St. Hildegard of Bingen & Sri Ramakrishna

Mary T. Malone writes in her "Four Women Doctors of the Church" that whereas chastity & celibacy had been strongly recommended to the clergy from the early days of the Church, it was almost universally ignored, so that by the early Middle Ages, most clergy, including bishops & even Popes - not to mention the lower clergy - were legitimately married, according to the norms of the time. Pope Gregory reformed the Church by making marriage out of bounds for the clergy.

St. Hildegard of Bingen was a passionate supporter of the Gregorian Reform, still under way in her lifetime. In the notion of hierarchy as divinely ordered, there was no doubt whatsoever in her mind that those who lived chaste & celibate lives were, in this world, at the peak. All others, especially all the married, were much further down the ladder in God's design.

Sri "M", the authorised recorder of the conversations & teachings of the nineteenth century Indian spiritual teacher, Sri Ramakrishna, writes that on one of his early encounters with the saint, Sri Ramakrishna was horrified to know that 'M' was married & still more horrified to know that he had children. Later the order carrying Sri Ramakrishna's name was set up by his monastic disciples led by Swami Vivekananda.

The same idea was later expressed by Sri Sarada Devi, who said "A celibate person is half liberated even if he/she doesn't pray to God. If such persons are attracted even slightly to God, their further progress will be rapid."

So the 11th Century Christian Saint & the two 19th Century Hindu Saints had remarkable confluence in their views.