Catholic Priests: Clothes, Celibacy, Ordination | Early European History And Religion

CATHOLIC PRIESTS

Priests are men who have been ordained (officially designated) by the Catholic church to carry out the holy sacraments such as baptism and communion. Monsignor is the official title of a priest. It is s derived from “monseigneur”, the French word for "my lord." During their ordination priests receive and stole and chasuble as well as bread and wine for mass.

Originally priests were set up to be assistants to the bishops to administer the Eucharist acting in “persoana Christ” (“in the person of Christ”). An official who becomes a priest must be ordained by a bishop. Ordination allows the priest to consecrate the bread and wine for the Eucharist. Members of the clergy are often invited to family affairs. There is currently a shortage of priests.

Peter Stanford wrote for the BBC: “The Catholic Church ordains only celibate men to the priesthood since Jesus was, it teaches, male and celibate. In the Protestant churches married and female clergy are the norm. Orthodoxy allows married men to become priests but not bishops. [Source: Peter Stanford, BBC, June 29, 2011 |::|]

Canonical hours are fixed forms of prayer that Catholic priests are required to recite everyday and consist of vigils (late night) matins and lauds (before sunrise), prime (at sunrise), tierce (morning), sext (noon time), none (afternoon), vespers (evening), and compline (night). These prayers are delivered as chants such as Gregorian chats.

Websites and Resources Holy See w2.vatican.va ; Catholic Online catholic.org ; Catholic Encyclopedia newadvent.org ; Lives of the Saints: Catholic.org catholicism.org ; BBC on Christianity bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity ; Candida Moss at the Daily Beast Daily Beast Christian Answers christiananswers.net ; Christian Classics Ethereal Library www.ccel.org ; Sacred Texts website sacred-texts.com ; Internet Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu ;

Ordination: the 5th Sacrament

Ordination in the Catholic church is a special ceremony in which bishops, priests, deacons and other clergy take the Holy Orders (special vows) and are officially designated to do the work of the church. It is regarded by Catholics and some other Christians a sacrament. Holy Orders are conferred by the laying of hands on the head of the ordained and then by the prayer of ordination. During the ordination of new priests, ordained priests must lay their hands on the new candidate. Anointment to the heads of bishops and to the hands of priests are complementary rituals.

An official who becomes a priest must be ordained by a bishop. Ordination allows the priest to consecrate the bread and wine for the Eucharist. According to Catholic teaching only a bishop in the Apostolic succession has the right to ordain priests and deacons through the laying of hands, while for Protestants all the is needed is an inner calling and training and the determination and dedication necessary to become a priest. The laying of hands by other minister is mostly symbolic.

Priests, Bishops and Cardinals

Catholic priest

The scriptural basis for priests, bishops, cardinals and the Pope is the appearance of Christ to apostles after the Resurrection and the mandate order to go forth and convert the unconverted and spread witness to humanity. As the leader of the apostles, St. Peter, was the cental figure in all this. Priests, bishops, cardinals and the Pope are also seen as successors of St. Peter and the Apostles, chosen by the laying on of hands, and serving a representatives of the Holy Spirit.

Priests and bishops preside over the faithful at their churches and dioceses (regions with many churches). Bishops are also assisted by deacons (from the Greek word “diakonos”, “servant), who perform certain sacramental ‘services. The diaconate (being a deacon) had long been seen as preparation for the priesthood and has, since the Second Vatican in the 1960s, became a permanent order again.

The Bishop of Rome—the Pope or “Servant of Servants of God”—is regarded as St. Peter’s successor. Bishops are his subordinates. Bishops, priests and deacons represent the three levels of the sacrament of Holy orders.

Priest Clothes

When officiating over ceremonies, priests are required to their vestments (special religious clothes which includes a stole (long rectangular garmet) and chausuble (robe). When they are not wearing these their official dress is 1) a soutane (an ankle-length garment with long sleeves) tightened around the waist with a belt, or 2) since 1963, what is called the “clergyman,” a black or grey suit with a small cross on the lapel over a dark shirt decked with a white dog-collar. The soutane is also worn as an undergarment for vestments.

