Actually, it's not a bad idea.

Omigosh! I'm actually in agreement with OJ and PJ. Actually this is a brilliant idea and a perfect example of how the RCC can change while still claiming to not ever change.

My aunt is a Dominican nun and she ran the Catholic school system for a major urban diocese. She had more brains than any priest or bishop I've ever met. So it gets me angry when I compare her retirement at the mother house (which has been delayed by many years while the diocese keeps her working) to the relative luxury awaiting retired priests.

A lot of Catholics and non-catholics have this ugly stereotype of the mean old nun who would whack your knuckles with a ruler. I never had that experience as all the nuns at the Catholic grade school I went to in the 60s were dedicated, kind and loving individuals. They taught me how to read and how to think clearly (a few were sharper than any Jesuit), so I'll always have a soft spot for nuns.

Now if only they would let nuns get married...

they are married.

Who are these nuns that you speak of?

The major orders are dying.

If you think the priesthood is in trouble . . . nuns are in a much worse state. And unlike with the priesthood, as far as I can tell there don't seem to be any new orders that might attract new women with say, orthodox positions.

And frankly the old orders of nuns here in the States deserve to be dying off.

I just read yesterday that three order of nuns were leading the fruitloop lefty protest in Peoria this week aimed at cutting off Caterpillar sales to Israel.

Here in Chicago, the Dominican sisters, who manage enormous properties in the wealthy western suburbs have hardly anyone left.

And is it any wonder when at their flagship girls high school they have the students pray not to God the Father but to Mother/Father/God? And refuse to let morning prayers include the Hail Mary, because -- at least this was their stated reason -- it would offend the non-Catholic students!

And talk about the lavender mafia . . . the priests have nothing on the nuns: the former Dominican principal of said high school lived for many years openly with her female lover.

Don't look for the sisters to ride to the rescue, unless some orthodox new orders come into the pipeline.

Jim, those are all very good arguments for a married nun-hood, or at least the use of married deaconesses. Most churches are already run by women volunteers. Though the parish priest officially has final say, that is usually a formality.

Why not make these volunteer moms into deaconesses and make them responsible for the whole parish as the author suggests?

Why is complete lack of orthodoxy an argument for married nuns?

And anyway, as OJ says, they're already married.

Because normal healthy women, like normal healthy men, will not tolerate celibacy.

Celibacy is and always has been a sham, a source of scandal and hypocrisy, whether they are gay or straight. For example, it is considered remarkable for an African priest to have only one tribal wife (many use African nuns as an HIV-free harem). Before the advent of modern media, the Church was able to hide it better.

So orthodoxy is a matter of normalcy and health?

As an aside, I think you exaggerate the difference such a change would make. Take the example of priests for example. What would the new rules look like?

Would single men be allowed to become priests and then subsequently marry? This is not how its done in the Orthodox Church, iirc. And for good reason. Who wants to see the parish priest out on the town Sat. night wining and dining some woman, or series of women. The opportunity for scandal increases not decreases.

What about men already married becoming priests? How much difference would that make?

Any married men, as I am, here imagine how that conversation with the wife would go? Honey, I feel God calling, so I'm quitting the job and starting seminary. But don't worry dear after 5-10 years I'll be in a low paying job w/ a massive time commitment. There is an upside tho, we'll have free housing and maybe the parish school, if there is one will provide an education for our kids gratis. Honey, honey, honey . . . where'd she go . . ..

How many more priests will this bring in?

Oh, btw, the whole married equals orthodox falls apart just by looking at the CofE and its affiliates.

Celibacy is not orthodoxy, its a discipline not a doctrine. The next pope could get rid of it on his first day on the job.

Celibacy is abnormal and too heavy a yoke to bear. Which is why the clergy has always been (at least for the last 1,000 years) a refugefor gays, pedophiles and hypocrites who have kept "housekeepers" or openly kept mistresses.

How many more priests will this bring in?

A lot more than are coming in now, with the added bonus that they will be straight.

the whole married equals orthodox falls apart just by looking at the CofE

But it seems to hold together nicely when looking at the Eastern Rites.

There have always been priests, monks, and nuns who have ignored their vows of celibacy, but no one really knows the historical percentage. So many attacks still come from ancient Protestant smear campaigns against Catholicism as opposed to actual fact.

