Expert: Fr. Michael - 2/12/2009

Question
Prior to their ordination vows, are eastern catholic men allowd to marry like the orthodox?

Answer
No.

       Clerical celibacy has a biblical basis in the evangelical counsel of Our Lord as relayed in St. Matthew's Gospel (19:12), also taken up by St. Paul in his First Epistle to the Corinthians (7:8-9, 25-26, and especially 32-35), and confirmed by St. John in the Apocalypse (14:4-5).  It is clear that once the Apostles received the call, they did not lead a married life.

       The tradition of clerical celibacy was solemnly proclaimed by the Council of Nicaea, the First Ecumenical Council, in 325.  Canon No. 3, unanimously approved by the Fathers, admitted of no exceptions whatsoever.  The Council considered that the prohibition imposed thereby on all bishops, priests, and deacons against having a wife absolute.  All subsequent councils that have addressed the subject have renewed this interdiction.

       Not only would it be a violation of Sacred Tradition to blot out a custom decreed for 2,000 years to be absolutely obligatory, but also one must recognize that clerical celibacy is to be seen not merely as of ecclesiastical institution, but part of what is more broadly known in Catholic moral theology as "divine positive law," initiated by Christ and His Apostles.  That is, it is not merely disciplinary in nature.

       The Council of Carthage in 390 stated that celibacy is of Apostolic origin.

       St. Epiphanius of Salamis (ca. 315-403):  "It is the Apostles themselves who decreed this law."

       St. Jerome (ca. 342-420):  "Priests and deacons must be either virgins or widowers before being ordained, or at least observe perpetual continence after their ordination....  If married men find this difficult to endure, they should not turn against me, but rather against Holy Writ and the entire ecclesiastical order."

       Pope St. Innocent I (401-417):  "This is not a matter of imposing upon the clergy new and arbitrary obligations, but rather of reminding them of those which the tradition of the Apostles and the Fathers has transmitted to us."

       St. Peter Damian (1007-1072) wrote:  "No one can be ignorant of the fact that all the Fathers of the Catholic Church unanimously imposed the inviolable rule of continence on clerics in major orders."

       There is a reason for this Tradition.  The cleric in major orders, by virtue of his ordination, contracts a marriage with the Church, and he cannot be a bigamist.  St. Jerome in his treatise "Adversus Jovinianum," bases clerical celibacy on the virginity of Christ.

       The universal law of clerical celibacy confirmed by the Council of Nicaea applied, and still applies, to the Eastern Church as well as the Western.  It is noteworthy that at that Council, the Easterns (Greeks) made up the overwhelming majority.  Previously, the Council of Neo-Caesarea (314) had reminded all Eastern clerics in major orders of the inviolability of this law under pain of deposition.

       The Eastern Church began at a late date to violate its own law of celibacy.  The Quinisext Council of 692, which St. Bede the Venerable (673-735) called "a reprobate synod," breached the Apostolic Tradition concerning the celibacy of clerics by declaring that "all clerics except bishops may continue in wedlock."  The popes refused to endorse the conclusions of the Council in the mater of celibacy, and the Eastern Church planted the seeds of its schism.

       The German scholar, Stefan Heid, in his book, Celibacy in the Early Church, demonstrates that continence-celibacy after ordination to the priesthood was the absolute norm from the start -- even for the separated married ordinand -- a triumph of grace over nature, so to speak.  The Eastern practice we now see was a mitigation of the rule, not, as the Modernists like to claim, the original practice from which the Roman Catholic Church diverged.