The history of priestly celibacy isn’t so simple
SIR – Fr Jerome Bertram’s article on priestly celibacy (Feature, August 19) repeats a number of details and suppositions regarding the continence of married priests in the first millennium. That this was the system for a time is true, but we do not know that this was so from the beginning and it was not the case that this was universally accepted in the Church. The Eastern Churches did not follow the Western position on this, which became the norm.
