Some Eighteenth—century Remarks on Clerical Celibacy

Extract

Of course, a serious question deserves a serious answer, but is importance necessarily associated with solemnity, especially if the problem is unlikely to be solved in the immediate future? Might it not be possible or even desirable in such a situation to relax, if only for the moment, and treat the problem neither indifferently nor lugubriously, but with a certain degree of panache or even irresponsibility—for our own sakes, if nobody else’s? Such thoughts were prompted by reading through one particular controversy among English-speaking Catholics during the eighteenth century. At the time, many Catholics were dissatisfied with the attitudes and laws of the Church, not least on the issue of celibacy. Furthermore, these critics, no doubt largely influenced by the temper of the time, regarded themselves as liberal and enlightened in their own religious approach. How then were they to regard the clerical ‘vert’?

In 1784, Charles Henry Wharton, one of the first American Jesuits, published A Letter to the Roman Catholics of the City of Worcester where he had previously served as chaplain, giving his reasons for joining the Anglican Church. This pamphlet, first published in Philadelphia and reprinted in London about three months later, was particularly successful because it was, to use the publisher’s phrase, written in ‘a spirit of moderation and liberality’. Wharton was answered by, among others, John Carroll, the first American Bishop, and William Pilling in A Caveat addressed to the Catholics of Worcester (London, 1785). Pilling in turn was answered by a former Benedictine, John Hawkins, in An Appeal to Scripture, Reason, & Tradition which supported Wharton’s Letter, while Joseph Berington replied in his Reflections addressed to The Rev. John Hawkins (Birmingham, 1785).