Note 214 — Chapter X · The Virtues and Vices of Women

The reader is probably aware that celibacy was not always the rule among the clergy of the Holy Catholic Church. It was only enforced by law during the fourth century A.D. Now, it is my theory that it was this instinctive vulgar predilection of the female in favour of material success that was partly responsible for compelling the authorities of the Church ultimately to make celibacy a duty among the clergy. Because as the bulk of them were, by virtue of their profession, poor, it was impossible for them to find women of their own station to marry them, and in consequence they were thrown on the lowest women, or the prostitutes, of the time. To avoid the abasement of the ecclesiastical body by this inevitable law, the authorities therefore prescribed celibacy. H. H. Milman, D.D., in his History of Latin Christianity, admits that celibacy was enforced among the clergy to save the Church from degeneration, but he gives as a reason that ecclesiastical matrimony would have led to the holy office passing from father to son, and thus to grandson and great-grandson. Why this should necessarily have led to degeneration is not clear, unless he assumes, as I do, that the clergy would have had to marry beneath them. See Vol. IV (Ed. London, 1864), pp. 17-18.