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THIS BOOK TELLS THE SAD STORY of how the eleventh-century papal "Gregorian Reform" forcibly imposed "clerical celibacy" on traditionally married Western Catholic bishops and priests (presbyters). The Gregorian popes forced many bishops' and priests' wives into homelessness, prostitution, and suicide. They forced other wives and their children into slavery. Driven in part by a vicious spiritual misogyny infecting some medieval networks of Benedictine monasticism, the popes of the "Gregorian Reform" tried to destroy in the Western Church the thousand-year-old apostolic tradition of married bishops and presbyters - a tradition rooted in the New Testament. They did that in order to construct a papal theocracy supported by a celibate cadre with no allegiance to family. At the time, their attacks precipitated a tragic fraternal battle between heterosexual and homosexual "clerics" - tragic because the two sides were brothers equally beloved by God. The book outlines a three-stage historical construction of non-evangelical clericalism: 1) the fourth-century Imperial Church's fabrication of the "clerical state;" 2) the eleventh-century papal imposition of "clerical celibacy;" and 3) the sixteenth-century Council of Trent's mandate of "clerical seminaries." Finally, the book proposes that, while the modern Western Catholic male "clerical-celibate-seminary" system is breaking down, the Holy Spirit is inspiring a lay-centered "New Evangelization" energized by postmodern feminine spiritual regeneration. JOE HOLLAND is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy & Religion at Saint Thomas University in Miami Gardens, Florida. The author of 17 other books, he is also President of Pax Romana / Catholic Movement for Intellectual & Cultural Affairs USA.
