A Catholic reviewer of my first edition has assured me that I am in error in assuming clerical celibacy to be a point of faith in his church. To use his own words—“The writer is mistaken when he calls the celibacy of the clergy a point of faith. It never was more than a point of discipline, as is keeping the fasts and other commandments of the church, which may be modified by the same authority which prescribed them.” That it may, even as a point of faith, be abrogated by the same authority which defined it, I do not doubt, for everything is possible to a General Council guided by an infallible Pope; that it may now be occasionally represented and even treated as a point of discipline, I think quite possible and shall not undertake to dispute, seeing that the Greek discipline is tolerated in that portion of the Greek church which admits the supremacy of Rome,1636 but that the council of Trent intended to make it a point of faith and did so make it is susceptible of the plainest demonstration. Any one who will read the Tridentine canons (ante, pp. 536-7) will see that their form is purely doctrinal and not disciplinary. If this be questioned, I may refer to Chr. Lupus, whose orthodoxy and accuracy in such matters no good Catholic can doubt, and who informs us, what indeed is self-evident, that the council of Trent classified its anathemas of faith as canons, and its regulations of discipline as decrees of reformation—“Sacrosancta Tridentina synodo fidei anathematismos, canones; morum autem regulas appellet decreta reformationis” (App. ad Synod. Chalced. Art. I.—Opp. II. 248), and the anathemas on the subject will be found classed under the title “Doctrina de Sacramento Matrimonii,” followed by disciplinary regulations under the rubric “Decretum de Reformatione Matrimonii.” The form of the canons in fact tells its own story. The dread anathema, the final and highest condemnation of the church (“Anathema est ÆternÆ mortis damnatio et non nisi pro mortali debet imponi crimine et illi qui aliter non potuerit corrigi”—Grat. Decret. P. II. Caus. XI. Q. iii. c. 41) is directed, not against him who actually marries, but against those who assert that all may marry who have not the gift of chastity; and the same condemnation is pronounced on those who hold that marriage is preferable to celibacy. It is therefore treated purely as a matter of belief, the mere discussion of which is practical heresy. This was the form adopted by the council throughout in defining points of faith, as, for instance, in treating of Original Sin, which no one will pretend to be a matter of discipline—“Si quis per Jesu Christi Domini nostri gratiam quÆ in baptismate confertur, reatum originalis peccati remitti negat ... anathema sit” (Sess. V. de Peccat. Orig. c. 5). Any one believing in the validity of priestly marriage is therefore not merely a contemner of a point of discipline but a heretic, and it is simply a libel on the good fathers of Trent to assert that they would anathematize as worthy of perpetual perdition a simple theoretical opinion on a matter of discipline.

Their intentions, moreover, as to this, are rendered indisputable by the answer of Pius V. in 1561, just before the final meeting of the Council, to the demand of Charles IX. for the concession of the cup to the laity. The pontiff states that he had considered that point and the marriage of the clergy to be matters of law, and therefore capable of alteration by due authority, but that, on expressing this opinion in the last conclave, he had been stigmatized as a Lutheran (Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. IV. 734). This is confirmed by the remarks of Fra Paolo on the canon which pronounces the anathema on those who deny that a non-consummated marriage is dissolved by the vow of either spouse (Sess. XXIV. de Sacram. Matrim. c. vi.), where he alludes to the surprise caused by making it a point of faith—“Nel sesto anathematimismo del Matrimonio restarono molti ammirati che fosse posto per articolo di fede” (Ist. del Concil. Trident. Lib. VIII.—Ed. Helmstadt. II. 382).

The same view continued long to be upheld as orthodox. It would be difficult to find a work published under auspices more authoritative than Andreas Forster’s “De Coelibatu Clericorum Dissertatio,” a thesis publicly read in the University of Dillingen in 1782, printed by authority, and dedicated to Pius VI. At that time there were serious efforts making, in the bosom of the church itself, to overthrow the rule of celibacy, and there was no hesitation on the part of the ecclesiastical rulers to avow the full purport of the Tridentine canons. Forster accordingly does not scruple to declare the truth as to the orthodox doctrine, nor was exception taken to his assertion by the authorities whose imprimatur the volume bears. The condemnation of those, he says, who rashly assert that marriage can be contracted by those in orders or bound by solemn vows of chastity is a dogma of faith, while the definition that virginity is better than matrimony is a dogma of morals—“Pro certo nos tenemus et ab omnibus Catholicis tenendum esse firmiter adserimus, Ecclesiam in laudato consilio recte omnino definiisse ... melius esse ac beatius manere in virginitate aut coelibatu quam jungi matrimonio. Recte porro damnasse eos qui matrimonium a clericis in SS. Ordinibus constitutis, vel a regularibus castitatem solemniter professis, valide posse contrahi temere adsererent. Et hoc ultimum ad Dogma Fidei, illud prius ad Dogma Morum proculdubio pertinet” (op. cit. § xxxi. DilingÆ, 1782). In full accordance with this was the line of argument adopted by the advocates of the church in 1831, when it became necessary to overrule the decision which had authorized the marriage of the priest Dumonteil. They represented that to permit the civil marriage of a priest was, in fact, to persecute the church, because “qui veut une religion la veut avec ses dogmes, et la chastetÉ du prÊtre est un de ceux de l’Église Catholique” (Bouhier de l’Écluse, de l’État du PrÊtre en France, p. 31).

I do not doubt that the peculiar dialectics by which Bishop Dupanloup explained away all that was shocking in the Syllabus of December, 1864 (La Convention et l’Encyclique, Paris, 1865), might make out a tolerably fair line of argument to prove that the Tridentine fathers did not do what they meant to do. In the subtle insincerity which pervades the formulas of the Latin church, allowing either side of a question to be affirmed as opportunity serves, the formulas of Trent constitute no exception. Thus if the rule of celibacy were to be abrogated, I presume that it could be readily accomplished by doing away with the vow of chastity and assuming that the administering of that vow is merely a matter of discipline. The papal power to dispense from vows is likewise too well established to be called in question, as was shown by the decision of the council of Trent on that very matter. The Latin church, in fact, has ample resources to enable it to adopt any line of policy that its rulers may consider adapted to the exigencies of the present or of the future; and if it should, at any time, consider sacerdotal and cenobitic celibacy undesirable, I am perfectly willing to concede that it would find no difficulty in setting aside or eluding the Tridentine anathemas; yet none the less would those anathemas remain to show us what was the position which it occupied in the sixteenth century. Meanwhile it may be suggested to the orthodox who regard celibacy as merely disciplinary that the church holds both marriage and ordination to be sacraments, and that a definition that the two are incompatible and a decision as to which of the two must give way to the other can hardly in the nature of things, or by any rational use of language, be regarded as merely a matter of discipline. Those, indeed, who are inclined to take such view, may well bear in mind the fate of Panzini, who, regarding celibacy as a point of discipline, was condemned, in 1860, by the Roman Inquisition to twelve years’ incarceration for merely writing an essay, which never was printed, arguing in favor of its impolicy.