Celibacy
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Celibacy. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the state of being unmarried. By common usage, the term refers primarily to men, but virginity is as much a state of celibacy as is bachelorhood. Nuns take a vow of perpetual virginity. Coelebs, originally meaning unmarried, has acquired the force of bachelor, as in Coelebs in Search of a Wife. Celibacy has been further intensified by its application to a single life as the result of a religious vow. The monks of various religious orders take a vow of celibacy. In the Greek Church celibacy is required of bishops and monks, but priests and deacons may remain married if married before ordination. They may not marry after ordination. In the Roman Catholic church celibacy is enjoined upon all ranks of the clergy. A married man may be consecrated only if his wife enter a religious order. The position of the Roman Church is stated well by a writer in the Americana: As no one has a right to demand to be consecrated a priest, the Roman Church has, by this addition, violated no one's right. Her position, therefore, is expressed by saying that, profoundly convinced that an unmarried clergy is best suited to her work, she admits to her ministry only those who voluntarily engage to lead a celibate life, and as long as she finds a sufficient number of such candidates she refuses to hamper her work by the employment of others.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the state of being celibate or unmarried; specially applied to the voluntary life of abstinence from marriage followed by many religious dev otees and by some orders of clergy, as those of the Roman Catholic Church. The ancient Egyptian priests preserved a rigid chastity; the priestesses of ancient Greece and Rome were pledged to perpetual virginity, and celibacy is the rule with the Buddhist priests of the East. Among Christians the earliest aspirants to the spiritual perfection supposed to be attainable through celibacy were not ecclesiastics as such, but hermits and anchorites who aimed at superior sanctity. During the first three centuries the marriage of the clergy was freely permitted, but by the Council of Elvira (305) continence was enjoined on all who served at the altar. For centuries this subject led to many struggles in the church, but was finally settled by Gregory VII. positively forbidding the marriage of the clergy. The Council of Trent (1563) confirmed this rule. In the Greek Church celibacy is not compulsory on the ordinary clergy. Protestants hold that there is no moral superiority in celibacy over marriage, and that the church has no right to impose such an obligation on any class of her ministers. (1) the compartments of a honey-comb,
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The core rule these accounts describe still stands: Roman Catholic priests of the Latin rite are required to be celibate, a discipline reaffirmed by Pope Paul VI in Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (1967) after the Second Vatican Council, and unmarried men are still ordained on the terms Aiton's writer defends in 1910. What has moved is the range of exceptions. The Second Vatican Council restored the permanent diaconate in 1967, so married men are now routinely ordained deacons, and from 1980 married former Anglican and Lutheran ministers who converted have been ordained Catholic priests without their wives entering religious life — an arrangement Aiton's 1910 entry treats as impossible. Since the 1960s the discipline has also been argued over publicly in a way the old entries do not anticipate, in debates over falling numbers of priests and nuns, over the clerical abuse crisis, and at the 2019 Amazon synod, where a proposal to ordain married men in priest-poor regions was declined.
Written for this edition, 2026.