Pope considers dropping celibacy requirement

Where it gets dicey for me (and this seems like a no brainer) is that they have a whole host of believers they are turning their backs on who want to worship in the Catholic tradition.  It seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face. 

The celibacy requirement has always been completely insane. I believe it is a contributing factor in the rampant abuse seen within the church. It is unrealistic to force a grown male (and female for that matter) to never have sex. (The other factor being those that do it to children are pedophiles).

Or how about ordaining women? That would help resolve the problem. But I’d bet conservatives would be more aghast at that than married priests.

Coming from someone raised as Catholic, went to Catholic school, and had Catholic doctrine shoved in my face until my mom died two years ago.

Celibacy does not cause or contribute to child sexual abuse in any way shape or form! Celibacy is a VOW taken by choice to be a priest or nun. Married men and woman sexually abuse children too. It is the person, not the profession. Maybe they should screen their applicants more carefully!

No, but the fact that it’s a profession that only welcomes men who are willing to forgo relations with an adult woman makes it more likely to attract asexual, homosexual, and pedophiliac men. My uneducated opinion.

This is what I was about to point out. I can only imagine that priests and nuns must feel incredibly lonely. Yes, they have a whole congregation surrounding them. But there must be something left lacking without the emotional connection that you get from a relationship a partner in life. Not to mention what you would get from having children. 

My great aunt said her uncles became priests because they could have all the women and drink they wanted without any responsibility of a family. If they got a woman pregnant, who was going to believe a priest was the father. I often wonder how many children they had?

The same men would abuse, where ever they are!

From what my aunt said her uncles only went after married women, but I do believe that anybody was fair game for the family priest.

I imagine that they do - especially today where most parishes have only a single priest and religious communities are shrinking. I think the days where a Catholic parish had multiple priests and a convent next door or down the road to staff the school provided much more companionship and community for the religious.

Maybe they're following the money? It's more likely the Catholics who want birth control and don't care about priests marrying have a higher income or are living in a developed or diverse area. That's the cynic in me. Get an increase in donations if policies change.

Aren't there any deacons anymore? In Catholic school growing up we had a married deacon, who was a surgeon in town with a big Irish family of ten kids who always gave mass in church.

I just have to throw this in:

When I lived overseas and was the daughter of a missionary I saw first hand how much effort and time it took to minister to the "flock". A man with a family has to give up much family time in order to take care of his congregation in the way it was expected. Time spent with family and taking care of family was precious and meant missing out on something to do with the church. In the islands below us, known at the time as the Trust Territory of the Pacific, there was a group of missionaries called the Liebenzell missionaries who came from Germany and were connected to the Lutheran faith. Some of the women were called sisters and were not allowed to marry or have a family and it was a life long commitment. As Germans, they also had to give up their German citizenship to live in the Trust Territory as only US citizens could even visit there. The life they lived was devoted to service of the community they ministered to. What they had to offer was much more than the families that were doing the same thing as they had no other commitments. Life in the Trust Territory was very primitive and labor intensive. Electricity and running water was not available in big portions of the islands.

This was taught to me the reason priests did not marry or have families. Their lives were devoted to service to the church and the congregation of the church. They did not have to divide their attention between family and congregation.

Whatever the Catholic church decides to do, I hope they can come to a compromise and have two kinds of priests - the ones who marry and have families and then the ones who don't. It seems there is a need for both.

As a conservative married to a cradle Catholic, I can assure you that we have zero problem with ordaining women or abolishing the celibacy doctrine.  Neither would the two nuns in the family.

We are also pro-choice and support the LBGT community, btw.

Signed:  So tired of being painted with such a hugely inaccurate broad brush. *sigh*