Priestly Celibacy

Famous quotes containing the words priestly and/or celibacy:

“Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)

“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)