It is generally admitted that the vow of celibacy was not demanded of the clergy in primitive Christian times.  It was only after many years of bitter debate and in response to the growing influence of the monastic ideal, that celibacy finally came to be looked upon as the highest form of Christian virtue, and was enforced upon the clergy.  As in the case of the vow of poverty, there certainly can be no reasonable objection to the individual adoption of celibacy, if one is either disinclined to marriage or feels that he can do better work unmarried.  But neither Scripture nor reason justifies the imposition of celibacy upon any man, nor the view that a life of continence is holier than marriage.  It may be reverently said that God would be making an unreasonable demand upon mankind, if the holiness He requires conflicted with the proper satisfaction of those impulses He himself has deeply implanted in human nature.

3.  The Vow of Obedience.  The monks were required to render absolute obedience to the will of their superiors, as the representatives of God.  Dom Guigo, in his rules for the Carthusian Order, declares:  “Moreover, if the Prior commands one of his religious to take more food, or to sleep for a longer time, in fact, whatever command may be given us by our Superior, we are not allowed to disobey, lest we should disobey God also, who commands us by the mouth of our Superior.  All our practices of mortification and devotion would be fruitless and of no value, without this one virtue of obedience, which alone can make them acceptable to God.”

Thus a strict and uncomplaining obedience, not to the laws of God as interpreted by the individual conscience, but to the judgment and will of a brother man, was demanded of the monks.

     “Theirs not to reason why,
     Theirs not to make reply,
     Theirs but to do and die.”

They were often severely beaten or imprisoned and sometimes mutilated for acts of disobedience.  While the monks, especially the Friars and Jesuits, carried this principle of obedience to great extremes, yet in the barbarous ages its enforcement was sadly needed.  Law and order were words which the untamed Goth could not comprehend.  He had to be taught habits of obedience, a respect for the rights of others, and a proper appreciation of his duty to society for the common good.  But while, at the beginning, the monastic vow of obedience helped to inculcate these desirable lessons, and vastly modified the ferocity of unchecked individualism, it tended, in the course of time, to generate a servile humility fatal to the largest and freest personal development.  In the interests of passive obedience, it suppressed freedom of thought and action.  Obedience became mechanical and unreasoning.  The consequence was that the passion for individual liberty was unduly restrained, and the extravagant claims of political and ecclesiastical tyrants were greatly strengthened.