Married men - If married proests were allowed, would you seek ordination?

[Tatian]

I know of a priest (well was a priest) who went through formation, and was at our parish while he was a transitional deacon, and then after only a few years left the priesthood and got married. I never saw this coming as he was so perfect as a priest. It would be nice to still see him as a priest though.

My concern would be this though. IF the church allowed priests to marry, I would think it would drive a wedge in the members just like it did when other controversial things happened (e.g. Vatican 2, etc), and membership would drop.

I know that when they changed/revised the Roman Missal recently, there were a few people in my church who were so fed up, they stopped going to mass. I also know as an Extraordinary Eucharistic Minister, there are some people who will switch lines in communion because they believe they can only receive communion from a priest.

I just have a grave concern that if the church allowed this, we might see a mass of people either abandon the church or just stop coming to church, which would be an awful shame.

Personally, I don’t know what the right thing to do with this topic would be… I will leave it to our Lord to guide us.

God bless,

John

The Church can’t be scared to change things because people will be malcontents and leave. I think a portion of people who leave are itching for an excuse anyway because they’ve got a bad ecclesiology (a virtue-driven ecclesiology, like Protestantism). But the real issue is that since Vatican II, the Church implements things in an incredibly poor way. Want to know how many homilies I heard explaining changes in the new translation of the Creed? Exactly zero. Not a one said anything about what “consubstantial” means (which makes me question whether any of the priests even know). I attend Mass every single day and never heard a priest even hint at it. If they think theology is useless, what are the laity going to think?

When the Church’s pastors are not pro-active in this, the Church has to become reactive, and it always puts us behind the ball. Were pastors intelligently informed about the sacrament of holy orders, various disciplines pertaining thereto, etc, they could ready the laity for such a change.

However, I still think changing the discipline for the Latin Rite is a bad idea. It’s a good discipline with many spiritual fruits. The recovery of seminarians will happen when we recover a traditional theology of priesthood and the liturgy. When the liturgy is grand and beautiful (because we worship a God who is glorious and who deserves all that we can give Him), then young people will become interested in serving.