While reading Gerald of Wales Gemma Ecclesiastica (written about 1200), I came across this :
There is no dispensation [from the vow of celibacy], and there can be absolutely no recall of the vow except through a general council of the pope and cardinals with the consent of the whole Church. Such a council could permit single priests to marry, as is the practice among the Greeks. It is said that Alexander III had definitely proposed and firmly decreed to permit the marriage of priests because he was aware of the great dangers in the Western Church which stemmed from the vow of celibacy. [To this end] he had acquired the consent of the entire Roman Church, except for that of his abbot chancellor – a man of singular austerity who became Pope Gregory IV [sic – actually Gregory VIII], the third pope after Alexander III. There is nothing in either the Old or New Testament, in the Gospels, or in the writings of the Apostles, to prohibit marriage. The clergy of the Western Church have only been urged to celibacy by the holy fathers and apostolic men of the early Church for the sake of greater purity and integrity. The Eastern Church, however, adhered rather to the kind disposition of St. Paul (even though he himself had taken a vow of celibacy).
The reforming popes of the Middle Ages tried to get the secular clergy to live up to monastic standards of chastity and poverty, without much success. German bishops at the Council of Trent complained that almost all their priests were living in concubinage, and had purchased from the Roman Curia dispensations from episcopal attempts to enforce celibacy.
Trent and later reforms had more success, and set the parish priest apart from ordinary masculine life of sex, drinking, fighting, etc. This gave Catholic anti-clericalism a boost. Andalusia in Spain has an extreme version of this. Men do not go to church; women do. The men suspect the priests are seducing the women. If a priest is obviously chaste and circumspect in his dealings with women, men think he is a pederast. Priests can’t win.
Celibacy is not the only problem – Protestant ministers also are suspected of having designs upon the females under their care. But celibacy seems to exacerbate suspicions.
Leon, the priests (as are all Catholics) are victims of a Church that embraces esoteric, academic criteria at the expense of both Scripture and human reality. St. Paul, for one. never demanded mandatory celibacy. He did, however, say that a bishop had to manage his household well and be married to one wife. IOW, the philandering and concubinage associated w/the Catholic priesthood would disqualify anyone from ministry (see 1 Timothy 3: 1-13).
Church leadership demands mandatory celibacy not to encourage holiness but to keep priests under their control. That violates the entire spirit of Jesus’ teachings.
I tend to think that the Latin Rite will gradually ease up on the ordination of married men. Everyone knows it’s not a doctrinal issue but a matter of Church discipline.
Many Latins like to argue that evidence points to priestly celibacy going back to apostolic times. Yet we have the written and inspired counsel of the Apostle St. Paul “I do not make this a command.”
What if ordaining married men to the priesthood is a concession to human weakness, as these folks argue? It is nonetheless a concession allowed for by the universal Church. We are weak, that’s one of the givens of a Christian understanding of the human person.
As well, the idea that in our age, where so many are addicted to sex, etc. we need the witness of celibate priests; I think your remarks about the perception of the Spanish of those priests who are truly pious and chaste as probable pederasts (or at best unnatural and unmanly) is telling. I recall a young man of 14, a real rough and tumble “true boy”, an altar server who took a liking to me say “please tell me you’re not a homosexual, you don’t seem to be, but I know most priests are.” This was twent years ago, from a kid whose family was religious and who himself enjoyed comming to Mass and serving at the altar.
Whatever good it served in the past, in the present age mandatory celibacy for priests of the Latin Rite might very well undermine the witness we want to give and attract the emotionally and psychologically unhealthy (God bless them, the Lord has a plan and healing for them – read Orthodox priest Thomas Hopko’s book on SSA).
One thing I know for sure.Both Orthodox married and Eastern Catholic celebate priests have both told me that as straight men they would not tolerate sodomites in the seminary especially if the they felt the majority of men studying there were with them and would back them up.
What if ordaining married men to the priesthood is a concession to human weakness, as these folks argue?
If the Latins really argue this, then the Catholic Church had “lost it” long ago. Since when is a married priesthood a sign of “human weakness”? Isn’t matrimony a sacrament?
This just shows how esoteric and academic Catholicism is. Basic common sense, even when viewed within the context of its own theology, ceases to exist.