Of course priests can marry. They just can't get married.

On March 9th in the year 1074, in the year after he ascended to the papacy, the reforming pope Gregory VII imposed celibacy upon the priesthood. He excommunicated all married priests. It was a bold move to bring the church into line with a hard-line ascetic faction that believed that lifelong abstinence was better than marriage. Pope Gregory wasn’t completely prejudiced against married people, though. He’d allow them to become priests as long as they ‘first escape from the clutches of their wives.’ It took a few hundred years, but eventually, his will prevailed.

Pope Gregory VII wasn’t backed up entirely by his flock—perhaps because this was 800 years before Popes were declared infallible. Marriage among priests was common at the time. In fact, if he’d made his edict a thousand-and-some years earlier, he would have thrown the first Pope, Saint Peter, out of the church. Peter and most of the apostles were married, so obviously the one who gave Christianity its name didn’t have such a hard time accepting them.

So how did Gregory VII get the idea to add “unmarried” to the list of requirements for the priesthood?

The tide against marriage began to turn during the second and third centuries, with the rise of a mystic sect called the Gnostics. They divided the world into light and dark. Material things, including all things related to the body, were on the dark side. Most priests of that era were married, but those who weren’t gained a little extra favor among the hard-liners.

In the centuries that followed, things got progressively tougher.

In the year 306, a council in Spain decreed that priests could not spend the night with his wife on the night before a Mass. In 325, the Council of Nicea decreed that once ordained, a priest could not marry. In 385, Pope Siricius left his wife in order to become pope, and decreed that married priests must also forsake their wives—or at least, not sleep with them. At the turn of the fifth century, St. Augustine put his seal of disapproval on marriage--and women in general--when he wrote, “Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of a man downwards as the caresses of a woman.”

It wasn’t until 1930 that Augustine’s approach was questioned from the papal throne. Pope Pius XI declared that year that marital relations can be good and holy. I’m personally glad that he did, too, because that was the year my father was conceived.

On a side note, a couple of popes didn’t think much of Gregory’s position. Pope Clement IV (who reigned from 1265 to1268) was married with two daughters; Pope Felix V (1439-1449) was married with one son.