Books Quote by Charles River Editors

The church may hold whatever it holds with regard to clerical celibacy.

— William P. Leahy

Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy…

— Harper Lee

How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and…

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Though I wholeheartedly supported celibacy at the start of my seminary career, my opinion changed as I made my way toward and through priesthood.”

— Charles Benedict

the most grievous wrong of that day ... was to be found in the establishment of the celibacy of the clergy. ... This hideous…

— Lillie Devereux Blake

“Not celibate are they who wear monastic garb and shut themselves away behind thick walls and massive iron gates, But celibate are they whose…

— Mikhail Naimy

Priestly celibacy has been guarded by the Church for centuries as a brilliant jewel, and retains its value undiminished even in our time when…

— Pope Paul VI

“During the tenth and eleventh centuries the rule of the Church prohibiting the clergy from marrying appears to have been widely and publicly neglected…

— James Harvey Robinson

“(5.) The working of the Romish system of celibacy, voluntary poverty, and monastic vows, has produced such fruits as prove the principle on which…

— Archibald Alexander Hodge

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

— Carl Sagan

It’s funny to hear priests and nuns argue with each other.

— Wendelin Van Draanen

“Next came the ban on clerical marriages in 1079, which some said, on top of purifying the clergy, was published to prevent the families…

— Charles River Editors