The Directa Decretal
In the Directa, the Pope dealt with the fact that clerics (deacons, priests, and bishops) were still living with their wives and having children, thus contravening the Council of Elvira and the First Ecumenical Council. Priests were justifying this by referring to the traditions of the Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament. Siricius was emphatic that clerical continence belonged to immemorial, even apostolic, tradition. He declared that priests had been under a duty to observe temporary continence when serving in the Temple, but that the coming of Christ had brought the old priesthood to completion, and by this fact the duty of temporary continence had become an obligation to perpetual continence. Fifteen points are studied in the decretal, but the key passage is that
| “ | The Lord Jesus formally stipulated in the Gospel that he had not come to abolish the law, but to bring it to perfection; this is also why he wanted the beauty of the Church whose Bridegroom he is to shine with the splendor of chastity so that when he returns, on the Day of Judgment, he will find her without stain or wrinkle, as his Apostle taught. It is through the indissoluble law of these decisions that all of us, priests and deacons, are bound together from the day of our ordination, and put our hearts and our bodies to the service of sobriety and purity; may we be pleasing to our God in all things, in the sacrifice we offer daily. | ” |
Continence was required of all Christian priests by ecclesiastical law until the great schism, and is still required of Catholic priests today; many Eastern Catholic Churches do not require celibacy of their priests.
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