Pope Gregory VII. introduced the unnatural requirement of celibacy--the forbidding of men and women to do what God had equipped them to do, and prompted them, by sexual passions to do--the most powerful passions known to humanity--passions which if not naturally gratified lead to crimes of revolting enormity, to loss of health, to loss of mental balance, to loss of shame, of normal desires, and of reason itself. (Consult such books as Dr. Sanger's "History of Prostitution;" Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, &c.) Soon after enforced celibacy was introduced, an honest priest, Honorius of Antrim wrote-- "Look at the convents of the nuns, places of debauchery! These abominable women have not chosen the Virgin, but Phryne and Messalina as their models. They prostrate themselves before the idol of Priapus!" (Priapus was the male organ of generation, and was formerly to be seen throughout Europe, especially at public fountains.) King Edgar of England wrote-- "What shall I say of the clergy? We find nothing among them but debauchery, excesses, orgies, and unchastity. Their abodes are propitious for solitude, and yet they dwell there not for pious meditation, but in order to lead lives of debauchery." Pope Benedict VIII. at the Council of Pavia deplored the awful vices of the unmarried clergy. Nicholas Clemangis says-- "The monasteries are no longer sanctuaries devoted to the divinity, but places of abomination and debauchery--rendezvous of young libertines. Indeed, _to make a girl take the veil is equivalent to forcing her into prostitution_." The monks of the Middle Ages led a life full of orgies, equalling the dissipations of Tiberius at Capri. "The concubines and prostitutes were mistresses of the wealth of the monasteries and convents." The good Catholic, Anselm of Bisate, wrote-- "The nuns are not more virtuous than the monks. Widows took the veil in order to be free, and not bound to one man." Instead of being the wife of one man, the nun could be the mistress of several. (Dr. Angelo Rappaport, p. 36.) Why was it that Irenæus and Epiphanius poured out such unprintable descriptions of the immorality of those "heretics" who refused to marry and who professed to be virgins? Did these Fathers of the Christian Church grossly slander those celibate heretics? Were the men and the women who indulged in those sexual excesses, while pretending to be chaste, any better or any worse than the human creatures of today?