Celibacy in the Church

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Catholic Apologist Tim Staples recently commented on celibacy in the Church. What are people’s thoughts on this?

 
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It is a beautiful practice but needs to be optional even for priests.
 
For those who can remain celibate as laypersons, we need individuals for the Angelic Warfare Confraternity.
 
I would be a priest if it meant I could still have a wife and family. It’s basically the one thing stopping me. I don’t understand it and I never will. St. Peter had a wife and if you believe the apocryphal Acts of Peter, he also had a daughter.
 
Shakuhachi said:
It is a beautiful practice but needs to be optional even for priests.
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It can never be optional for priests. Once a priest, you cannot get married.

However, it may be permitted for married men to become priests.
 
Onthisrock84 said:
I would be a priest if it meant I could still have a wife and family. It’s basically the one thing stopping me. I don’t understand it and I never will. St. Peter had a wife and if you believe the apocryphal Acts of Peter, he also had a daughter.
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Peter was married BEFORE he became a priest. That’s totally fine. There are Catholic priests today who are married, because they were married before they became a priest.

However, I think Peter MIGHT be the reason (or part of the reason) why bishops are selected from unmarried priests.
 
Yah but we also trust that text for the account of Peter being crucified upside down.
It’s not a Gnostic text. There’s plenty of orthodox apocryphal books that show us what early Christians believed. Also just because it isn’t Canon means nothing. The Didache and 1 Clement and other writings that were considered scripture in the early Church are cited in the GIRM and the CCC.
3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manessah aren’t scripture in the Catholic Church ( are in an appendix to the Vulgate), yet all three are used in liturgy. So just because it isn’t canon doesn’t mean it can’t be useful.
 
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Our diocese had a married priest, former Episcopal priest, with children, now retired. His wife became active in Catholic ministries, but she was a firm opponent of a married Catholic priesthood.
 
Which priests did? That is a rather broad statement without some context.
 
We had a married priest who was a Presbyterian minister, and his wife was not opposed to a married Catholic priesthood.
 
The Op asked thoughts on the clip. I agree with Tim that celibacy can be a strong witness to Faith. That does not necessarily say that all priests should be celibate, and polls of seminarians and young priests have noted that many would continue to choose celibacy if there had been an option for married men to be ordained.

Many.

Not all.

If one is going to be a pastor of a parish, the current workload (as in, meetings, responsibilities for the parish plant, possibly a school, and sacraments outside of the Mass) can appear overwhelming.

However, when I was young (born well before Vatican 2), there were a number of priests who were high school teachers, and a number of younger priests who were assistants, not pastors. The ration of priests to parishes then had a significant excess; now we struggle to have a priest in each parish, with far fewer parishes with an assistant priest - there just are not as many.

Just as deacons have been added to the mix and are taking up some of the duties which were non-sacramental, so it is possible that the Church could ordain more married men (other than Protestant pastors who convert). It is seriously doubtful that there would be an overwhelming rush of married men to be ordained, as both they and their spouses would have to go through the winnowing which the deacons and their wives do now (each year during the 5 year training, there is a specific and rather lengthy review with the wife to determine they are still “on board”.

The church could well adjust to ordaining married men as well as celibate men. the eastern Rites have managed it for 20 centuries and not fallen apart at the seams.

And one last comment: kudos to Tim for clarifying what I have repeatedly said, and that is that the sexual abuse cases by priests were for the most part not “pedophilia” - a term used extremely loosely both by the press and the laity - but rather ephebophilia. words have meaning; it is best to use them correctly if one wants to communicate.
 
Shakuhachi said:
It is a beautiful practice but needs to be optional even for priests.
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Optional for single priests. Are you endorsing fornication or homosexual expression for single priests? I have to think you are angling for a married clergy??
 
otjm said:
We had a married priest who was a Presbyterian minister, and his wife was not opposed to a married Catholic priesthood.
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Not necessarily against married priests, but I see too many problems if said married priest was made a pastor of a church. IMO married priest would live in a community of their own, at the discretion of the bishop, and take on the role of “circuit rider” filling in at parishes where the unmarried pastor needs help or relief due to illness, vacation, etc. I think there would be too many wives that would see their position as something superior to all the other women in the parish and by extension due to the position of her husband, assume a role that was not hers by any right. I think this would cause a problem in the priest’s marriage.

Then of course you have the problem of married priests divorcing. For a church that holds that marriage is a lifelong, indissolvable union, this might just put a nail in the coffin of the CC view of marriage. Not a good thing given the perceived hypocrisy of that particular situation.
 
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