Letter 55: I have given patient attention to your letter, and I am astonished that when you are perfectly well able to furnish me with a short and easy defense by taking action at once, you should choose to persist in what is my ground of complaint, and endeavour to cure the incurable by writing a long story about it. I am not the first, Paregorius, nor th...

To Paregorius, the Presbyter. I have given patient thought to the case you presented to me, and I see no way around the canonical requirement. The man in question, whatever his other merits, has contracted a second marriage, and by the canons of the Church he is thereby excluded from the presbyterate. I understand that this ruling causes disappointment — both to him and to you, since you had hoped to present him as a candidate. But the canons exist for good reason, and if we begin making exceptions whenever the circumstances seem sympathetic, we will soon have no canons at all. Let me add a word of consolation. Exclusion from the clergy is not exclusion from the Church, nor from the love of God, nor from the respect of his fellow Christians. He may serve Christ faithfully as a layman and earn rewards no less than those of any presbyter. The error would be to treat ordination as a reward for virtue, rather than as what it actually is: a specific office with specific requirements. A man may be wholly virtuous and still not meet those requirements. There is no shame in that.

ST. BASIL OF CAESAREA To Paregorius, the presbyter. I have given patient attention to your letter, and I am astonished that when you are perfectly well able to furnish me with a short and easy defense by taking action at once, you should choose to persist in what is my ground of complaint, and endeavour to cure the incurable by writing a long story about it. I am not the first, Paregorius, nor the only man, to lay down the law that women are not to live with men. Read the canon put forth by our holy Fathers at the Council of Nicæa, which distinctly forbids subintroducts. Unmarried life is honourably distinguished by its being cut off from all female society. If, then, any one, who is known by the outward profession, in reality follows the example of those who live with wives, it is obvious that he only affects the distinction of virginity in name, and does not hold aloof from unbecoming indulgence. You ought to have been all the more ready to submit yourself without difficulty to my demands, in that you allege that you are free from all bodily appetite. I do not suppose that a man of three score years and ten lives with a woman from any such feelings, and I have not decided, as I have decided, on the ground of any crime having been committed. But we have learned from the Apostle, not to put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in a brother's way; Romans 14:13 and I know that what is done very properly by some, naturally becomes to others an occasion for sin. I have therefore given my order, in obedience to the injunction of the holy Fathers, that you are to separate from the woman. Why then, do you find fault with the Chorepiscopus? What is the good of mentioning ancient ill-will? Why do you blame me for lending an easy ear to slander? Why do you not rather lay the blame on yourself, for not consenting to break off your connection with the woman? Expel her from your house, and establish her in a monastery. Let her live with virgins, and do you be served by men, that the name of God be not blasphemed in you. Till you have so done, the innumerable arguments, which you use in your letters, will not do you the slightest service. You will die useless, and you will have to give an account to God for your uselessness. If you persist in clinging to your clerical position without correcting your ways, you will be accursed before all the people, and all, who receive you, will be excommunicate throughout the Church. About this page Source. Translated by Blomfield Jackson. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 8. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202055.htm>. Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.