And as for Africa, it remains a society previously strong in its polygamous traditions. It is not very surprising that some native priests retain that part of its indigenous culture, but we can expect incidents to decrease as Christianization spreads and affects the culture.

Celibacy is certainly not for anyone, but there is a range in people's sexual drive. While some have a high libido and seek out sex or new sex partners constantly, others have a low libido and can accomodate celibacy. Far from being abnormal, celibacy and asceticism seems to always crop up in societies although only within a small portion of it.

The main detriment to recruiting new priests and nuns is that 1) religious vocations are no longer highly respected by society, and 2) we live in a highly sexualized culture that does not respect or encourage virginity. While I think any wealthy society would undermine these two points to some degree, I don't think it's true that our current situation is the only way a wealthy society could develop.

Nor will getting rid of celibacy lead to orthodoxy .

There is a reason that the Church started enforcing clerical celibacy in what, the 11th c?, and it was b/c of sexual scandals that were no better or worse than the ones the Church faces now.

There is a reason that the Church started enforcing clerical celibacy...

Yes, and the reason was purely financial. The Church didn't want the children of priests inheriting Church property.

imagine how that conversation with the wife would go?

So how do your think rabbis, ministers, preachers and prthodox priests convince their wives? Since they do it all the time, such convincing probably isn't as difficult as you make it out to be.

Chris, the fact that so few people tolerate celibacy means that his characteristic is outside the statistical "norms" of the bell shaped curve measuring these characteristics for the populatin under study. Statistically, celibates are "abnormal" - literally outside the norms.

Jim: ..and also to prevent dynasties.

As an outsider, I often get the impression that liberal Catholics calling for married priests (especially those who relate the issue to the scandals) are in the grip of a raw Freudianism that holds celibacy "dams up" not just healthy, but positively life-sustaining needs, the denial of which leads to warped psyches and all kinds of dangerous perversions. The argument actually doesn't put the women who would marry these guys in much of a light. What are they, receptive vehicles for sexual release? Is the purpose of marriage to forestall droolers and perverts? That seems to be the modern faith and it explains a lot of things from modern marital discord to a general casualness about adultery and no-fault divorce to gross stupidity on the AIDS issue. Very few today seem to remember that it wasn't all that long ago that celibacy was the expected lot of all the unmarried. Honestly, it's like we've all become fevered 18 year olds in heat in our minds, if not in our bodies.

I don't know what the Church should do, but obviously if priests marry, they can't be priests in the traditional sense anymore unless they only marry nuns. They would become like pastors or rabbis. How could they have wives and kids and still maintain lifelong vows of poverty and obedience? Can you just imagine the worldwide negotitations of employment terms and benefits? If it has to be, then it has to be, but no one among the liberal set seems to have thought that through.

The point remains.

Why would allowing married priests, or priests to marry, lead to a more orthodox clergy?

To judge by many of those who left the priesthood and the convent in the late 1960s b/c they thought they'd be allowed to marry and weren't, the answer is it won't Indeed in might actually lead to a more herterodox clergy.

I was taught by some of these ex-nuns, and they were uniformly theological fruitcakes. I suspect the same is true for many of the ex-priests.

The problem today isn't celibacy. The problem is bishops who operated heterodox seminaries, many of them seemingly gay hook-up joints -- in the 1960s and 1970s in particular. They drove orthodox candidates for the priesthood away, and continue to do so today.

Today, new orthodox orders have sprung up -- PPFSP e.g.-- and are finding a great demand among the young, as have orthodox bishops who are accepting many of the candidates that were turned away from other seminaries for being too "rigid" as the saying goes.

This is where the future of the clergy lies.

And I stand by my point in the first post. Who are the nuns who will watch over the priests today? The warmed-over remnant of 60's radicalism that constitute nuns today are actually worse than the priests by a long shot.

Nor will getting rid of celibacy lead to orthodoxy

Well it's not as if celibacy has done a bang up job of preserving orthodoxy now has it? Perhaps the two aren't really related.

Why would allowing married priests, or priests to marry, lead to a more orthodox clergy?

Why would it lead to a less orthodox clergy? Your sampling of theological fruit cakes isn't what you might call a scientific opinion poll. Don't forget, most of those fruit cakes were ordained pre-vatican II and before the counter culture of the 60s (as were the most notorious pedophiles).

The problem today isn't celibacy.

