Word: lateran
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Church tried to split the difference, prohibiting marriage after ordination and encouraging married priests to abstain from sex with their wives after they had joined the priesthood. (The Eastern Orthodox CHurch continues to allow married men to be ordained as priests.) But it wasn't until the Second Lateran Council in 1139 that a firm church law allowing ordination only of unmarried men was adopted. Journalist and former priest James Carroll contends in Practicing Catholic that the reasons for this celibacy requirement were not purely theological. "Celibacy had been imposed on priests mainly for the most worldly of reasons...
...French President Nicolas Sarkozy has poked at this spiritual status quo, using a visit to Rome's Basilica of St. John Lateran to call for a "positive" conception of laïcité, which would also encourage public expressions of faith. Some critics, however, say that the twice-divorced Sarkozy sees the symbolic and historic identification with Christianity as a way to respond to the growing assertiveness of French Muslims...