celibacy

n.

1. Abstinence from sexual intercourse, especially by reason of religious vows.
2. The condition of being unmarried.

For more information on celibacy, visit Britannica.com.

The ideal of celibacy — abstaining from sexual activity for religious or spiritual reasons — exists within several religions. It has been an ideal within Christianity from the earliest times. Jesus spoke of those who are ‘eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 19: 12), and Paul recommended celibacy as the best way of living, for it enabled a person to be free from distracting ‘worldly’ concerns, especially the household, children, and sex — and for men, the worldly was particularly represented by the female body — and therefore free to serve Christ. Thus, for many centuries, especially in the West, marriage was regarded as an inferior option for Christians, for those who needed to produce heirs or could not practice self-control because they did not have the ‘gift’ of celibacy. Only at the Reformation, when Protestant reformers began to privilege and justify marriage, was this view seriously challenged. Even in the post-Reformation period, there have been new Christian groups which have set celibacy as an ideal or rule, most notably the Shakers in nineteenth-century America, who formed communities of celibate men and women to live a simple life together. Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican monastic communities retain the ideal of celibacy to this day.

In the early Church celibacy had been an individual vocation, so marriage was not incompatible with holding ecclesiastical office; but beginning with the canons of the Council of Elvira (c.306), the Church in the West increasingly moved towards clerical celibacy as the norm; married men who were ordained were urged to put aside their wives, go on living with them as sister and brother, or exchange vows of continence with them; their wives might then become deaconesses or join a monastic community. Throughout the later Middle Ages the Roman Catholic Church attempted to enforce clerical celibacy, not always with great success; the second Lateran Council (1139) made clerical marriages invalid. Clerical celibacy remains the rule in the Roman Catholic despite pressures in the late twentieth century to change this. The Church of England allowed clerical marriage in 1549, as did the Protestant churches at the Reformation. The Eastern Orthodox churches have always allowed their priests and deacons to marry before ordination, though not after, and their bishops must be celibate.

Within Buddhism, celibacy is a permanent vocation for monks and nuns. Within Hinduism, celibacy is part of the fourth and final stage — samnyasa — for the Hindu who is following the Vedic way. This is the stage of renouncing all ties to family, caste, and property. Within a number of religions, reactions to celibacy are mixed. For Sikhs, it is not an ideal, for the Gurus taught that the married state (grihastha ashrama) was the ideal. But there are two Sikh groups that dissent from this: the Udasis (meaning ‘withdrawn’ or ‘dejected’) are an ascetic order, also forbidden to consume flesh, tobacco, or spirits; they wear salmon-coloured clothing and are clean shaven, though they often have long, matted hair. The Nirmalas (meaning ‘spotless’ or ‘pure’) are a learned monastic group who live in monasteries called akharas (meaning ‘wrestling arenas’) and wear saffron robes. Islam is generally hostile to celibacy, emphasizing the God-given goodness of creation, though Sufism, especially in its beginnings, has emphasized the strong control of body and spirit via ascetical practices, including celibacy. Early Sufi leaders saw lust as one of the seven gates to hell, one Sufi leader even going so far as to say that Sufism was founded on celibacy.

Judaism has generally not advocated celibacy, seeing marriage as important for the fulfilment of procreation as commanded in Genesis 1: 28. The High Priest in Temple times had to be married (Leviticus 21: 13) and the unmarried were barred from holding various public offices, though there were two important Jewish first-century Ascetic groups. The Therapeutae (Latin, ‘healers’), described by Philo, lived in Egypt in solitude, poverty, and (as far as was possible) celibacy, meditating on spiritual writings. Both men and women could be members. Every fiftieth day, they gathered for a meal and sang and danced. The all-male Essene community by the Dead Sea (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947) sought to bring Israel back to God by their own rigorous and celibate way of life. This relationship between apocalyptic beliefs and the ideal of celibacy forms the backdrop to Jesus' preaching about the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was intimately entwined with his call to follow him and leave behind all family ties. Thus in Christianity, the celibate was seen to anticipate the state of the human being at resurrection — described by some as a state in which the sexes do not exist and there is no place for marriage. The celibate therefore sought to return to his or her original — that is pre-Fall — state. As Genesis records Adam and Eve as having had sexual intercourse only after the Fall, sexual renunciation was a vital component in acquiring this pre-lapsarian ‘state’. This meant the transcendence of gender, and while, for some celibates at least, it meant that the body was seen as alien to the true self, many explored the possibilities of that transcendence. Celibacy, and the ascetic way of life in general, were appealing because they allowed any Christian, regardless of gender or social status, to transcend what their body represented in this world; this was particularly appealing for women, especially élite women, whose bodies functioned primarily to produce heirs and thereby circulate wealth in the Roman world. That some writers spoke of Christian women ‘becoming male’ to indicate their great holiness illustrates the double-edged nature of this ideal of celibacy for women. Suspicion of the female body, and projection onto it of all the male celibate's fears of ‘the world’ exists within Christianity generally, and has existed particularly within the monastic communities from the fourth century onwards, and is shared by Buddhism and the early Sufis.

