I thought the following was interesting:
Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, Volume 2, Feb. 6, 1999
www.ejhs.org
MANDATORY CELIBACY AND SEXUAL ETHICS
IN THE LATIN RITE OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
Part 1
CELIBACY DEFINED
Celibacy is the state of being unmarried. Chastity is the avoidance of all sexual activity outside the married state. As far as Rome is concerned, any attempt to distinguish between celibacy and chastity in the priesthood is an idle exercise in semantics. Priests who marry (without a dispensation) violate the law of the Church and the divine law of chastity. Throughout the first part of this paper, then, we will be using the word "celibacy" according to the definition proposed by theologian Leonard Weber:
"Celibacy here means not simply the fact of not being married…celibacy is here understood as the unmarried state chosen in the light of the Christian faith, and in particular as one of the duties of the state in life of the clergy of the Latin Church by which they are forbidden to marry and obliged to live in total continence." (Weber, 1975, p.178)
However, later in our paper, we hope to demonstrate that, even though celibacy (renunciation of marriage) and abstinence (renunciation of extra-marital sexual activity) have come to be identified in Roman Catholic hierarchical and populist thinking, they proceed, in fact from two separate ideologies, one born of power, the other born of sex negative asceticism. By twinning and identifying celibacy and abstinence, the Roman Catholic Church had found the perfect formula for controlling the lives of its ordained.
One common misunderstanding (evidenced by the way people speak, e.g. "He broke his vow and married"
is that celibacy is a vow taken by ordained priests of the Latin Church. Celibacy is not a vow. In Roman Catholic theology, a vow is a promise made directly to God. Celibacy is an obligation imposed by the institutional Church. We notice the use of "obligation" words in the most recent Code of Canon Law where no reference is made to celibacy as a vow:
“Clerics are obliged to observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and, therefore, are obliged to observe celibacy." (canon 277)
And, again:
"...loss of clerical state does not entail a dispensation from the obligation of celibacy." (canon 291) (Code of Canon Law: 1983. pp. 97 & 103)