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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   1817 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 4, 2025

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Are their any non-religious organizations whose members take vows oaths of celibacy, a la the Night's Watch or the Maesters from ASOIAF?

(I'm pretty sure the answer is "no," but I'd like to double-check my bases so I can be more certain in replying as such the next time someone "advises" me to "go join the Night's Watch" or similar.)

(Edited per @FiveHourMarathon's fine pedantry.)

Not that it answers your question, but technically the Night's Watch doesn't take a vow of celibacy. They promise to take no wife and father no children, not to abstain from sex.

Celibacy is no marriage, chastity is no sex. Don't worry even Catholics get it wrong a lot (and rise of the incorrect term Incel has furthered that misunderstanding)

My understanding is that chastity is no sex outside of marriage, but inside marriage is fine. i.e. all Christians (married or not) are called to chastity but they are encouraged to enjoy sex with their spouse.

Then again my understanding might be mistaken. I definitely don't claim to be an authority on that. Fair point about celibacy, I got sloppy and was just using the common sense of the word even though I should know better.

They're not exactly "encouraged to enjoy sex with their spouse", that's new age degeneracy. It's better to abstain and pray according to the church fathers. But because humans are so weak, the married are supposed to occasionally close their eyes and think of canaan so their spouse does not engage in sexual intercourse with lucifer or other people, which would be like, so much more disgusting.

1 Corinthians 7: 1 Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

They're not exactly "encouraged to enjoy sex with their spouse", that's new age degeneracy. It's better to abstain and pray according to the church fathers.

This is definitely not true, at least for Catholicism. My source is that I just recently went through the pre cana process (for those who don’t know, this is the Catholic marriage preparation, basically a retreat where you do various activities with your soon-to-be-spouse alongside other couples; it was a very good experience actually, happy to explain more to the curious) and they were very clear that a husband and wife are supposed to enjoy sex together. Sex is a hugely important part of romantic attraction and the general human experience, not to mention for procreation, and God made it feel good for a reason. You’re just not supposed to enjoy with people other than your spouse, or while using contraception other than cycle-tracking methods (of which the church offers a surprisingly robust suite of resources to help with, including services like biomarker tracking to help precisely identify a woman’s fertility cycle; they also included an array of secular scientific studies showing good success rates for the methods, I found it all very interesting). I admittedly can’t cite the biblical references off my head but I can tell you with absolute certainty that the Official Church StanceTM is that sex is good, actually.

Edit: reading further down the page I see that @urquan has included a key term I forgot to use, which summarizes the position and reconciles the attitude that “sex is good” with the attitude that “celibacy/chastity is good”. Marriage is, in and of itself, a vocation in the religious sense. There’s a reason it’s a sacrament after all. The priesthood, of course, is also a vocation. Priests are not “missing out” on something religious by being celibate and unmarried, nor are married couples “missing out” on part of the religion by not becoming priests and nuns instead. They are simply two different callings.

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