his duty conscientiously, without suppressing or extenuating one iota of the law. He addresses the Corinthians as follows: “To them that are married not I, but the Lord, commandeth that the wife depart not from her husband. And if she depart that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife.”542 Here we find the Apostle, in his Master's name, commanding the separated couple to remain unmarried, without any reference to the case of adultery. If so important an exception existed, St. Paul would not have omitted to mention it; otherwise he would have rendered the Gospel yoke more grievous than its Founder intended.
We must, therefore, admit that, according to the religion of Jesus Christ, conjugal infidelity does not warrant either party to marry again, or we are forced to the conclusion that the vast number of Christians whose knowledge of Christianity was derived solely from the teachings of Saints Mark, Luke and Paul were imperfectly instructed in their faith.
Nor can we suppose that St. Matthew gave to the married Christians of Palestine a privilege which St. Paul withheld from the Corinthians; for then the early Christian Church might have witnessed the disedifying spectacle of aggrieved [pg 414] husbands seeking in Judea for a divorce from their adulterous wives which they could not obtain in Corinth, just as discontented spouses, in our times, sue in a neighboring State for a legal separation which is denied them in their own. Christ is not divided, nor do the Apostles contradict one another.
The Catholic Church, following the light of the Gospel, forbids a divorced man to enter into second espousals during the life of his former partner. This is the inflexible law she first proclaimed in the face of Pagan Emperors and people and which she has ever upheld, in spite of the passions and voluptuousness of her own rebellious children.
Henry VIII., once an obedient son and defender of the Church, conceived in an evil hour, a criminal attachment for Anne Boleyn, a lady of the queen's household, whom he desired to marry after being divorced from his lawful consort, Catherine of Arragon. But Pope Clement VII., whose sanction he solicited, sternly refused to ratify the separation, though the Pontiff could have easily forseen that his determined action would involve the Church in persecution, and a whole nation in the unhappy schism of its ruler. Had the Pope acquiesced in the repudiation of Catherine, and in the marriage of Anne Boleyn, England would, indeed, have been spared to the Church, but the Church herself would have surrendered her peerless title of Mistress of Truth.
When Napoleon I. repudiated his devoted wife, Josephine, and married Marie Louise, of Austria, so well assured was he of the fruitlessness of his attempt to obtain from the Holy See the sanction of his divorce and subsequent marriage [pg 415] that he did not even consult the Holy Father on the subject.
A few years previously Napoleon appealed to Pius VII. to annul the marriage which his brother Jerome had contracted with Miss Patterson of Baltimore. The Pope sent the following reply to the Emperor: “Your majesty will understand that upon the information thus far received by us it is not in our power to pronounce a sentence of nullity. We cannot utter a judgment in opposition to the rules of the Church, and we could not, without laying aside those rules, decree the invalidity of a union which, according to the Word of God, no human power can sunder.”
Christian wives and mothers, what gratitude you owe to the Catholic Church for the honorable position you now hold in society! If you are no longer regarded as the slave, but the equal of your husband; if you are no longer the toy of his caprice and liable to be discarded at any moment, like the women of Turkey and the Mormon wives of Utah; but if you are recognized as the mistress and queen of your household, you owe your emancipation to the Church. You are especially indebted for your liberty to the Popes who rose up in all the majesty of their spiritual power to vindicate the rights of injured wives against the lustful tyranny of their husbands.
How opposite is the conduct of the fathers of the so-called Reformation, who, with the cry of religious reform on their lips, deformed religion and society by sanctioning divorce.
Henry VIII. was divorced from his wife, Catherine, by Cranmer, the first Reformed Primate of England.
Luther and his colleagues, Melanchthon and Bucer, permitted Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, [pg 416] to have two wives at the same time.543 Karlstadt, another German Reformer, justified polygamy.544
Modern Prussia is now reaping the bitter fruits of the seeds that were then sown within its borders. Seventy-five per cent. of the marriages now contracted outside of the Catholic Church in Berlin are performed without any religious ceremony whatever. A union not bound by the strong ties of religion is easily dissolved.
This subject excites a painful interest in our own country, in consequence of the facility with which divorce from the marriage bond is obtained in many of our States. We have here another exemplification of the dangerous consequences attending a private interpretation of the sacred text. When Luther and Calvin proclaimed to the world that “it was not wise to prohibit the divorced adulterer from marrying again,”545 they little dreamed of the fruitful progeny which was destined before long to spring from this isolated monster of their creation. There are already about thirty causes which allow the conjugal tie to be broken, some of which are of so trifling a nature as to provoke merriment were it not for the gravity of the subject, which is well calculated to excite alarm for the moral and social welfare of our country.
Persons are divorced by the courts not only for infidelity, but also without even the shadow of Scripture authority—for alleged cruelty, intemperance, [pg 417] desertion, prolonged absence, mental incapacity, sentence to the penitentiary, incompatibility of temper and such other causes as the court, in its discretion, may deem sufficient.
For the year ending June, 1874, seventeen hundred and forty-two applications for divorce were presented in the State of Ohio. If such is Ohio's record, what must be the matrimonial condition of Indiana, which is called the paradise of discontented spouses.
In Connecticut there were, in 1875, four thousand three hundred and eighty-five marriages, and four hundred and sixty-six divorces from the marriage bond. The number of divorces obtained in the same State during the last fifteen years has reached five thousand three hundred and ninety-one. This is the record of a State whose public school system is considered the most thorough and perfect in the country. The statistics given of Ohio and Connecticut will enable us to form some idea of the fearful catalogue of divorces annually obtained in the United States.
There are some who regard the Catholic Church as too severe in proclaiming the absolute indissolubility of marriage. But it should be borne in mind that it is not the Church, but the Divine Founder of the Christian religion, that has given us the law. She merely enforces its observance.
The law, how rigorous soever, is mercy itself, when compared with the cruel consequences which follow from the easy concession of divorce.
The facility with which marriage is annulled is most injurious to the morals of individuals, of the family and of society. It leads to ill-assorted and hasty marriages, because persons are less circumspect in making a compact which may be afterwards dissolved almost at will. It stimulates a [pg 418] discontented and unprincipled husband or wife to lawlessness, quarrels and even adultery, well knowing that the very crime will afford a pretext and legal grounds for a separation. It engenders between husband and wife fierce litigations about the custody of their offspring. It deprives the children of the protecting arm of a father, or of the gentle care of a mother, and too frequently consigns them to the cold charity of the world; for the married couple who are wanting in conjugal love for one another are too often destitute also of parental affection. In a word, it brings into the household a blight and desolation which neither wealth nor luxury can repair.
There is but one remedy to this social distemper, and that is an absolute prohibition of divorce a vinculo, in accordance with the inflexible rule of the Gospel and of the ancient Church. In Catholic countries divorces are exceedingly rare, and are obtained only by such as have thrown off the yoke of the Church. If the sacred laws of Matrimony are still happily observed by so large a portion of the Protestant community, the purity of morals is in no small measure due to the presence among them of the Catholic religion, which exercises a beneficial influence even over those who are outside the pale of her communion, like the sun, whose benignant light and heat are felt even in those secluded spots which his rays can but obliquely and dimly penetrate.