The vow of celibacy (celibacy) is given mainly for religious reasons. Officially, it is possible only if a person accepts the monastic rank. The path of a layman who has taken a vow of celibacy does not apply to celibacy. This is a personal choice of each person, a narrow path between two large roads.
The vow of celibacy is the refusal of a person from family, marriage and sexual relations due to religious or subjective motives. A true vow of celibacy involves the absence of a sexual partner and sexual activity throughout life or its long period. Although many use this word in a milder sense, especially when it comes to the voluntary form of celibacy.
Forms of vow of celibacy
The vow of celibacy can be voluntary, mandatory, or mandatory. A voluntary vow of celibacy takes place if a person refuses to marry for purely personal reasons. Some of the most common reasons for a voluntary celibate vow include unwillingness to take responsibility for a family, a precarious financial situation, or a desire to remain faithful to a loved one.
In some religions, the vow of celibacy is obligatory for monks, in Orthodoxy - only for monks and bishops, and in Catholicism - for all clergy. Celibacy of Catholic priests became mandatory in the era of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), but de facto was established only in the 11th century. The obligatory vow of celibacy prescribes the observance of chastity, the violation of which is regarded as sacrilege.
Forced celibacy can take the form of punishing spouses for adultery. According to the ecclesiastical law of the Russian Orthodox Church, upon dissolution of a marriage due to adultery, the guilty spouse is obliged to take a vow of celibacy. A similar rule was enshrined in Roman and East Roman law. For a long time in Russia there was a ban on marriage after 80 years and on the fourth marriage.
Vow of celibacy in various religions and non-monastic fraternities
In ancient Rome, the vow of celibacy was brought by the ministers of the cult of the goddess Vesta. For breaking a vow, women were buried alive in the ground. In Buddhism, only monks of the highest initiations, Gelongs and Getzuls, take the vow of celibacy in the name of self-knowledge and spiritual growth. In Hinduism, a vow of celibacy can take the form of a lifelong or temporary renunciation of sexual pleasures in order to obtain transcendental knowledge and self-knowledge. In Judaism, the vow of celibacy is treated negatively, primarily because of the direct biblical prescription to be fruitful and multiply.
Here celibacy is considered a hindrance to personal improvement and the attainment of holiness. In Christianity, only monks take the vow of celibacy, and persons of the white clergy, who are forbidden to marry as long as they are in the priestly or deacon's rank, take the vow of celibacy only in the event of the death of their wives. In the Middle Ages, a vow of celibacy was a prerequisite for joining the knightly order, and initially for candidates for membership in the Hanseatic League. The vow of celibacy was also given by the Zaporozhye Cossacks.
Negative consequences of celibacy
The vow of celibacy has severe, irreversible consequences for a person's mental and physical health. He provokes a feeling of dissatisfaction with his life, is a powerful stress factor, makes people angry and withdrawn, leads to loneliness and depressive states. A survey of 823 Catholic priests who are prescribed compulsory celibacy showed that 60% of respondents suffer from serious disorders in the genitourinary sphere, 30% regularly break this vow and only 10% adhere to it impeccably. According to a survey by the central public-legal German TV channel, 87% of Catholic priests consider celibacy to be a phenomenon that does not correspond to the spirit of the times, and only 9% see the meaning in its existence.
The lack of sexual release, natural for men, entails systematic masturbation, and sometimes - attraction on a sexual basis. For example, the shocking and unpleasant consequences of celibacy were numerous facts of sexual abuse of children by Catholic ministers, about whom they started talking back in the middle of the twentieth century. Nowadays, this problem has become so urgent that a service of its own security has been created, which is trying to cleanse the Catholic Church of child molestation.
