OK, so supposing we go ahead with this, what about the 400k or so priests who are currently serving? What will we do about paying for entire families to live in a rectory? What will we do about clerical divorce? Will we completely sever ties with the Orthodox and have married bishops? If not, where will we get our bishops, and what justification will we be able to use? What about bad PKs (priest’s kids), what do we do about their fathers?
Have you polled your local priests, are you ready for the vacuum that will hit us when thousands of them leave the Church or enter monastic life?
I’d think many American dioceses couldn’t afford to maintain a priest with his family. The parishioners certainly might balk.
I personally don’t think compulsory clerical celibacy will be done away with all at once with decree from the Pope or something like that. It took the Church many many centuries to implement the current policy of compulsory clerical celibacy and Catholic priest are already permitted to be married in certain parts of the world as are priests who convert over from other denominations. It will be a slow process. Divorce should be saved for another topic. The Bible and the Gospels and Jesus are pretty specific on that topic. Most other religious denominations permit married priests including the Orthodox Church. George Stephanopolous’s father is a Greek Orthodox priest.