The dog collar lies at the top of a shirt called a neckband shirt which has no collar just a thin band of cloth around the neck. This shirt has a flap of cloth that covers the buttons on the front of the shirt. At the top, where you expect to find one button, there are two buttonholes that line up. There is an additional button hole at the back of the neck. The wearer puts on the shirt and then sticks a collar stud through the buttonhole in the back of the neckband, then another collar stud through the buttonholes in the front to fasten the two ends of the neck band together under the throat. The white plastic collar has three small hole in it; one in the middle and one at each end. The wearer slips the collar over the collar stud in front, then wraps the two ends around the back and slips them over the collar stud in the back. The end effect is a circular collar that goes completely around the neck.

Vestments: Ceremonial Clothes of Priests

Vestments are the ceremonial clothes worn by priests when officiating over services. The color depends on the event it is worn at. Green is often worn in everyday use. White is for joyful occasions such as Christmas and Easter as well as festivals for saints other than martyrs. Purple is worn at mournful occasions such as Good Friday and Lent. Red s for Good Friday, Pentacost and the festivals of martyrs.

clothes of a priest

Pectoral crosses are large crosses worn around the neck by clerics in the front of the chest (hence pectoral, for chest). They are large and meant to be seen from a distance. They are worn over vestments during religious ceremonies but are too large and cumbersome to be worn on the streets.

The alb (from Latin “alba”, white) is a white robe with long sleeves, which covers the entire body, and is gathered at the waist by a cord. It is the basic garment of all those who take part in liturgical ceremonies: bishops, priests, deacons, acolytes (servers) and electors.

The stole (from Latin “stola”, “long robes”) is worn over the alb. It is the minimum that ordained priests can wear as vestments. It consists of a long strip of cloth made up of two equal bands. Bishops and priests wear it around their necks and the two bands hang down in front parallel to each other. During their ordination priests receive and stole and chasuble as well as bread and wine for mass.

The chasuble (from Latin “casula”, “small house”) is a capacious upper vestment, put over the head like a poncho. It completely envelops the wearer and protects him like a small house, or tent. It is the vestment that a priest or bishop wears when celebrating mass. By wearing a chasuble they “put on” the presence of Christ to act in his place during the Eucharistic sacrifice.

The cape (from Latin “cappa”, “hooded cloak”) is a long ceremonial cloak that covers the entire body. The cape consists of a semi-circular piece of cloth, with its two folds held together at the front by hooks and eyes. The cape is worn during solemn events outside mass.

Priests, Celibacy and Marriage

Priests reportedly are men and celibate because Jesus's apostles were men and reportedly celibate. However there is a reference in the Gospel Matthew to Peter having a mother-in-law, which implies he had a wife. Many scholars believe that Paul, who encouraged Christians to be celibate, had a wife that he divorced before his conversion at the age of 40.

In A.D. 306 the regional Council of Elvira in Spain decreed that all priests and bishops, married or not, should be celibate. The Qunisext Council in 692 highlighted the split between Eastern and Western churches and concluded only bishops need to abstain from sex. The second Latheran Council in 1139 abolished clerical marriage and established the Roman Catholic church’s official position on celibacy. Throughout history there have been many example of priests and popes giving in to the temptations of the flesh. In 1525 Reformation leader Martin Luther renounced his celibacy vow, and married an ex-nun.

Celibacy is said to have it roots in the belief that abstaining from sex was en expression of commitment to church and worries that offspring might try to claim church property. Some historians have suggested that the Catholic Church insisted that priests be celibate to remove the temptation of seeking favors for their families. The method didn't always work: the word "nepotism" is derived from "nephews," who priests favored instead.

Up until the 12th century clergy often married and monasteries were often full of families not single men. In 1724, the Vatican banned the confessional requirement of naming names of adultery partners because priests were seeking out the partners. Many surveys have shown that the majority of Catholics believe that it is okay for bishops and priests to get married.

At the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s hopes were raised that celibacy requirements would be dropped but that didn’t happen after the conservative Pope Paul VI was elected. Since the Second Vatican Council seminary membership has dropped 75 percent. In the United States there are an estimated 25,000 former priests alive today that are married.

