Priestly celibacy deliberately severed local attachments and enabled papal absolutism
Evidence
After celibacy had most effectively supported this endeavor—since a married priest would have had attachment to a narrower circle and thus would have engendered a closed opposition within the church, whereas as a celibate, a priest’s only recourse in his individual isolation would be to the unqualified totality—the Jesuits took it up with the greatest success. They fought the status aspirations of the clergy on all fronts, and they laid stress on the universal character of the priest that permitted him to feel at one with all believers, whatever their status. In opposition to all aristocratic systems of church rule, their goals were a thorough leveling of all believers, on the one hand, and papal absolutism, on the other. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 679
Categorization
- QUESTION: Provocative claim — a married priest’s narrower circle as ‘closed opposition’ is a mechanism worth checking against church history.
- XREF: connects to: Papal temporal power prevented the political unification of Renaissance Italy — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 1878; Augustine provided the theoretical justification for medieval papal supremacy — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 1432
Related
Broader Connections
- Papal temporal power prevented the political unification of Renaissance Italy
#complicates(0.60) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 1878 - Augustine provided the theoretical justification for medieval papal supremacy
#corroborates(0.60) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 1432