The Byzantine Forum: "The Catholic Church today already has married priests and they appear to be doing quite well."

Excerpts: "The Catholic Church today already has married priests and they appear to be doing quite well." "In 1596 the Ukrainian bishops and the papacy entered into the Union of Brest, pursuant to which the Ukrainians agreed to join the Catholic Church and to accept fully the authority of the pope on all matters of faith and dogma. In return, the Ukrainians were permitted to retain their Orthodox liturgy and rites and to continue the tradition that priests (but not bishops) could be married." "Although the spiritual and scriptural arguments that support celibacy are noble and complex and go back to the earliest days of the church, the concept of mandatory celibacy is not rooted in theological considerations, nor is it a dogma of the Catholic Church. Rather, it gathered momentum in the Middle Ages in response to a number of historical factors, became firmly entrenched with the Council of Trent in the mid-1500s, and is today an obligatory disciplinary rule imposed by the institutional Roman Catholic Church on its priests. But times have changed. The institution of priesthood, and with it the church as a whole, are passing through a moment of intense crisis and face an acute shortage of clergy." "The beauty of any such reform is that there is little need to gaze into a crystal ball and experiment: The Catholic Church today already has married priests and they appear to be doing quite well."