Posted by PDH on November 1, 2009, 2:15 pm
"Celibacy had become the norm for both Bishops and priests and deacons quite early on in the Church. Only in the East did they have any significant # of married priests."
http://members7.boardhost.com/CathPews/msg/1257045494.html
From Hugh Ballantyne (April 2003 issue of “Homiletic and Pastoral Review)
“After Cochini it is no longer possible to believe the old conventional wisdom based upon Funk. The contrary is now clear. From the beginnings of the Church, and throughout the Greco-Latin world, a single rule prevailed: Priests were celibate; or else, if they had married before ordination, they and their wives promised to live together thereafter without the use of the marriage.
This rule was an Apostolic norm; it was proclaimed and practiced by the Apostles; and that norm in turn was founded upon the example of our Lord Himself.”
“Bickell, an expert in Oriental languages, defended the thesis that in the West the obligation of continence did not start with Pope Siricius in the fourth century, but went back to the apostles, appealing in particular to evidence from the East. In conjunction with this position, he affirmed that the same obligation existed in the East at the time of the apostles, but was progressively neglected from the fourth century.” (Fr McGovern, another expert on priestly celibacy, is a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei in Dublin -- http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/mcgovern/celhist1.html and parts 2 & 3 of Chapter 1-- Chapter 1: Celibacy - A Historical Perspective].
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