For the first twelve hundred years of the Church’s existence, priests, bishops and thirty nine popes were married. Celibacy existed in the life of the church among hermits and monks from the first century, but it was an alternative lifestyle. Medieval politics brought about the man-made discipline of mandatory celibacy for priests, and we’ll explore that issue in more depth later. For now, let’s focus on one of the greatest secrets about our Church’s history that puts the married priesthood in its proper perspective. That secret is that married priests and their wives built the foundations of the church we have today. We remember Jesus’ words: "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church." St. Peter, the pope who was closest to Jesus, was a married priest. There are three different references in the Gospels about St. Peter’s wife, his mother-in-law, and his family. All of the Apostles, except for young John, were married men with families. Married priests were the first pastors, the first bishops, the first missionaries. They carried the message of Jesus across cultures and protected it through many hardships. Married priests and their wives guided the fragile young Church through its early growth and helped it survive numerous persecutions. For the most part, Catholics have not been taught this important history about the married priesthood.

Modern Catholics are usually delighted to discover that the married priesthood is the original and the traditional priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II is even aware of this historical fact. In the summer of 1993, he publicly stated that celibacy is not essential to the priesthood. His announcement has the potential to offer the entire Church great promise towards resolving the problems that have been created by the shortage of celibate priests. Let’s begin to uncover the hidden tradition of the married priesthood by reviewing some Church history concerning married Catholic priests.

The early Church was a network of small communities located in cities throughout the Mediterranean world. Life in the early Church was marked by friendliness and a sense of joyful expectation. Jesus said that he would return and the first Christians believed that it would be soon. They formed small family-based communities and met at each other’s homes to celebrate the Mass. Married priests celebrated Mass, and strangers were invited to share in the bread and the wine. The strangers soon became friends, joined the young Church, and brought others to hear the good news of Jesus.

Sacred Scripture clearly documents that priests and bishops of the early Church were married men. In the New Testament, you will find St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy. In chapter 3, verses 1 through 7, St. Paul discusses the qualities necessary for a bishop. He describes a "kind and peaceable" father, a man with a family. As part of his description, St. Paul even asks the question, "...how can any man who does not understand how to manage his own family have responsibility for the church of God?" St. Paul established many small communities and left them in the hands of married priests and married bishops. There was no separation of hierarchy and laity in the early Church. That class distinction was to emerge in the fourth century.

Church leadership was based in service and was accountable to the people. Each member of the church had a voice in the life of the community. As we read in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 15, verse 22, group decisions were made in agreement with the whole assembly. The early Church is portrayed as a democratic church where leadership listened to the community and responded to its needs.

How did we move away from small communities and evolve to the large institution that we have today? What ever happened to the married priesthood in the Church? It started in the year 325 AD when the Roman emperor Constantine decreed that Christianity would become the new religion of the Roman Empire. Almost overnight, he took the early Church from a persecuted group of small communities to the official faith of a world power. Constantine’s intentions in adopting Christianity were not entirely spiritual. He was facing two crises in his leadership. His position was being challenged by political groups in the empire and he needed to exert his power over them. Forcing other politicians to become Christians was a test of their loyalty to him. Constantine used the new religion as a very effective tool to weed out his enemies. Christianity actually strengthened Constantine’s political power. Constantine was also faced with unifying the many peoples his armies had vanquished. Christianity was the key to establishing a new Roman identity in the conquered peoples. On the surface he made them Christians to save their souls, but this new religion was his final act of conquest over them.

With Christianity now the official religion of the Roman Empire, many things changed very quickly in the Church. Priests from the small communities were given special social rank among their new Roman friends. They no longer had to hide from Roman soldiers and fear for their lives. Instead, they received pay for their services as priests and enjoyed special privileges in Roman society. Bishops were given civil authority and assigned jurisdiction over the people in their area. Romans, who were members of the local ruling elite, quickly converted to Christianity as ordered by the Emperor. These were men trained in public life and skilled in city politics. They became priests and rapidly moved into positions of leadership in the Church. These Roman politicians, with their newly acquired priesthood, brought the impersonal and legalistic attitudes of government to the Church. The celebration of the Eucharist moved from small home gatherings to "mass" involving huge numbers of people in large buildings. The celebration of the Eucharist became a highly structured ritual that imitated the ceremonies of Rome’s imperial court. This Roman influence is the source of our vestments, genuflection, kneeling, and the strict formality of Mass. An institutional Church structure emerged mirroring that of the Roman government. Large buildings, church tribunal courts, rulers and subjects began to replace the family-based small communities that were served by a local married priesthood. The new Roman priests worked to shift authority away from the married priests in the small communities and consolidate political power around themselves. With the assistance of the Roman Empire, Church leadership became a hierarchy that moved away from its family origins and into the Roman mindset of a ruling class that was above the people in the street.

While the young Church certainly benefited from Constantine’s adoption, many of its finest qualities diminished as its leadership was infiltrated by Roman politicians. In this process of change, the primary importance of the community was soon overshadowed by a new emphasis on laws and obedience to institutional authority.

Other changes occurred that shifted emphasis away from the people and towards the preferences of the Roman politicians. The Church adopted the Roman practice of men alone holding institutional authority. We have solid historical evidence that women served as priests and pastors in the early Church. In the year 494 women’s participation in the leadership of small communities came to an end when Pope Gelasius decreed that women could no longer be ordained to the priesthood. This legislation is perhaps the strongest proof we have of women serving as spiritual leaders in the early Church. Women’s roles in the church diminished as popes and bishops marched in lockstep with the Roman authorities.

