Clerical marriage
[1] Some Protestant clergy and their children have played an essential role in literature, philosophy, science, and education in Early Modern Europe.
[note 1] Evidence for the view that continence was expected of clergy in the early Church is given by the Protestant historian Philip Schaff, who points out that all marriages contracted by clerics in Holy Orders were declared null and void in 530 by Roman Emperor Justinian I, who also declared the children of such marriages illegitimate.
[6] Schaff also quotes the account that "In the Fifth and Sixth Centuries the law of the celibate was observed by all the Churches of the West, thanks to the Councils and to the Popes.
"Despite six hundred years of decrees, canons, and increasingly harsh penalties, the Latin clergy still did, more or less illegally, what their Greek counterparts were encouraged to do by law—they lived with their wives and raised families.
[9][10] The great East–West Schism between the Church of Rome and the four Apostolic sees of the Orthodox Communion (Constantinople, Alexandria Egypt, Antioch Syria, and Jerusalem) took place in 1054.
The practice of clerical marriage was initiated in the West by the followers of Martin Luther, who himself, a former priest and monk, married Katharina von Bora, a former nun, in 1525.
[11] Generally speaking, in modern Christianity, Protestant and some independent Catholic churches allow for ordained clergy to marry after ordination.
However, in recent times, a few exceptional cases can be found in some Orthodox churches in which ordained clergy have been granted the right to marry after ordination.
Certain denominations require a prospective pastor to be married before he can be ordained, based on the view (drawn from 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1) that a man must demonstrate the ability to run a household before he can be entrusted with the church.
[13] In general, Eastern Catholic Churches have always allowed ordination of married men as priests and deacons.
[14] Traditionally, the rejection of clerical marriage has meant that a married deacon or priest whose wife dies could not remarry but must embrace celibacy.
Another approach is to simply delay the formal ordination of the subdeacon, if, for example, a likely candidate for the subdiaconate has stated an intention to marry but has not yet done so.
An exception to this practice arises in the case of married non-Catholic clergymen who become Catholic and seek to serve as priests.
The Vatican, it was revealed in February 2019, secretly enacted rules to protect the clerical status of Catholic clergy who violated their vow of celibacy.
[23][24] The same year, former Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala, who did not resign either from his post as Auxiliary Bishop or from the Catholic clergy until revelations that he fathered two children were made public, was implicated by the Los Angeles Times for having "more than a passing relationship" with the mother of his two children, who also had two separate pregnancies.