— Jane Shaw

Bibliography

• Brown, P. (1988). The body and society, men, women and sexual renunciation in early Christianity. Columbia University Press, New York

See also asceticism; chastity; religion and the body.

n

Definition: abstinence from sexual activity
Antonyms: promiscuousness

---

Marriage is a commandment in Jewish tradition and celibacy is deplored. The first positive precept in the Bible is "be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 1:28) and this sets the pattern for Jewish attitudes. Procreation is a holy obligation, so that deliberate abstention from marriage has never been condoned; indeed many authorities regard it as a sin. Halakhically speaking, the commandment to be fruitful is binding upon males only, so that female celibacy is less problematic. The biblical Nazirite took various vows of abstinence; sexual abstinence, however, was not among them. One exception in the Bible was Jeremiah, who apparently chose to remain celibate owing to his unwillingness to bring children into the world to face the impending doom of the Jewish people. According to Josephus, celibacy was practiced among the sectarian Essenes. The normative teaching is contained in the saying, "He who is without a wife is without joy, without blessing, without happiness, without learning, without protection, without peace; indeed he is no man" (Yev. 62b).

One talmudic scholar, Ben Azzai, never married, but he and his colleagues acknowledged that he was an exception. None of the medieval rabbis is known to have been unmarried, and bachelors were not allowed to occupy positions of leadership in the Jewish community. Judaism, moreover, encouraged early marriage to counter sexual temptation.

---

Monastic orders of many religious traditions have rules concerning celibacy. Marriage and sexual union are forbidden for practical or spiritual reasons.

Sometimes, as in some Hindu and Buddhist traditions, sexual expression is considered to be a detriment to meditation and growth, a "giving in" to the body and its desires. Celibacy is then considered to be a form of asceticism.

In early Christianity, celibacy was inspired by the words of the apostle Paul advising that those who chose not to marry had more time to serve the Lord. He implied that sex, as opposed to spiritual work, was a base human need when he said it "was better to marry than to burn." And since the early church believed Jesus was soon to return, it didn't make much sense to settle into a stable home life that would not last much longer. Besides this, Jesus had said that "in heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage." All these together seemed to imply marriage was for the weak, at best.

This notion was taken to its logical conclusion by the Shaker community in the United States. Nobody was allowed to have sex. The community only grew by conversions.

In Roman Catholic tradition, celibacy is seen as a crucial vow taken by ordained clergy to allow them both time and uninterrupted energy to devote to the practical matter of being available for ministry. It is not that clergy are not married. They are married to the church and are expected to give the same devotion to Christ as they would to earthly spouses. Although a mystique surrounding "unavailable" male priests and "pure" female nuns undoubtedly places celibate clergy on a pedestal in the popular psyche, this was not the official intention of the church.

Sources: Smart, Ninian. The Religious Experience. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996.

---

Celibacy is obligatory for all members of the Saṃgha. Sex is regarded as a powerful bond to the mundane (laukika) world and not appropriate for one who has renounced home and family. Since Buddhism regards craving (tṛṣṇā) as the cause of suffering (duḥkha), the dangers of sexual desire are obvious, and are frequently pointed out in Buddhist literature. There are strict penalties in the Vinaya or monastic code for monks and nuns who fail to remain celibate. The first of the four pārājika-dharmas prohibits sexual intercourse, and the penalty for breaking it is lifelong expulsion from the Order. More minor offences, such as masturbation or lewd conduct, reported in the Vinaya, are punished less severely. Married lay-people may also adopt the practice of voluntary celibacy for longer or shorter periods.

Quotes:

"How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general? Impossible! and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, and. prove it abundantly." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"I think that one of the qualifications of artists should be a vow of celibacy. They should be confined to ruining only their own lives." - Roger Lewis

"Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horse pond." - Thomas Love Peacock

"Celibacy is not just a matter of not having sex. It is a way of admiring a person for their humanity, maybe even for their beauty." - Timothy Radcliffe

"A celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity." - Jeremy Taylor

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - cølibat

Nederlands (Dutch)
celibaat, seksuele onthouding

Français (French)
n. - célibat, chasteté

Deutsch (German)
n. - Zölibat, Ehelosigkeit

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - άγαμος βίος, εργενιλίκι

Italiano (Italian)
celibato

Português (Portuguese)
n. - celibato (m)

Русский (Russian)
безбрачие, сексуальное воздержание

Español (Spanish)
n. - celibato, soltería

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - celibat

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
独身生活

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 獨身生活

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 금욕, 독신, 독신주의

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 独身, 独身主義

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) عزوبه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮רווקות, פרישות‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.

To select your translation preferences click here.