"The Latin Church has not always demanded celibacy or continence of its priests. There is evidence that, beginning in the third century, many bishops and priests were married and had children. In fact, until the fourth century, no law was promulgated by Church authorities concerning clerical marriage or continence. The Council of Elvira in roughly AD 305 would be the first to decree that married priests practice continence; however, it did not exclude married men from the priesthood. Celibacy became mandatory for priests in the Latin Church only after the Second Lateran Council in 1139. Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries, the celibacy requirement in the Latin Church was subject to multiple challenges; this state of affairs ended when Pius V (1566-1572) made it clear that the matter was closed. Although the issue surfaced from time to time, particularly during the French Revolution, the celibacy requirement and the elevated status assigned to the celibate state has been largely quiescent within the Latin Church from the late eighteenth century until the late 1960s."
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Priesthood in the Catholic Church
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