eady 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 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 fac