There is a lot of evidence to back that up, actually. Plenty of theologians have suggested the same, and as each new scandal arises involving priests and choir boys, it shows that such a custom only breeds contempt and sexual frustration.Masques wrote:
One of my little theories as to why the Papacy proscribed marriage amongst priests relates to this.Turquoise wrote:
Most organized religion itself is about money more than faith as well.DoctaStrangelove wrote:
The Crusades were faught more for plunder than for relgion. Most of the guys fighting them just wanted gold and a greater percentage of the kings leading them just wanted the gold.
You'll find that most conflicts supposedly about religion are really about money.
It was only until the Medieval period when the church began to require clerics to be celibate, roughly corresponding to when the church began to grow in wealth and when many former pagans became Christians (Germanic pagans in particular).
In many Germanic societies it was customary for wealth to be split amongst all male heirs as opposed to the Roman practice of primogeniture (leaving everything or most of everything to the eldest male heir). Given that most low ranking priests would have come from the cultures in which the church was trying to grow; a priest allowed to marry would have split church property among his heirs instead of a single heir who may have been persuaded to become a member of the cloth.
Cultural habits die harder than religious ones. So in essence, clerical celibacy may have been a successful attempt to keep wealth "in house" as it were.
But that's just my theory...
Maybe someday, the Church will wake up and let these people marry, in order to spare their children.
