To Marry or To Burn: The Question of Celibacy

These are revised sections of chapter two of Properties of Blood, Part II.  I realized, in working over the two chapters on marriage, that I had written too much on history and not enough on basic questions.  I had also too much followed the devices and desires of my own heart, which is not much sympathetic to the celibate life.  I beg my readers forbearance in reading these extracts and ask them to recall that it is part of a far-ranging survey of marriage customs whose object is to put Christian marriage in the broader context.

The whole chapter has to be revised--which I am in the process of doing--but I think I shall move on to the Household, to get some relief from marital difficulties.

To Marry or To Burn

One basic question faced by early Christians was whether nor not to marry at all.  St. Paul praises celibacy but grants marriage as an indulgence to the weak.  It is understandable that Christians who expected Christ's imminent return might regard marriage as pointless.  Despite his relegation of marriage to a secondary status, Paul does not approve of a man living with his wife in celibacy.  Celibacy represents an ideal of perfection, but marriage is for most of us a necessity that both enriches our lives and protects us from sin.  The opening of the 7th chapter of I Corinthians captures much of his thought.

Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.  Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.

Note the phrase every man.  Marriage is not to be the rare exception but the norm.  The celibate life is best, but marriage, which is preferable to fornication, imposes duties of both kindness and sexual intercourse.  In his “Epistle to Polycarp,” St. Ignatius follows Paul’s lead, in praising celibacy but celebrating marriage as a true union to be solemnized in the presence of a bishop.  Once a marriage was made, it was not to be broken off lightly or treated as a legal fiction.  

Every movement, whether political, intellectual, or religious, develops factions and sects, some of which derive their peculiar teachings from external sources.  Christianity was no exception.  From almost the beginning, the Stoics’ opposition to non-rational pleasures and their advocacy of self-control and chastity had impressed itself upon Christian moral theology.  Major Stoic thinkers were agreed that sexual pleasure was a moral problem--it was not to be actively pursued by a wise man, but they differed on  the manner of solution.  The sect’s founder, Zeno, argued for promiscuity and nudity as a means of escape, while later Stoics more practically taught moral restraint and chastity. On the other hand, the eclectic Stoic Hierocles advocated marriage, in general, as the practice adopted by wise men.

It is sometimes said that the early Christian emphasis for celibacy reflects the influence of some puritanical Judaic sect, such as the Essenes, who are said to have banned marriage and denigrated women, but this is simply speculation.  Our best sources for the Essenes, Pliny the Elder, Josephus, and Philo, agree that celibacy was required  and women were excluded from the community, though Josephus, writing in the first century A.D., also knows of an Essene group that strictly regulated but did not prohibit marital sex. (BJ II.8}:

Moreover, there is another order of Essens, (8) who agree with the rest as to their way of living, and customs, and laws, but differ from them in the point of marriage, as thinking that by not marrying they cut off the principal part of human life, which is the prospect of succession; nay, rather, that if all men should be of the same opinion, the whole race of mankind would fail. However, they try their spouses for three years; and if they find that they have their natural purgations thrice, as trials that they are likely to be fruitful, they then actually marry them. But they do not use to accompany with their wives when they are with child, as a demonstration that they do not marry out of regard to pleasure, but for the sake of posterity. Now the women go into the baths with some of their garments on, as the men do with somewhat girded about them. And these are the customs of this order of Essenes.

The Essenes were hardly alone in viewing sex—and even marriage—as impediments to sanctity.  A number of Middle Eastern cults encouraged or required the castration of priests, and, in the early Christian centuries, a variety of “Gnostic” sects enjoined celibacy.  Celibacy was also either demanded or advocated by influential heretics such as Marcion, Tatian, and Montanus, and even among orthodox Christians there were many who viewed the body itself as shameful and sexual acts as disgusting.  In Pagans and Christians, Robin Lane Fox, in surveying these excesses, warns against the tendency to see them as normative, sensibly pointing out “most Christian authors did remember that the highest ideals did not apply to everyone but to each according to his capacity,” adding, “We must do justice to this range of opinion, which was headed by Paul himself.”

The celibate life has been the highest Christian ideal from the beginning of the Church, but in time it became clear that a communal life requiring celibacy and communal property was only possible for the dedicated minority willing to take monastic vows.  As the concept of the sacraments developed, marriage was elevated to the sacramental level.  Sex even within marriage, however, was not given an unqualified license.   Abstinence except when children are intended was the ideal, though it is, nonetheless, not wrong to pay the marriage debt.  In his De bono coniugali, (6)  Augustine says that excessive demands, which reflect incontinence, should not be made, but even in such a case the sin is venial.  Augustine praises the mature couple whose affections grow once they have decided to abstain from intercourse.[9]  In the early centuries of the Church, sex even within marriage was typically looked upon as an irrational and even degrading passion and impediment to sanctity. The most careful exposition is given by St. Thomas, who argues that sexual acts can be without sin if performed in a manner that is rational and consistent with nature.[Summa Th II-III , 153 .]  

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Although the revolution did not take place all at once, the Christian doctrine of "one flesh" influenced virtually every aspect of marriage.  Celibacy remained the highest ideal in the Middle Ages, but marriage was an institution created by God for the procreation of the human race, though the pursuit of sexual pleasure for its own sake was condemned even in marriage.  Since most of the information on the secondary status of marriage and the sinfulness of conjugal pleasure comes from clerics, one may well doubt how representative such opinions were in any other class.  The most generous interpretation of marital intercourse is offered by St. Alphonsus dei Liguori,  a 17^th century casuist often regarded as the most comprehensive moral theologian of the Catholic Church.  St. Alphonsus wrestles mightily with the question of whether marital copulation for the purpose of pleasure is illicit.  After surveying the authorities in painful detail, he makes several distinctions.  He concludes that such pleasure is sinful only if the sole purpose is pleasure, because it is a perversion of nature to put means (pleasure) before the end or purpose (procreation), but it is not a sin if pleasure is merely anticipated by a couple that wishes to have children.  But, even in the cases where marital relations are sought only for pleasure, the sin is venial.