When did the Roman Catholic Church establish the rule of celibacy for the clergy?

Answer 1

In the middle ages, the catholic church was the center of education. The convents held libraries of books that only the clergy could read. Allowing people to marry (and reproduce) would cause significant strain on the system, so it was disallowed.

They cite Paul's single status and his dicussion of it as their biblical proof.

Answer 2

it was a joke that got out of hand, now its to late to take it back

Answer 3

They didn't want priests to have families.

Answer 4

In the history of clerical celibacy conciliar legislation marks the second period during which the law took definite shape both in the East and in the West. The earliest enactment on the subject is that of the Spanish Council of Elvira (between 295 and 302) in canon xxxiii. It imposes celibacy upon the three higher orders of the clergy, bishops, priests, and deacons. If they continue to live with their wives and beget children after their ordination they are to be deposed. This would seem to have been the beginning of the divergence in this matter between East and West. If we may trust the account of Socrates, just quoted, an attempt was made at the Council of Nicaea, (perhaps by Bishop Osius who had also sat at Elvira) to impose a law similar to that passed in the Spanish council. But Paphnutius, as we have seen, argued against it, and the Fathers of Nicaea were content with the prohibition expressed in the third canon which forbade mulieres subintroductas. No bishop, priest, or deacon was to have any woman living in the house with him, unless it were his mother, sister, or aunt, or at any rate persons against whom no suspicion could lodge. But the account of Socrates at the same time shows that marriage on the part of those who were already bishops or priests was not contemplated; in fact, that it was assumed to be contrary to the tradition of the Church. This is again what we learn from the Council of Ancyra in Galatia, in 314 (canon x), and of Neo-Caesarea in Cappadocia, in 315 (canon i). The latter canon absolutely forbids a priest to contract a new marriage under the pain of deposition; the former forbids even a deacon to contract marriage, if at the moment of his ordination he made no reservation as to celibacy. Supposing, however, that he protested at the time that a celibate life was above his strength, the decrees of Ancyra allow him to marry subsequently, as having tacictly received the permission of the ordaining bishop. There is nothing here which of itself forbids even a bishop to retain his wife, if he were married before ordination. In this respect the law, as observed in the Eastern Churches, was drawn gradually tighter. Justinian's Code of Civil Law would not allow anyone who had children or even nephews to be consecrated bishop, for fear that natural affection should warp his judgment. The Apostolic Constitutions (c. 400), which formed the principal factor of the church law of the East, are not particularly rigid on the point of celibacy, but whether through imperial influence or not the Council of Trullo, in 692, finally adopted a somewhat stricter view. Celibacy in a bishop became a matter of precept. If he were previously married, he had at once to separate from his wife upon his consecration. On the other hand, this council, while forbidding priests, deacons, and subdeacons to take a wife after ordination, asserts in emphatic terms their right and duty to continue in conjugal relations with the wife to whom they had been wedded previously. This canon (xiii of Trullo) still makes the law for the great majority of the Churches of the East, though some of the Eastern Catholic communions have adopted the Western discipline.

In Latin Christendom, however, everything was ripe for a stricter law. We have already spoken of the Council of Elvira, and this does not seem to have been an isolated expression of opinion. "As a rule", remarks Bishop Wordsworth from his anti-celibate standpoint, "the great writers of the fourth and fifth century pressed celibacy as the more excellent way with an unfair and misleading emphasis which led to the gravest and moral mischief and loss of power in the Church." (The Ministry of Grace, 1902, p. 223). This, one would think, must be held to relieve the papacy of some of the onus which modern critics would thrust upon it in this matter. Such writers as St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Hilary, etc., could hardly be described as acting in collusion with the supposed ambitious projects of the Holy See to enslave and denationalize the local clergy. Although it is true that at the close of the fourth century, as we may learn from St. Ambrose (De Officiis, I, l), some married clergy were still to be found, especially in the outlying country districts, many laws then enacted were strong in favour of celibacy. At a Roman council held by Pope Siricius in 386 an edict was passed forbidding priests and deacons to have conjugal intercourse with their wives (Jaffe-Löwenfeld, Regesta, I, 41), and the pope took steps to have the decree enforced in Spain and in other parts of Christendom (Migne, P.L., LVI, 558 and 728). Africa and Gaul, as we learn from the canons of various synods, seem to have been earnest in the same movement, and though we hear of some mitigation of the severity of the ordinance of Elvira, was enforced against transgressors than that if they took back their wives they were declared incapable of promotion to any higher grade, it may fairly be said that by the time of St. Leo the Great the law of celibacy was generally recognized in the West. With regard to subdeacons, indeed, the case was not clear. Pope Ciricius (385-398) seems to rank them with acolytes and not to require separation from their wives until after the age of thirty when they might be ordained deacons if they had previously, during some short period of trial, given proof of their ability to lead a life of stricter continence. Writers like and Wernz regard them as bound to celibacy in the time of Pope Leo the Great (446). The Council of Agde in Gaul, in 506, forbade subdeacons to marry, and such synods as those of Orléans in 538 and Tours in 567 prohibited even those already married from continuing to live with their wives. As other councils took an opposite line, the uncertainty continued until King Pepin, in 747, addressed a question upon the subject to Pope Zachary. Even then the pope left each locality in some measure to its own traditions, but he decided clearly that once a man had received the subdiaconate he was no longer free to contract a new marriage. The doubtful point was the lawfulness of his continuing to live with his wife as her husband. During this Merovingian period the actual separation of the clergy from the wives which they had previously married was not insisted on. A law of the Emperor Honorius, in 420, forbids that these wives should be left unprovided for, and it even lays stress upon the fact that by their upright behaviour they had helped their husbands to earn that good repute which had made them worthy of ordination. However, this living together in the relation of brother and sister cannot have proved entirely satisfactory, even though it had in its favour such illustrious examples as those of St. Paulinus of Noa, and of Salvinianus of Marseilles.