Sex and the (Vatican) City: a brief history of clerical celibacy

Article for History Extra (January 2020).

VATICAN-POPE-ORDINATION-PRIESTHOOD-MASS

Amid an ongoing papal debate about whether to relax a rule against married men becoming priests, and with the Church of England calling for Christians in gay or straight civil unions to be abstinent, Emma J Wells considers the history of celibacy in the Christian church