Marriage and Celibacy in Concert [Commentary on Browne: Article XXXII]

According to the Article, celibacy—defined as “the state of not being married”^[1]—is “not commanded by God’s Law” for “Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.” A number of commentators on the Articles have claimed this teaching is uncontroversial and that even the Church of Rome, which practices clerical celibacy, would grant as much: “This subject admits of the briefest treatment, for the statement made in the Article will scarcely be denied by the most ardent advocate of the rule of clerical celibacy; nor has the Roman Church ever committed herself to the assertion that it is more than an ecclesiastical law.”^[2] However, if Browne’s treatment is any indication, this was not always the case—on his account, Romanists have at times contorted themselves to avoid the plain meaning of key Scripture texts on the subject, arguing, for example, that when 1 Timothy 3:2 says bishops must be “the husband of one wife,” Paul actually “speaks figuratively, meaning that a bishop should have but one diocese.”^[3] Such outlandish glosses are not likely to be employed by Romanists today, for while there were once “diverse opinions [within the Roman Church] on whether celibacy was a church law or intrinsic to the priesthood,”^[4] the Church has since declared that “it is not demanded by the very nature of the priesthood, as is apparent from the practice of the early Church and from the traditions of the Eastern Churches.”^[5] This teaching can be said to build on the Council of Trent, which takes care to anathematize those who say “clerics constituted in sacred orders…are able to contract marriage…notwithstanding the ecclesiastical law”^[6] rather than condemning the practice of clerical marriage per se. As an ecclesiastical law, the rule of clerical celibacy “is one of those matters that a particular Church can decide for itself,”^[7] and in this Article the Anglican church has revoked it, on the basis that

The experience of several centuries had shown to our Reformers the grave evils that flowed from the rigid rule which had been customary; and they were perfectly justified in holding that the national Church was competent to settle the matter for herself, and that she was well within her rights in altering her rule.^[8]

It is left to each clergyman—as it is for all Christians—to decide whether marriage or celibacy will “serve better to godliness.” All human beings are made with “instincts implanted in us by the Creator, and sanctified to us by His blessing,” to marry and procreate.^[9] The gift of continence, on the other hand—understood to mean “the act of refraining from any sexual act”^[10]—is “a peculiar gift,” one that “comes from God to some people only and cannot be made to order.”^[11] For this reason, marriage “was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication, that those persons who have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.”^[12] Many in the Christian tradition go further, teaching that those without the gift of continence have a “duty” to marry.^[13] With this in mind, it is odd to speak, as so many in our time have, of “the gift of singleness,”^[14] as singleness in itself is not a gift—continence is a gift, and one that most people do not have.

When we consider that the gift of continence is rare, it is perhaps unsurprising that the state of virginity/celibacy has historically been highly regarded in the Christian tradition, so much so that the Council of Trent condemns those who say that virginity and celibacy are not superior to marriage: “If any one saith, that the marriage state is to be placed above the state of virginity, or of celibacy, and that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity, or in celibacy, than to be united in matrimony; let him be anathema.”^[15] (More than a millennium before Trent, Jovinian was condemned as a heretic for this precise teaching, that “virgins, widows, and married women, once they have been washed in Christ, are of the same merit, if they do not differ in other works.”)^[16] Protestants have generally rejected the claim that virginity/celibacy has greater merit before God than marriage,^[17] but at the same time, many are willing to say that virginity/celibacy is superior to marriage in some sense: “Single life, for many causes, is the best, I grant.”^[18] It must be understood, however, that virginity/celibacy is better than marriage only insofar as it facilitates greater devotion to God, and not because of any inherent quality of its own. This is how Browne, drawing on the teachings of Christ and St. Paul, assesses the matter: “They had spoken of a single life as more favourable to piety, inasmuch as it separated more from worldly distractions and gave more leisure for attending to the things of the Lord.”^[19] In truth, although it may be easier to practice greater devotion to God in the state of virginity/celibacy, it is nevertheless the case that the heights of devotion are equally open to married and single alike:

It [virginity] is, then, a state of life wherein, if all things be answerable in the parties that embrace it, there are fewer occasions of distractions from God, and more opportunities of attaining to the height of excellent virtue, than in the opposite estate of marriage; yet so, as that it is possible for some married men so to use that estate, that they may be no way inferior to any that are single.^[20]

Gregory of Nazianzus says as much in his funerary oration in praise of Basil of Caesarea:

When all are eminent, the honour is clearly due to those who brought them up. This is proved by the blessed roll of priests and virgins, and of those who, when married, have allowed nothing in their union to hinder them from attaining an equal repute, and so have made the distinction between them to consist in the condition, rather than the mode of their life.^[21]

Christians, then, should not hesitate to marry out of fear that in doing so they will consign themselves to a life of lesser virtue. Marriage and celibacy alike are as virtuous or vicious as we make them. What is more, given that most are not blessed with the rare gift of continence, it is in marriage that the vast majority of people will find the more virtuous life. Let us therefore be guided by whether we judge ourselves to have that gift, and choose accordingly.

