Yet, lest marriage should thereby be discouraged, celibates were expressly debarred from the privileges of adopting heirs.
"The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2)"
John Holland Rose
Only at night, in the silence of the upper cloister, in the privacy of those families who were born and died among the stones of the Cathedral, did they dare to repeat the murmurs of the Church, the interminable tangle of tattle which grew over the monotonous ecclesiastical existence, the complaints of the canons against His Eminence, and what the cardinal said about the Chapter, an underground war which was reproduced at every archiepiscopal elevation, intrigues and heart-burnings of celibates, embittered by ambition and favouritism, primitive hatreds that reminded one of the time when the clergy elected their own prelates and ruled over them, instead of groaning as now under the iron rule of the archbishop's will.
"The Shadow of the Cathedral"
Vicente Blasco Ibañez
In Ireland the clergy were apt to forget this simple fact that celibates do not continue the race.
"The Untilled Field"
George Moore