- 65 - I Timothy 5: 14: ‘I desire, therefore, that the younger widows remarry, bear children, and preside over their households.’ When Paul stresses the point that bishops and deacons must be ‘husbands of one wife’, he does not mean that men may not enter into a second marriage, for if he recommends that widows remarry, as he does in his letter to Timothy, then surely he concedes the same right to widowers. The term ‘husband of one wife’ is used because several men who became converted from paganism to Christianity had concubines in addition to their wedded wives, a fact which was generally known. Because of the detrimental effects that could arise therefrom, Paul would not tolerate the appointment of such men to service in the religious communities. For such offices he wanted only married men of good repute among both Christians and non-Christians, as he writes to Timothy: I Timothy 3: 7: ‘Moreover, he must have a good reputation also among the non-Christians, so that he will not be maligned and fall into the slanderer’s snare.’ For a thousand years, matrimony, which Paul made a duty for the elders, bishops and deacons of his time, was permitted to Catholic priests also. When the papacy forced celibacy upon the clergy, its motives for doing so were not based on any lofty religious grounds, for such could hardly have existed, since otherwise they would have led to the imposition of the rule of celibacy in the first days of the Christian Church. The later determining factor was a purely worldly viewpoint, namely, strengthening the power of the pope. • For a clergyman who is bound by no family ties is a far more pliable tool of his ecclesiastical organization than a priest who enjoys the moral and material support of a wife and children. It might be added that it was likely that a celibate priest would bequeath his property to the Church. The dangers of celibacy, which caused a man like Paul to reject unmarried persons as servants of the church, are the same in all ages. They were no greater then than they are today. The alleged gain in purity of morals and devotion to the cause of God in the case of a celibate clergy is a mere pretext that has ever proven fallacious.
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