Notes

1. Jimmy Akin, “What Are Celibacy, Chastity, and Continence? 9 Things to Know and Share,” National Catholic Register, 26 January 2014, https://www.ncregister.com/blog/what-are-celibacy-chastity-and-continence-9-things-to-know-and-share. See also Philip Kosloski, “What is the difference between chastity, celibacy, and continence?” Aleteia, 3 August 2019, https://aleteia.org/2019/08/03/what-is-the-difference-between-chastity-celibacy-and-continence. ↑
2. Gibson, Articles, 696. See also Beaven, Articles, 98; Richard Field, Of the Church, vol. IV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1852), 154–58; Forbes, Articles, 627; Baker, Articles, 181; Maclear and Williams, Articles, 376; Kidd, Articles, 247; Bicknell, Articles, 393; and Joseph Hall, The Honour of the Married Clergy, in More and Cross, Anglicanism, 446–47. ↑
3. See also Waite, Articles, 466. ↑
4. John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2013), 228. ↑
5. Presbyterorum Ordinis, 7 December 1965, Documents of the Second Vatican Council, The Holy See, Ch. III, “The Life of Priests,” Art. 16, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19651207_presbyterorum-ordinis_en.html. ↑
6. Waterworth, Trent, Twenty-fourth Session, Canon IX, 195, italics mine. ↑
7. Bicknell, Articles, 390. See also Burnet, Articles, 469; Tomline, Christian Theology, 445; Forbes, Articles, 627; Baker, Articles, 182; and Gibson, Articles, 703. ↑
8. Gibson, Articles, 703–704. See also O’Donnoghue, Articles, 255; Burnet, Articles, 470, 473; and Beaven, Articles, 98. For more on the evils and abuses that arose from compulsory clerical celibacy in the medieval period, see Henry Charles Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, vol. I, 3^rd ed. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907), 408–450. ↑
9. See also O’Donnoghue, Articles, 253; Waite, Articles, 467–68; Burnet, Articles, 469–70, 474; and McCain et al., Concordia, “The Augsburg Confession,” Article XXIII, “Of the Marriage of Priests,” https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/of-marriage-of-priests/. ↑
10. Kosloski, “Chastity, celibacy, and continence,” https://aleteia.org/2019/08/03/what-is-the-difference-between-chastity-celibacy-and-continence. See also Akin, “Celibacy, Chastity, and Continence,” https://www.ncregister.com/blog/what-are-celibacy-chastity-and-continence-9-things-to-know-and-share. ↑
11. Bicknell, Articles, 393. See also Beaven, Articles, 98; Maclear and Williams, Articles, 376; McCain et al., Concordia, “Defense of the Augsburg Confession,” Article XXIII, “Of the Marriage of Priests,” Section 18, https://bookofconcord.org/defense/of-marriage-of-priests/; and Calvin, Institutes, II.8.42–43, 257–58. ↑
12. Bray and Keane, 1662 Book of Common Prayer, 313. Compare “An Homily of the State of Matrimony” in Homilies, 472. ↑
13. See, e.g., Waite, Articles, 466; Bicknell, Articles, 389 note; John Witte, Jr., From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 5, 24, 49–50; McCain et al., Concordia, “Augsburg Confession,” Article XXIII, https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/of-marriage-of-priests/, and “Defense of the Augsburg Confession,” Article XXIII, Section 14, https://bookofconcord.org/defense/of-marriage-of-priests/; Calvin, Institutes, II.8.42–43, 257–58; and the Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 138, https://thewestminsterstandard.org/westminster-larger-catechism/#136. ↑
14. See, e.g., Katelynn Luedke, “The Good Unwanted Gift of Singleness,” Desiring God, 18 November 2015, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-good-unwanted-gift-of-singleness. For a helpful corrective to this tendency, see Mark Snoeberger, “The Gift of Singleness,” Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, 5 July 2022, https://dbts.edu/2022/07/05/the-gift-of-singleness/. ↑
15. Waterworth, Trent, Twenty-fourth Session, Canon X, 195. Compare Donovan, Catechism of the Council of Trent, 228, and Herbert Thurston, “Celibacy of the Clergy,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03481a.htm. ↑
16. David G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 26. See also Philip L. Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments: The Sacramental Theology of Marriage from Its Medieval Origins to the Council of Trent (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 107–110. ↑
17. See, e.g., Richard Field, Of the Church, vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1847), 297, and McCain et al., Concordia, “Defense of the Augsburg Confession,” Article XXIII, Section 26, https://bookofconcord.org/defense/of-marriage-of-priests/. Some denigrate outright the practice of celibacy as being of heathen origin. See, e.g., Cloquet, Articles, 457; Middleton, Articles, 215; and Thomas, Articles, 431. ↑
18. John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, vol. III, ed. John Ayre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), 421. See also Burnet, Articles, 474, 476; Forbes, Articles, 628–29; Herbert Thorndike, The Reformation of the Church of England, in More and Cross, Anglicanism, 447; and McCain et al., Concordia, “Defense of the Augsburg Confession,” Article XXIII, Section 38, https://bookofconcord.org/defense/of-marriage-of-priests/. Some, on the other hand, teach that marriage is superior to virginity/celibacy, as does Waite, Articles, 469. ↑
19. See also Bicknell, Articles, 389. ↑
20. Field, Of the Church, vol. I, 297–98. ↑
21. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 43, § 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310243.htm. ↑