The faith of our fathers - Carmel Apologetics

"HaveCELIBACY, ETC. 461Ethelbert have become a Christian, if St. Augustinehad introduced to him his lady and her bridesmaids?" 1We frequently hear of unmarried Bishops andPriests laying down their lives for the faith inChina and Corea, and imprisoned in Germany.But such heroic sacrifices are too much to be expected from men enjoying the domestic luxury, andengrossed by the responsibility of a wife and children.But does not St. Paul authorize the marriage ofthe clergy when he says: we not power tocarry about a woman, a sister, as well as the rest ofthe Apostles ? The Protestant text mistranslates" 2this passage by substituting the word wife for woman.It is evident that St. Paul does not speak here ofhis wife, since he had none ;but he alludes tothose pious women who voluntarily waited on theApostles, and ministered to them in their missionary"journeys.It is also objected that the Apostle seems to require that a Bishop be the husband of one *wife."The context certainly cannot mean that a Bishopmust be a married man, for the reason already given,that St. Paul himself was never married. The senseof the text, as all tradition testifies, is that no candidate should be elected to the office of Bishop whohad been married more than once. It was not poa1Marshall, Comedy of Convocation.a I. Cor. ix. 6,39*8 I. Tim. iii. 2.