Yes it is. As for the orthodox seminaries doing a gnagbuster business in priest wannabes, that's not evidence of an increase in vocations - they remain small and continue to shrink. The reason these hard right seminaries have more seminarians is that they attract would be priest from outside the regions served by the seminaries, priests who would otherwise attend local seminaries if they weren't so lavender. These orthodox seminarians are arriving from outside the seminary's diocese,they are not a home grown increase. If they did represent an increase in vocations you would see a increase in local applicants. What you see is a shifting of potential seminarians from lavender to orthodox, not a jump in vocations.

This is where the future of the clergy lies.

Then the future consists of continued Church closings and denial of the Eucharist to the faithful due to lack of priests.

Jim in Chicago wrote: "And (the Chicagoland Dominican sisters) refuse to let morning prayers include the Hail Mary, because -- at least this was their stated reason -- it would offend the non-Catholic students!"

I'm Jewish and went to St. John's Prep, a Xaverian Brothers high school in a suburb north of Boston in the late Sixties. Every class taught by a brother (we had lay teachers,too) began with the Hail Mary. I didn't say the prayer. Nor how could I be offended when this was a Catholic school and I was there to get a better education than I could get at my local high school. By the way, I can say the Hail Mary in four seconds, including the way freshman biology teacher Brother Payton emphasized the second syllable in the name "Je-SUS."

"Perhaps the two aren't really related":

Exactly the point I tried to make again and again in my comments. You were the one arguing that somehow married priests would make a difference.

Daniel you're also wrong about vocations, which are on the rise I believe, as are the number of seminarians over the last 10 years worldwide.

You also don't understand what is going on.

Yes, right now there are a handful of orthodox orders and diocesan seminaries, but as the heterodox bishops shuffle off dreaming of married priests, female priests, and contraception for all, they're being replaced by orthodox bishops, who reform the local seminary and let orthodox priests in from outside the diocese.

Good example here in Chicago with Cardinal George.

And frankly, it doesn't matter whether a diocese is producing its own priests. I'm perfectly open to what are in effect missionary priests coming to the US from African and elsewhere -- the Polish priests here in Chicago seem a particularly good lot. I mean after all, what percentage of priests in the major US cities 100 years ago were educated at places like Maynooth?

Good discussion at Amy Wellborn's today on some this:
http://amywelborn.typepad.com/openbook/2005/04/whither_nuns.html

Several commentators also note that there are orthodox new orders of nuns forming and going gangbusters as well. So perhaps I was to hasty to dismiss nuns.

Peter:

As this is the way the happiest, most successful and safest families work, perhaps the Church might reflect on this nugget of good sense.

Brilliant insight. Similar to something I read elsewhere. Happy marriages have one thing in common that distinguishes them from unhappy marriages: the husband does what his wife tells him to.

Jim:
I have read (no source, sorry) that while vocations are up in absolute numbers, they are declining in rate (# of vocations per # of Catholics).

As a follow up, a recent post at Beliefnet has these statistics on the priest shortage:

(see http://www.beliefnet.com/story/164/story_16487_1.html)

Even the Vatican admitted, in a little-noticed survey released two weeks before Pope John Paul II’s death, that the number of Catholic priests in the world is lagging behind the needs of the church. Worldwide, the number of priests is not much less than it was in 1975—-405,000 then, versus about 397,000 today. But Catholics meanwhile increased worldwide by 52%, to 1.1 billion people.

As a result, while there were 893 Catholics for every priest worldwide in 1958, today there are 2,677. The figure is likely to grow until at least 2050, according to the Vatican. Meanwhile, in Latin America today there are 8,000 Catholics for every priest. In Europe, the ratio is 1 to 1,400; in America it is 1 to 1,200; in Africa the ratio is 1 to 4,000, according to the Vatican.

So much for importing Third World priests to evangelize the West. Their priest shortage (as properly measured by the ration of priests to laity) is almost 3 to 6 times worse than ours.

And frankly, it doesn't matter whether a diocese is producing its own priests.

Yes it does. If all a conservative seminary is doing is attracting ouside priests who are repelled by "lavender" seminaries then there is no real overall nationwide increase in vocations as a result of conservativism. What part of this are you not understanding?

Jeff:

Would that it were that simple. The key is to defer 95% of the time, but the 5% when you don't is very important and without it there will be trouble. It's quite an art to decide where that 5% should lie. Takes about thirty years.