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Updated: June 13, 2025
Naturally, Protestant writers, who hold that papal supremacy never was a blessing in any country or in any age, and who think that clerical celibacy has always been a fruitful source of crime and sin, condemn the reforms of Dunstan in the most unqualified terms. A statement of a few of the many and perplexing facts may assist us to form a fairly just judgment of the man and his work.
"Mine was the phrase, to begin with, my daughter," he admitted. "I used it to the Holy Father, and I confess that, in using it, I did mean to convey that which, as you well know. I have long believed, that wifehood and motherhood, if worthily performed, may rank higher in the Divine regard than vows of celibacy.
It was one of the last six sermons which I wrote when I was an Anglican. It was one of the five sermons I preached in St. Mary's between Christmas and Easter, 1843, the year when I gave up my living. The MS. of the sermon is destroyed; but I believe, and my memory too bears me out, as far as it goes, that the sentence in question about celibacy and confession was not preached at all.
When corruptions began to press themselves on the notice of Christians, here you find three witnesses raising their distinct and solemn protest in different parts of the Church, independently of each other, in Gaul, in Italy, and in Asia Minor, against prayers for the dead, veneration of relics, candles in the day-time, the merit of celibacy, the need of fasting, the observance of days, difference in future rewards, the defectibility of the regenerate, and the divine origin of episcopacy.
That this has been going on for six hundred years is due, not to any special corruption of the Catholic heart, but to the practice of clerical celibacy, which is contrary to nature, a transgression of fundamental instinct.
I had thought that it was rather by the glories of celibacy gross and superstitious as their notions of it are that the Galileans tempted their converts. 'So had I, my dearest lady, answered he, as, glad to turn the subject for a moment, and perhaps a little nettled by her contemptuous tone, he resumed something of his old arch and careless manner.
The venerable monastery, raised on its height over the busy vale of Garigliano, like some contemplative spirit above the conflicting problems of life, might well be held to represent the nobler side of Christian celibacy.
Finally the rising tide of dogmatic Medievalism, with its crassly materialistic view of the Eucharist; its insistence on the saving grace of asceticism and celibacy; and its scarcely veiled contempt for women, overwhelmed the original conception. Certain of the features of the ancient ritual indeed survive, but they are factors of confusion, rather than clues to enlightenment.
All their priests shave their heads and beards, and are clothed in yellow; and they live in companies of one or two hundred together, observing strict celibacy.
His sister, Miss Rachel Waverley, presided at his table; and they became, by degrees, an old bachelor and an ancient maiden lady, the gentlest and kindest of the votaries of celibacy.
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