The problem is, both you and your wife have professions in which marriage and kids have been ‘part of’ for decades, if not centuries (counting doctors as surgeons, herbalists etc and scientists of varying types.
Sorry the argument doesn’t, fly as there have been married priests in the Church for a long time, even in the Latin rite. For instance Anglican priests are not obliged to renounce their families if they swim the Tiber. Moreover the duties their vocation, even in the Anglican ecclesial community, is not all that much different than a Catholic priest’s, and there are plenty of married Anglican priests; culturally, in the West, it is not at all uncommon to have unmarried clergy.
The only thing I keep seeing discussed is celibacy.
If you want to discuss other aspects of a marriage, why has only the one been mentioned? I stand by my understanding that this is really about sex.
Catholic Encyclopedia:
Celibacy of the Clergy
Celibacy is the renunciation of marriage implicitly or explicitly made, for the more perfect observance of chastity, by all those who receive the Sacrament of Orders in any of the higher grades.
Celibacy is about marriage. While
sex is normally part of marriage, it is not the only part. Moreover, many married couples are not sexually active for reasons of illness, age, loss of interest, whatever. Their marriage is no less valuable, and no less important, because of it, and such married couples find different ways to express love, and mutually care for each other.
A priest’s life is not only a continent one, it is by virtue of celibacy also a lonely one.
In French, my mother tongue, someone who is not married is a *célibataire". In other words, “celibacy” refers to marriage. Sexual continence is of course demanded of the celibate.
Is the idea that we need to ‘attract vocations’ one we really want?
Surely that does more to foster the whole idea of priesthood as ‘job’ (not vocation), and thus strengthens the case for ‘female priests’. If it’s all about ‘jobs’ and ‘sex/family’ and making things ‘attractive’, where is God in all this?
God often uses things to attract us. We can say the same about beautiful liturgy. It is attractive enough to have drawn this former lapsed Catholic back into the fold. Priests are only human, and priests today, often having to work alone, are being asked for something heroic. It’s beyond not “attracting” vocations, it is repelling them. There will already be plenty of sacrifices to a priestly vocation, including economic ones, without expecting heroic, and dare I say unnatural, virtue from ordinary men.
