Married Priests
Some of you may have noticed the reportage on the recently concluded Synod of Bishops in Rome.
One topic some portions of the media have seized on was the rejection of the idea of permitting Catholic priests to marry. That was not even the main topic of the synod, but, okay, some folks in the US seem to be particularly obsessed with the issue.
The thing is, the Church already allows married priests (and I’m not referring to the exception traditionally made for married Anglican priests who convert).
What what?
The prohibition on married priests is specific to the Latin Rite; many of the Eastern Rites do permit priests to marry. So, the question is simply whether it should also be permitted in the Latin Rite.
What happened at the synod was that one of the bishops (an American, I think) raised the issue, and after brief discussion it was shot down. By the Eastern Rite Bishops.
Apparently, based on their own experiences with married priests, they felt that the practice created far more problems than it solved.
I am not one to argue with experience in such things.
Short of the wholesale migration of the disaffected conservative Anglican congregations into communion with Rome (which would likely result in the creation of a separate Anglican Rite to accomodate them), the West is unlikely to ever see married Catholic priests, any more than Eastern Rites are likely to reverse their own position after so many centuries (it’s much harder to prohibit again once you’ve started allowing it…).