With time, celibacy took on the status of a special spirituality. Certain factions promoted it by denigrating the holiness of marriage and family life. The Roman practice of abstaining from marital relations to conserve energy before a battle or a sporting event found its way into liturgical practice. Priests were ordered to abstain from intimacy with their wives the night before they celebrated Mass. The intended message was that sexuality and marriage were no longer holy. Celibacy became yet another political opportunity in the hands of ambitious priests and bishops. They used the celibate lifestyle as a political tool to lessen the influence of the married priests. They began to equate holiness with an aversion to women and the avoidance of sexuality. A negative attitude towards women and sexuality began to emerge from the hierarchy that stood in stark contrast to the healthy family perspective that was central to the early Church. This new emphasis against women and for celibacy shifted focus away from the holiness of married love and established celibacy as the highest state of holiness. The movement away from the Church’s family-based spirituality laid the groundwork for mandatory celibacy and the eventual suppression of the married priesthood.

Here are some examples. In the year 366, Pope Damasus began the assault on the married priesthood by declaring that priests could continue to marry, but that they were not allowed to express their love sexually with their wives. This law was rejected by the priests and people alike. In the year 385, Pope Siricius abandoned his own wife and children in order to gain his papal position. He immediately decreed that all priests could no longer be married, but he was unable to enforce compliance to his outrageous new law.

With time, an unnatural sexual ethic emerged in the Church’s developing theology. This new legalistic preoccupation with sexuality was antagonistic to normal human relationships and out of step with the natural order of life as established by God. It continued to be very derogatory towards women. Here are more examples. In the year 401, St. Augustine wrote that a woman’s embraces were "sordid, filthy, and horrible." He continued by saying that, "Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of a man downwards as the caresses of a woman." This evolving legislation against sexuality and women was designed to control the intimate aspects of people’s lives, and this dynamic continues to the present day. Because they were family men, married priests could see the political agenda behind the new obsession with sexuality. Married priests stood in solidarity with the people and did their best to stave off the Roman hierarchy’s continued efforts to gain power and control over them and their families.

The people in the pews suffered the most as this hierarchical trend continued. By the twelfth century, a negative and legalistic mindset pervaded the Church’s hierarchy. Celibate bishops and priests put great emphasis on sin and guilt in an effort to establish uniformity and control. It was during this period of Church history that marriage after divorce was declared to be a sin. Up to this time, marriages were adjudicated, consentually dissolved, and individuals were free to marry again. Another political dynamic was at play here. The medieval church hierarchy was in a struggle for power with the many monarchies and royal families across Europe. With the ability to control royal marriages, Rome realized that it could influence political alliances and manipulate affairs of state. As a result of this new effort to control royal alliances, ordinary people who divorced and re-married were immediately punished by being barred from Communion and the sacraments. They were denied full participation in the life of the Church because they did not comply to the will of church authorities. It was during this time that legal status replaced spirituality as the benchmark for holiness and good standing in the institutional Church.

In this growing atmosphere of power and legalism, certain medieval popes abused their authority. In the year 1075, Pope Gregory VII declared that nobody can judge a pope except God. Introducing the concept of infallibility, he was the first pope to decree that Rome can never be in error. He had statues made in his likeness and placed them in churches throughout Europe. He insisted that everyone must obey the pope, and that all popes are saints by virtue of their association with St. Peter.

The medieval hierarchy viewed married priests as an obstacle to their quest for total control of the church and focused a two pronged attack against them. They used mandatory celibacy to attack and dissolve the influential priestly families. At the same time they claimed ownership of the churches and the lands owned by married priests. As land-owners the medieval hierarchy knew that they would gain the political power they sought in every country in Europe. An additional benefit of land ownership was money. They now had the ability to collect taxes from the faithful and charge money for performing basic sacramental ministry.

In the eleventh century, the attacks against the married priesthood grew in intensity. In 1074, Pope Gregory VII legislated that anyone to be ordained must first pledge celibacy. Continuing his unnatural attack against women, he publicly stated that "...the Church cannot escape from the clutches of the laity unless priests first escape the clutches of their wives". Within 20 years, things took a turn for the worse. In the year 1095, there was an escalation of brutal force against married priests and their families. Pope Urban II ordered that married priests who ignored the celibacy laws be imprisoned for the good of their souls. He had the wives and children of those married priests sold into slavery.

The effort to consolidate church power in the medieval hierarchy and to seize the land assets the married priest families saw its victory in 1139. The legislation that effectively ended the married priesthood came from the Second Lateran Council under Pope Innocent II. The true motivation for these laws was medieval greed and the thirst for power. The laws demanding mandatory celibacy for priests used the language of purity and holiness, but their true intent was to solidify control over the lower clergy and eliminate any challenge to the political objectives of the medieval hierarchy. One brave man, the Italian bishop Ulric of Imola, argued that the hierarchy had no right to forbid marriage to priests and urged bishops and priests not to abandon their families. He prophesied that the imposition of mandatory celibacy on priests would cause them to commit horrible sins. The recent number of highly publicized cases of clergy sexual misconduct have unfortunately proven good Bishop Ulric of Imola correct.

The respected tradition of the married priesthood was virtually destroyed by the new celibacy laws. The healthy family origins of our faith withered with the destruction of the married priesthood and the devaluation of women in the Church. The rule of law and the exercise of power were victorious over the compassionate spirit of Jesus and the family values embodied in the married priesthood.

Many of the problems we face in the Church today can be traced back to this period of our Church history, but we are not without hope. We are at the end of the 20^th century, and God seems to be calling us back to the wholesomeness of our origins as a Church. In the past 25 years, over 110,000 Roman Catholic priests, world-wide, have married and many have continued to offer their priesthood to individual Catholics and communities who request their service. One out of every three Roman Catholic priests in the United States today is a married priest. The number of celibate priests transitioning to the married priesthood continues to grow.

Father John Shuster
Married Roman Catholic Priest