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          Celibacy in Ancient Ireland

In Ireland celibacy was not an issue in the early Church. Indeed, the decisions in the documentary recounting 'The First Synod of Patrick' simply takes married clerics for granted and says that "any cleric from ostiary to priest ...whose wife walks about with her head uncovered shall be despised by the laity and separated from the Church." Dr Patrick Power, in Sex and Marriage in Ancient Ireland (Mercier Press, 1976), points to the fact that a later Brehon Law actually grades ecclesiastical marriages indicating that married bishops and priests were allotted only two-thirds of the honour price of an unmarried bishop or priest. 
Clerics marrying remained an unchanging factor of religious life through the sixth century. In AD 567, at the second Council at Tours, it was decided to recommend that any cleric found in bed with their wives should be forbidden to perform church rituals and reduced to a lay state. However in AD 580 Pope Pelagius II (AD 579-590) was not so much bothered with married clergy but with inheritance to their offspring. He ordered that married priests should not bequeath property acquired in their office as a member of the church to their sons or other heirs. 
In spite of attempts to 'sanitise' things by those who want to present celibacy as a strict rule of faith from early times, the evidence to the contrary is absolutely clear. 
In Ireland, from the 8th Century, Many religious houses were adopting ecclesiastical rules and laws and displacing the native Brehon Law system. 
Returning to celibacy, Dr Patrick Power, in Sex and Marriage in Ancient Ireland, points out that a Céili Dé Penitential does not order the excommunication and expulsion of any member who was married or had a sexual relational but prescribes only a penance. The Céili Dé (Servants of God) monastic order, founded in Tallaght by St Mael Rúain (d. 792) certainly approved of celibacy 
A century before this period, in Ireland, some Kings like Cormac mac Cuileannáin (836-908) were not simply Kings but, in Cormac's case was Bishop of Cashel as well as King of Cashel. He married Gormflaith, daughter of the High King, Flann Sionna mac Maelsechnaill (879-916). 
The Irish annals and chronicles are full of references to the sons of abbots and bishops. As surnames began to emerge in 11th and 12th Century Ireland, we find that Mac an Mhanaigh (MacEvanny) was 'son of the monk'; that Mac an tSagairt (MacEntaggart) was 'son of the priest' that Mac Giolla Easpuig (MacGillespie) was 'son of the bishop' and Mac Giolla Iosa (MacAleese) was 'the son of the devotee of Jesus' - applied to the sons of a religious leader. 
The rights and education of children of clerical marriages, as given in Brehon Law, has been studied in papers printed in Studies in Early Irish Law, 1936. Yet it is perfectly clear that in many monasteries in Ireland, those habitants were families that were bound by blood as well as religion. As Professor Lisa M. Bitel, in spite of her later arguments, confessed in Isle of the Saints: Monastic Settlement and Christian Community in Early Ireland, (Cornell University Press, 1990): 
"Abbots and officers openly supported wives, sons and other kin. They sent their relatives to become officers in nearby monasteries, or they kept sons, brothers, and nephews within their own communities to succeed to offices there. Successive generations of the Maicc Cuinn na mBocht, for example, controlled major monastic offices at Cluan Moccu Nois (Clonmacnoise) for about three centuries. Another family, the Uí Sinaich, battled for and won control of Ard Macha, remaining in power for generations. There is no reason to assume that other monks ignored the example of their abbots and officers." 
In the Annals of Ulster just for the year AD 793 we find recorded not only Dubh Da Leithi, the son of Sinaich, the Abbot of Armagh, but of Cinaed, son of Cumascach, the abbot of Demag, Flaithgel, son of Taichlech, abbot of Druim Rátha and so on.  Sons of abbots certainly reached high rank in the Irish Church. For example, Bishop Flann, who died in AD 812, was the son of Cellach, abbot of Finnglas. 
Yet Bernard points out that even 'this primatial Holy See' was "held in hereditary succession for they (the Irish) suffered none to be bishops but those who were of their own tribe and family". He mentions that the abbots and bishops of Armagh were married and fifteen bishops had succeeded by hereditary right at Armagh prior to the election of Archbishop Celsus. 
In fact it was not until 1101 at a Council at Cashel, convened by the High King Muirechertach Ua Bríain (d. 1119), who was not only High King but King of Munster (Muman), that the first serious moves were made to enforced clerical celibacy in Ireland. It was at this Council that Muirchertach handed over the historical royal lands of Cashel to the church "without any claim of layman or cleric upon it, but to the religious of Ireland in general". It was, for Ireland, a point where church and state began a separation and, indeed, the pro-celibacy lobby began to have its most significant impact. 
What many later scholars who attempt to square the circle, arguing for the tradition of celibacy, try to claim is these married religious were not ordained but were laymen. Such a claim was made for St Celsus, otherwise Cellach Mac Aodh (1079-1129) who inherited the bishopric of Armagh in 1105. Now if St Celsus was a laymen, we have a problem. How was he then able to ordained St Malachy (Maelmadoc ua Morgair) as a priest, commission him to reform the church, and then, as he lay dying, appoint him his successor as Archbishop of Armagh? 
Those who attempt to deny that there was clerical marriage in Ireland and deny the existence of many mixed communities can only put forward their argument by distorting or ignoring the evidence. 
Peter Berresford Ellis looks at the politics and philosophy behind the Catholic church's rules on marriage and celibacy