The Catholic Church

It is important briefly to note (if we are to understand some of the most important changes in structure that took place in the church in the first centuries of the period that we are considering here) the ways in which the Catholic Church was influenced by the beliefs and practices of the major religions of the classical world.

Although the empires of Greece and Rome are long since gone, they remain an important part of the story of how Western Europe is organized. The two great empires of Greece and Rome are without a doubt two o

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nt standard of celibacy for clergy. Pope Gregory VII is generally credited with making the discipline universal and mandatory for priests in the western church in the 11th Century (http://www.aegis.com/news/ct/2000/CT000202.html). By the end of the sixth century, Pope Gregory would declare that sexual desire is sinful in itself, not simply for members of the clergy but for all people, and this asceticism would dominate church thinking for a number of years. It is important to recognize that it rose from the church's growing power and wealth and can be seen in some ways as an attempt to recapture the simpler faith of the church's first centuries: When Paul dealt with qualifications for bishops, elders and deacons, his restriction was only that they be "the husband of one wife." By the third century, bishops were being denied the right to a second marriage. The problem for Christianity was it started to become financially prosperous. The rich, the thoughtful ones who understood that their earthly goods were barriers to heaven, were delighted to hand over chunks of wealth to the priests and bishops as a down payment on easier transmission from one place to the next. (The soul's equivalent, the wealthy presumed, of time-sharing
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Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)