In May 2001, a big deal was made when Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo from Zambia broke his vows to marry a Korean woman, Maria Sung, in a mass wedding arranged by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and then after several weeks left his wife, renounced his marriage on television, and reconciled with the church. Sung them staged a hunger strike outside St. Peter’s basilica in an effort to get her husband back. She claimed he was being held prisoner and was drugged. A year earlier Milingo had been forced out of a Vatican position over controversies relating to exorcisms and healings he did in Zambia and Italy

Clergymen, who have girlfriends, who are gay or have more serious problems related to sexuality, are sometimes sent to correction centers like Our Lady of Victory in Gloucestershire in England. Clergymen who have spent time in the facility described their treatment as a "gross invasion of privacy" and an "oppressive, claustrophobic" experience and "absolute hell." The clergymen are subjected to long psychological interrogations and curtailments of freedom for between in one week or several months.

Catholic Church structure

Origins of Christian Celibacy

Kim Haines-Eitzen wrote: One of the surprising and distinctive features of early Christianity is the praise of celibacy — the practice of abstaining from all sexual relations — as an exemplary way to demonstrate one’s faith. Given Christianity’s origins within first-century Palestinian Judaism, it was hardly a given that the new religion would develop a high regard for celibacy. Judaism valued family life, and many ritual observances were centered on the family. But the early Christian Gospels, which told the story of the life of Jesus in the early first century A.D., never mentioned a possible wife. And Paul, a Jewish convert whose letters are the earliest books contained in the New Testament, implies that he himself was unmarried when he writes to the earliest Christian communities. [Source: Kim Haines-Eitzen, Professor of Early Christianity, Cornell University, The Conversation, March 23, 2017]

The stories of these founder figures, however, do not explain the course of Christian teaching about asceticism — a wide range of practices of self-discipline that include fasting, giving up personal possessions, solitude and eventually priestly celibacy. By the third and fourth centuries A.D., Christian writers had begun elevating the practice of celibacy and asceticism. They did so by pointing to both Jesus and Paul as models of the ascetic life as well as by carefully interpreting scripture in support of the practice of celibacy.

There were also influences from Greco-Roman philosophy. Christianity developed in a complex world of Greco-Roman religious diversity, including Judaism as well as a variety of Greco-Roman religious movements. From Judaism it inherited monotheistic ideas, codes of ethical conduct, ritual practices like fasting, and a high regard for scriptural authority. From Greco-Roman philosophies, Christian writers adopted ideals of self-control (“enkrateia,” in Greek) and withdrawal (“anachoresis,” a term that came to be applied to Christian hermits). Discipline and self-control meant control over one’s emotions, thoughts and behaviors as well as, in some cases, careful attention to what one ate and drank, how attached one was to possessions and the control of one’s sexual desire.

Over the course of several centuries, Christian writers — church leaders in many cases — took the moral and scriptural ideals from Judaism and coupled them with Greco-Roman philosophical ideals of self-control to argue for the virtue of celibacy. Simultaneously, and also from a very early stage, Christians viewed themselves as a persecuted minority. This meant that one way Christians could prove their faith was by being resolute during these times of persecution. This victimization could take the form of individuals being called before a judge and possibly executed, or it could be directed against communities as a whole through mocking and slander. In either case, from the beginning Christians developed a view of themselves as a suffering and persecuted minority.

This attitude naturally changed when the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the fourth century and issued an Edict of Toleration for all religions. Christians now had to reevaluate their self-identity. And they appear to have increasingly channeled their views about suffering, asceticism and celibacy into the formation of monasteries and convents, where groups of men and women could live lives of celibacy, prayer and manual labor.

Priestly Celibacy

Kim Haines-Eitzen wrote: Although Christian “clergy,” such as bishops and deacons, begin to appear around the year A.D. 100 in early Christian communities, priests emerge as Christian leaders only much later. Priests came to be the ordained clergy tasked with officiating rituals like the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper, also known as Communion. And what about their celibacy? Even here, evidence is both unclear and late: there were reports that some bishops at the Council of Nicea, called by Emperor Constantine in A.D. 325 to address the problem of heresies, argued for a consistent practice of priestly celibacy. This, however, was voted down at the conclusion of the council. The debate resurfaced a couple of hundred years later, but still without uniform agreement. [Source: Kim Haines-Eitzen, Professor of Early Christianity, Cornell University, The Conversation, March 23, 2017]

Over time, priestly celibacy became a serious point of disagreement between the Eastern Orthodox and the Western Roman Catholic churches and contributed to the Great Schism between the two in A.D. 1054. Pope Gregory VII attempted to mandate priestly celibacy, but the practice was contested widely by Christians in the Orthodox Eastern Mediterranean world. Five centuries later, the issue was once again at the forefront of debate when it became a significant factor in the Protestant split from Catholicism during the Reformation.

