There is an inaccuracy in your first citation; it says that in the eastern rites ‘In the East, priests but not bishops may marry’ which blatantly incorrect; married men may be ordained, but in the East, priests may not marry - with one exception; and that is a married man who is ordained; has young children, and the wife dies; by permission he may remarry.
And as to the second citation, the bit about “angelic purity” strikes right at the heart of another sacrament - marriage. So people who marry are “impure”??? Or are we going to slide around that one and say “Well, just less pure…, but of course, not impure…”
And neither one really gets to the heart of the matter. In the Catholic Church (not the “Roman Catholic Church”, there are both married and celibate priests. Both articles have a lingering red herring, that somehow, if the Roman rite should allow married men to be ordained, why, heavens to Betsy, celibacy would be done away with. That one gets so tiring as it is simply an illogical red herring to the conversation.
This issue has been hashed and rehashed in these forae, and the same tired, ill-thought out lame excuses come forward (and I am not accusing you of those). The Church (not just the Roman wing of it) has managed to preach the Good News, deliver the sacraments, and save souls for +/- 2000 years with both a celibate and a married clergy. The world, Christianity, and the Church has not gone into a tailspin because of it.
We have had a time of having married deacons, and to the best of my knowledge, that has not turned into a massive fiasco. We also have had a time, within the Roman rite, of having married men ordained to the priesthood, and I have not seen or heard of any massive fiasco due to that either.
Celibacy is not going to disappear if we start ordaining married, cradle Catholic men. I would submit that in fact, celibacy will be seen as what it should be seen as, and that is, a charism to which some are called; and that should, if anything, strengthen the call to celibacy, rather than denigrate it. We certainly have a long history of both men and women choosing to lie celibate lives, and not ordained; and that call has been one that perhaps until recently was not as displayed and celebrated as well as it could have been.
We are not going to settle this; but the Church has a history of moving very slowly, and that movement has been, of recent (as in the last 50 years of less), to ordain married men to the deaconate, and to the priesthood ( the latter albeit very limited by original status). It may be that in my lifetime, short as that may be, I will see the opening to ordaining married cradle Catholic men. Would that this would happen.
