Castration for priests and monks

Would it be possible that when RCCdecides on celibacy for clergy that they require them to be castrated? Throw in "leaving wordly life behind", "resisting temptation", "sign of true faith" etc reasoning behind it?

If this happens how would various opposition (mostly protestantism) see it? RCC's mutilation of people?
 
Not likely. Church doctrine holds the completeness of the body as sacred.

And you'd make papal selection less interesting.
 
Also, to be spiritually meaningful, it seems to me the discipline of celibacy would require that it involve voluntarily rejecting the natural sex urges, not eliminating the possibility of having them. Free will and all that.
 
That'd be a hell of a way to nip the spread of the religion in the bud.

I see what you did here :cool:

But remember, this would only apply to priests and monks, who took wows of celibacy anyway. This would simply be a sign that they really mean it.
 
Origen of Alexandria self-castrated at the start of III century through a personal evangelical reinterpretation, but the bishop for this denied to him to become a priest.

But i also think in other periods in the Papal State they mutilated young boys to made them white voices singers...
 
I could see a monastic order arising trying to justify the practice using both Matthew 5:29 and Matthew 19:10-12.
 
The RCC would reduce itself to a fringe group in a few years if makes this mandatory and really tries to enforce it.
Also, celibacy for the priests took a very long time to become mandatory and much more again to be actually enforced. Any attempt to introduce widespread castration would destroy the Church as a significant spiritual force for simple lack of personal. Eunuchs existed, yes, and it possible that SOME monastic order could establish mandatory castration for the members.
All the preists? I can't see a moment where it would possible, and if happens, it would not last without making orthodoxy/protestantism/catharism/whatever the majority religion of formerly catholic areas.
 

Philip

Donor
This would take a very early POD.

The first canon of the Council of Nicea rules against it. Castrates were forbidden to remain in or become part of the clergy (with exceptions for those who were castrated due to illness or when captured by 'the barbarians')
 
Origen of Alexandria self-castrated at the start of III century through a personal evangelical reinterpretation, but the bishop for this denied to him to become a priest.

But i also think in other periods in the Papal State they mutilated young boys to made them white voices singers...

The two things are pretty much unrelated, though. Castrato singers were a luxury item (literally - they were usually slaves until very late). Their being mutilated was an exercise in raising value. Priestly castration would have been a liturgical requirement, and it was decided early on that it should not be. After all, the possibility of reading Scriptire this way is only too obvious.A requirement, early on, would have been thinkabnle, which is why this was categorically stopped.
 
Top