Given this widespread disagreement about the requirement for priests to be celibate, it is not surprising to find that there was widespread diversity on instituting the practice, even within Roman Catholicism. There have always been exceptions to the celibate rule within Roman Catholicism as, for example, among married priests from other denominations of Christianity who convert to Catholicism.

Were There Ever Female Priests?

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: In the early Church, Paul’s most famous acolyte was a young woman named Thecla. Thecla abandoned her fiance, dressed as a man, and went out to spread the gospel. She narrowly escaped martyrdom at the hands of some ravenous seals and was protected in the arena by a sisterhood of lionesses. Most important, she baptized herself in the pool of seals. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, May 15, 2016]

We know that there were other important female visionaries in the Church who served as leaders. Many of them were associated with a heretical sect known as the Montanists but others, like St. Perpetua, are regarded as saints to this day. As Brown University professor Nicola Denzey Lewis has shown in her book The Bone Gatherers, late antique aristocratic women played an especially important role in establishing shrines dedicated to martyrs and overseeing the veneration of the dead. All of this suggests that women held leadership roles in the early Church.

bishop

Were deaconesses clergy in the way that they are today? Did ancient people mean the same thing by “deacon” that modern Catholics do? The strongest evidence for deaconesses comes from a late fourth-century Syrian document known as the Apostolic Constitutions. It contains instructions for the ordination of a deaconess by a bishop. The fact that they are ordained suggests that deaconesses are part of the clergy, but against this we have to put the statement made by a member of the Council of Nicaea in 325 c.e. that deaconesses “have no imposition of hands [that is to say they weren’t formally ordained by a bishop and thus they were] numbered only among the laity.”

The “historic openness” of the Church to female deacons is important because many Church teachings about the priesthood are based on the precedent set by Jesus. The reason why only men can serve as priests is not only because the priest serves “in persona Christi” and as an “icon of the apostles” (for which gender is important), but also because Jesus only selected 12 men as apostles. If it turned out that Jesus selected women as apostles, let’s say Mary Magdalene, then that particular argument for the necessity of an all-male priesthood would be substantially eroded.

We don’t know exactly what female deaconesses did. We know that in some places they were ordained through the imposition of hands. And a number of fourth-century texts (at least one of which prohibits female priests) suggest that their primary role was in ministering to other women. We have no evidence to suggest that they presided over the mass or performed other priestly roles. The trouble is that most things about the early Church are obscure. Skeptics argue that the Church is only selectively attentive to the obscure origins of many of her beliefs, practices, and structures.

If women were to be ordained as deacons, they would be permitted to give homilies in Church, their voices being heard as a central part of the mass in ways they never have been before (at least not for centuries). It might seem that women are inching further toward ordination and preparing to storm the altar. But even if Francis’s commission allows for the possibility of women becoming deacons, we should not assume that ordination is the next step. As Jamie Manson has written, Francis’s language on women is very much in keeping with traditional Church teaching.

Bishops and Archbishops

Bishops are powerful priests who have the authority to ordain or confirm and oversee churches within a certain area, called a diocese, with many churches. Bishops are responsible for the unity, order and faith of their diocese. They are usually based in a church or cathedral in the principal city of a diocese. The cathedral chapter consists of members of the clergy called “canons” who assist the bishop. An archbishop is a an important bishop that presides over bishops. The clothes and vestments are essentially the same as bishops.

In each diocese, the bishop fulfills the role of pastor, priest and doctor as is regarded as a participant in Jesus Christ’s own ministry. From the earliest days of the church, bishops have been assisted by priests , who the bishops ordains and share in the bishops’ ministry.

The pontifical insignias of a bishops are a miter (the tall liturgical head covering also worn by the pope) and crook (a long staff with a curl at the top). In the Catholic church, the bishop’s color is violet. They wear a violet soutane, cape and calotte. They also wear a ring that symbolizes their marriage to the church (they constitute the sacrament of “Christ the Bridegroom”). Their pectoral cross hangs from a green cord (violet during Advent and Lent).

