Get Rid of the Celibacy Requirement

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šŸŒ»:sunflower:If there is a need for more nuns in the Catholic Church should we have discussions about allowing youthful beautiful women to be able to be married and be a nun?

What if the majority of women donā€™t want to become nuns because they want to get married and have kids? Maybe theyā€™re not called to it.šŸ’šŸŒ¹

( Iā€™m not against priests being allowed to be married or get married if the church allows it.)
 
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Thom18, Iā€™ve definitely given it serious thought, but Eastern Rite churches are difficult to find outside of major metros and Iā€™ve only ever known the Roman tradition.
Also, I would like to serve where the need is most dire, and in my experience that is in rural churches which are being shut down for no other reason than a lack of priests trained in the Roman Rite to administer the sacraments.
 
As I believe is the case with the Byzantines, the married priests say Mass and hear confessions on a part time basis. But thatā€™s about it. The celibate clergy do the rest. If, say, there was a priest in some rural area who did that and not much else, I could picture it working. But what if he works at the sawmill and will get fired if he ā€œpoints outā€ by too many absences, and somebody is dying? I donā€™t know how well it all works for the Byzantines. Maybe one will tell us.

I will say I have never heard of a priest who left the Church, went Anglican, got married, and returned to the Church as a married priest. Maybe there are some, but I have never heard of one.
 
Thom18 said:
Why arenā€™t all of these married men desiring to become priests entering the Eastern churches?
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I donā€™t think the eastern Churches are too keen on people doing that. Other than when a Latin marries a Byzantine, I donā€™t think they much like Latins crossing over to their churches even if they donā€™t become priests.
 
It could easily be the same people that were going to be celibate, but they decided too marry.
 
Protestant ministers work full time in ministry and have a family. Priests donā€™t have to always be available to the laity. The laity can also minister to one another. In my Protestant church, there were several ministers, deacons, deaconessā€™, and others that assisted our pastor. The congregation was never neglected. Itā€™s selfish to expect priests to only give and the laity only receive. Vatican II was convened to end the culture of absolute dependency on the clergy. The laity has a mission in Christā€™s church.
 
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Being a Orthodox priest or Protestant minister is also a vocation. They balance marriage, family, and active ministry. Tge arguments against married priests are nonsensical. Study how other churches manage married priests and modify it for the Catholic Church.
 
It was the main reason for celibacy. The theology supporting it developed later, as it was contrary to the east which always had both married and celibate clergy.
 
Jesus and St. Paul never mandated a celibate priesthood. There is nothing in scripture demanding that anyone be celibate in order to serve God. It was left up to the individual, but was never a requirement. The western Church made it a requirement.
 
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People was not a widow. There are early church fathers that said his wife actively assisted him in his ministry, until she was martyred.
 
Married priests have always been permitted with special dispensation. Such priests take a vow to live in continence should they survive their spouse. This condition for married men, in both the Latin and Eastern Rites, is nearly as old as the church herself.

The rule is not unwaveble in exceptional circumstances, such as a premature death within a young family. However, serious proposals to allow married clergy only offer broader criteria for accepting married men within the Latin Rite, not fundamentally change to the existing practice.
 
glencor63 said:
There are early church fathers that said his wife actively assisted him in his ministry, until she was martyred.
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I presume you mean Eusebius who stated that it came from Clement, but gave no actual quotation from Clement.

Eusebius (who is a historian, not a Church Father), being an Easterner, had no direct contact with the Western Church ( Peter and Clement) to record. It was simply heresay on his part that Origen repeated.

Eusebuis was even criticized in his own time for creating a work simply to praise the Emperor in Constantinople, rather than a factual account.
 
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WHY? Why is having a celibate priesthood so important to you? Is it because you have only ever experienced a celibate priesthood? People from other Christian traditions have had the opposite for centuries. The late Reverend Billy Graham is a perfect example of a full time minister, theologian, husband, and father. His wife was actively involved in his ministry, until she died. Likewise, the Reverend Jack Van Impe and his wife.
 
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Interesting how every crisis Protestants want to attack the Church and make it more in the Protestant model. Yet I know of no celibate Protestant preacher, who has forsaken the life of a husband, even though Jesus taught this, and Paul preached this as the better way to minister.
 
pnewton said:
Interesting how every crisis Protestants want to attack the Church and make it more in the Protestant model. Yet I know of no celibate Protestant preacher, who has forsaken the life of a husband, even though Jesus taught this, and Paul preached this as the better way to minister.
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Thatā€™s what I think all of this is: protestants wanting us to be like them, or our own laity wanting us to be like them. The argument always revolves around the latest scandal, and I can only see it as an opportunistoc assault against one of the Churchā€™s greatest treasures.
 
Uh, nope. Catholic here, and I already outlined three good reasons why Iā€™d like to see a married priesthood, which were roundly ignored.
 
glencor63 said:
It was the main reason for celibacy.
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That explanation does not make sense. A priest has always been free to own property, and that property would pass to his heirs like anyone elseā€™s.

How, then, would celibacy protect church property from being passed to a priestā€™s heirs? The solution you propose doesnā€™t fit the problem.
 
glencor63 said:
Priests donā€™t have to always be available to the laity.
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Yes, even now they have vacations, retreats, days off. It is only human. And rotate on-call like other professionals. The ā€œMarried to the Churchā€ concept can be a fine option for some people, like monks, brothers and sisters who freely choose celibacy for its own sake, not because it is required to do something else.
 
To all the naysayers, consider this question:
Do you believe that sacraments administered by one of our currently married Catholic priests to be any less effective or valid than those administered by a celibate priest?

If so, how do you reconcile this with Church teaching, which states that all are equally valid?
 
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