6. Celibacy and Elitism
14. CELIBACY
Free chosen celibacy or faithful marriage is now a choice for either sex. Celibacy after the first century, used to be reserved for martyrs, and was more respected and blessed by the church, than the married state. Marriage used to be an unholy estate, and because the clerical hierarchy, who had no experience of family life, told its people how to behave, it is no wonder that marriage fell into disrepute and disgrace. Living by grace in either of the two states, celibacy or faithful marriage is a gift from God, and to God. The currency of procreation is blessed in a faithful marriage and is no longer subject to the wicked forces that the monastic fathers of the first five hundred years after Christ, consigned to it. Their diatribes against women heaped damage and denigration on that sex which resulted in their subordination, and ruined the beautiful picture of one flesh that Christ had painted. The upholding of marriage as a holy estate by the church has been long rendered unholy by the century’s long veneration of virginity. Not only was Mary a virgin but her own mother had to be a virgin, and from this came the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This not applying to men, only devalued the rest of women in the married state.
Asceticism, or abstinence, then reigned through Christian history as the perverted ideal, and the monasteries, (not nunneries) of Europe held all the scriptural thought and wisdom
Robust affirmation of scripture was absent, as it is even today, and perverse priestly church judgements in the absence of learning, or understanding by the populous, led to divisions in the communities. Into this paucity of spiritual life, the Feudal System brought great poverty and immoral practices which the church was impotent to control.
The church reintroduced parts of the Mosaic Law and completely ignored the lessons that were to be learned from the rituals, turning them into the denigration of women who were unclean, and caused the uncleanness of men. Communion was forbidden on the day after marital relations and menstruating women were forbidden access to the church. Lisa Sawell’s Biblical explanation of these laws in her discussion paper on The Role of Women in the Ekklesia, show the lessons to be learned, yet those laws themselves do not encourage the denigration of women, only the way they were perversely used.
However before this, in the first century, as we know, there was a holistic view of asceticism. Sanctity was not then synonymous with sexual renunciation and early Christian literature celebrates women and men as prophets and martyrs and teachers and leaders, and celebrating as well the married and single state. All were able to sit comfortably within the new church, as Paul had encouraged them to do. He encouraged them to their civic and family obligations, but encouraged those as well, who did leave all to follow their new found faith in preaching and teaching. There are apocryphal writings of the second century where Thecla from Iconium, converted by Paul, left husband and newborn son, and Felicitas, whose son was born in a cell, where she was persecuted. These both attest to the fact that it was possible to be a married woman and a mother, and be Christian.
In the second century Pliny the Younger, was despatched by Rome to make a surveillance of the empire's Christians, and found them in married family households, where they worshipped together. He reported that they were morally disciplined as well as intensely devout, meeting regularly and binding themselves with oaths to refrain from law breaking practices.
Clement, the ascetic Christian, contemporary with Paul in the first century, from Alexandria, understood that by advocating marriage, he made it more courageous and difficult for those who may be required to give their lives for Christ's sake, though he warmly defended the marriage state as an enduring structure of the Christian church. Eventually they did sustain great tragedies, and the city martyrs with families to consider, were more hard pressed, than the single martyrs from the desert. Sexuality may of course been a problem for the desert celibates, but there were more pressing problems for everyone, including poverty, hunger, persecution and social injustice for all. Clement actually advocated a dual system for the desert folk living the ascetic life, which could be in a co support system with the family structures in the cities.
15. ELITISM
However as time passed, Christianity became more respectable, the desert holy ones became enclosed in the monasteries, and marriage became less holy, and more relegated to a natural, rather than a spiritual way of life. The monastics took orders from the hierarchy rather than the people and so the people became isolated from the shared bread, work and prayer life of the faith. Marriage became second best, and the elite in the monastic institutions had all the learning, and made all the doctrinal decisions. Virginity became the lifelong requisite for holiness, and those who practised that, had primacy of honour and special powers of intercession. So Christ and Paul lost out to those who created elitist layers in the church, which were unattainable for those who had been followers, up til this time. "My celibacy is better than your marriage" was the distorted view of the new clergy.
Elitism is still alive amongst the church today, where conforming is seen by those who wish to set their standard, as of the utmost importance, and the deeds that are done in that name need repentance and amendment, as much as they did in this second century. There is unity in diversity and we can celebrate the differences, but to restrict the life of the church and set it upon a course of destruction cannot bring honour to His name. Nor did it, at this turning point in history, because hierarchical forms of administration to regulate forms of worship began to be established and the wonderful freedoms that had been found were now, once more, lost. How can it be that our own community, with no hierarchical structure or "more informed clergy", is often in danger with the same call for conformity? Have the blessings of diversity in unity in Christ, not yet been learned? We pray that a celebration of differences in Christ is still possible.
For some, celibacy was a great trouble. Origen, who preached at Caesarea, and died at Tyre, and was said to write over 6,000 volumes by the middle of the fourth century, had had himself castrated, to conform with Matt. 19: 11, which he accepted for himself.
So marriage once more sunk to the level of slavery, as a sinful necessity for the human condition, and like slaves, wives had to obey their masters.