Cardinals

Cardinal Jean de Marie Abboud

Cardinals are technically parish pastors in Rome and occupy the position in the church hierarchy between the Pope and archbishops. Their name is derived from “cardines”, the different quarters of Rome. But today the name is linked to the crimson color of their garments: mozzetta (capes), cassocks, and silk biretta (a type of square cap) . Pope John Paul II once said the color represents "the dignity of the office of cardinal, signifying you are ready to act with fortitude, even to the point of spilling your blood." Cardinals also wear a sash and a ring on their finger. Their pectoral cross hangs from a red chord.

Cardinals belong to the College of Cardinals, a kind of pontifical senate. In February 2001, the Pope expanded the College of Cardinals from 167 to a record 184 cardinals. Of these 135 were eligible to vote for the next Pope and 41 percent were from non-Western countries. The others were over 80 and could not participate in the selection of the new pope.

Pope John Paul II has made an effort to internationalize the College of Cardinals. As of 1996, there were cardinal from 62 nations. Of these 55 cardinal electors were from Europe, 33 from the Americas, 15 from Africa, 14 from Asia, 3 from the Central and South Pacific.

Peter Stanford wrote for the BBC: “Great emphasis is placed on the ascetic tradition of religious life as either separation from worldly concerns or, in the words of Pope John Paul II (1978 - 2005) as 'a sign of contradiction' in contemporary culture. Catholicism retains from earliest times a strong sense of sin and correspondingly of God's redeeming love. [Source: Peter Stanford, BBC, June 29, 2011 |::|]

Jesuits and St. Ignatius Loyola

The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) is a male order of the Catholic Church, with 19,000 members worldwide. Traditionally representing the militant side of Christianity, it was established in 16th Century Europe as a missionary order, with members making vows of poverty, chastity and obedience but going about their duties in a disciplined, militaristic way. The Jesuits played a major role in the Counter-Reformation and Christianizing Latin America and educating the European aristocracy. The order became so powerful that it was suppressed at the end of the 18th Century but later restored. Jesuits have a reputation for being expert communicators and spreading the word of God through beauty and art. Jesuits undergo as much as 12 years of training. In recent decades the order has been perceived as becoming too liberal.

The Jesuits were founded by St. Ignatius Loyola (1491?-1556), who regarded himself as a “knight of the virgin." Born Ifigo de Onez y Loyola in the castle of Loyola near Azpeteita in Guipuzcoa in northern Spain, he was the youngest of 11 children born into an ancient noble family. He received little formal education and was trained as soldier. He spent the early part of his life pursuing worldly concerns. His passions were games and military matters.

Saint Ignatius Loyola

In 1521, during the siege of Pampeluna, Ignatius broke his leg, ending his military career. While recovering there was little he could do other than read. He read “The Lives of the Saints” and was deeply impacted by it.. After finished the book he vowed to change his ways and devote his life to God. In 522 he went to Our Lady Shrine in Montserrat and prayed and did penance in a cave near Manresa. He gave away all his worldly clothes; dressed in pilgrims dress of sackcloth and hempen shoes and spent seven hours a day in prayer.

Ignatius went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem but was not allowed to stay. He returned to Spain, now age 32, and began studying. During that time he was suspected of heresy and imprisoned by the Inquisition for teaching before he completed his prescribed studies. During that time he conceived his idea of the Jesuits—a group of priests, spiritually drilled and disciplined like a military unit—to battle heresy and do missionary work in heathen countries. The members, he thought, should take their monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience but wear no distinctive dress and not by tied down by monastic rules.

In 1534 St. Ignatius Loyola and six companions founded a groups that would become the Jesuits. In 1540, the Society of Jesus was sanctioned by the Pope and Ignatius was named the first “general.” After that Ignatius devised the constitution for the organization and developed a strategy for the Counter Reformation, in which the Roman Catholic Church won back half the land it lost through Martin Luther’s revolt (The Reformation). St. Ignatius was canonized in 1628.

Book: “The First Jesuits” by John W. O'Malley.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File); “ Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions” edited by R.C. Zaehner (Barnes & Noble Books, 1959); King James Version of the Bible, gutenberg.org; New International Version (NIV) of The Bible, biblegateway.com; Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ccel.org , Frontline, PBS, Wikipedia, BBC, National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Encyclopedia.com, Reuters, Associated Press, Business Insider, AFP, Library of Congress, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2024