Treating a fascinating topic, this book fits quite awkwardly into the chronological parameters (1300–1700) of the series in which it is published. Though the author's subtitle extends the focus two centuries back, in fact the volume treats the arguments surrounding an obligation of celibacy for secular clergy, all the way from the church fathers to Pope Benedict XVI. Helen Parish shows convincingly that though the several arguments for and against such an obligation have changed little over the centuries, the particular arguments most highlighted in a given era, and the way in which they were articulated, have reflected changing cultural and institutional contexts.

Parish begins with the ambiguity of the Bible as a source for clerical marriage or celibacy. Both advocates and opponents of clerical celibacy have had and still have their favorite scriptural verses to quote, and to fuel their imaginations. For example, a reference to Peter's mother-in-law (Mark 1:30) has been mined as a proof of married apostles and thus as justification for married clergy. And yet the lack of any explicit (or further implicit) mention of Peter's wife has been seen as evidence of Peter having renounced marriage to follow Jesus, and thus as an argument for clerical celibacy. If the example or legacy of Peter for later clerical marriage was polyvalent, the same was true for Paul. Nothing in his letters suggests that he was married; he spoke of marriage as preferable to burning with passion (1 Corinthians 7:9), but that was hardly a ringing endorsement of marriage as an ideal.

By the fourth century and through the Middle Ages, ascetical ideals, closely associated with monasticism, were often proposed to and expected of secular priests as well as monks and nuns. The priest at the altar was seen as someone obliged to live a “pure” life and such purity was understood, by many, to exclude sexual intercourse. Thus when married men were ordained as clergy, the couple could be expected to live as brother and sister. Celibacy came to be the ideal for all clergy, an ideal promoted by bishops and theologians. But if a married man might still be able to be ordained, an ordained cleric was definitely not allowed to marry. Thus if the wife of a married priest died, he had no choice, in principle, but celibacy. Yet the priest's concubine was not uncommon. Meanwhile, as Parish deftly shows, a diversity of reasons for celibacy was advanced, including the need to avoid having priests pass church property to their heirs. Pope Gregory VII (reign, 1073–1085) worked harder than most popes to enforce clerical celibacy, but he met with considerable resistance, as did those who attempted to enforce his decrees. Among Parish's evidence of such resistance: a French bishop was stoned by his clergy for ordering them to give up their concubines, and some bishops in Italy refused to implement papal decrees on celibacy because they feared for their lives.

Parish explores the era of Protestant and Catholic Reformation as one of particularly vigorous debates on celibacy. She asserts that for Luther and other Protestant reformers, clerical marriage was “iconoclastic” (145, 183) in that it helped to smash not only papal authority and its unrealistic demands, but also false notions of ordained clergy as set apart and sacred, and notions of a works righteousness that would presume to earn merit before God through ascetical renunciation of sexual activity. But staunch defense of clerical celibacy was no less prominent in the early modern period. Parish repeatedly points out King Henry VIII's polemics against clerical marriage, polemics that surely must have seemed a bit strange (or strained) to anyone aware of Henry's own sex life. Other defenders of celibacy seem to have had more credibility. The Council of Trent decreed the creation of seminaries for the training of a parish clergy that would live holy, celibate lives altogether devoted to pastoral care of their flocks. Celibacy was promoted as undivided availability for priestly ministry. Bishop and humanist Jacopo Sadoleto defended the apostolic foundations of obligatory celibacy for clergy, as did various theologians and church historians, Robert Bellarmine among them.

The least developed part of this book is the last twenty-five pages where Parish considers clerical celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church from the French Revolution to today. Too many important topics are given but a rather brief mention, such as the 1917 Code of Canon Law, or Pope Paul VI's insistence that celibacy not be discussed by the Second Vatican Council, or the sex abuse crisis in the last decade. There is not much in this chapter on the rapidly changing cultural and religious context since the 1960s in which celibacy has been debated, such as change in attitudes toward sexual intercourse outside marriage, toward gender difference, toward homosexual marriage, and the particularly heated debates on the possibility of homosexual clergy in Protestant churches where heterosexual marriage has been the norm (if not outright requirement) for clergy. One question this reviewer would have liked to have seen posed: if clerical marriage was iconoclastic in the Reformation era, is clerical celibacy iconoclastic today? That is, could it be that it is iconoclastic of contemporary bias in favor of abundant sexual intercourse as absolutely essential to anything remotely like a fully human life? Even with a few limitations, this book offers a very useful examination of the history of a Catholic ideal and practice that has elicited acceptance and rejection for some two millennia.