ABSTRACT
Since the discipline of the Roman Catholic Church seeks to base itself upon the teaching of Jesus as reflected in the apostolic tradition, the argument for clerical celibacy has often been sought in the New Testament. The priest's wife was one of the figures of village life in Western Europe just as she was in Eastern Europe; the only difference was that in the West, according to church law, she and her priest-husband were both supposed to abstain from sexual relations. The association between sexual intercourse and uncleanness is so ancient that its origins can no longer be traced in history. The civil law, at length, began to take cognizance of the church legislation on the life of the clergy. Despite the rejection of any outright condemnation of marriage the intellectual climate of the first Christian centuries persuaded some Christian authors to express misgivings about sex and marriage.
