[Mrs. Don-o]

Well, the Melkites, Maronites and Ukrainians are Catholics, too. And their Sacrament of Holy Orders is legit.

The married male clergy issue is completely separate from the wacky Womynpriest rot. There have been married Catholic deacons and priests for well over a millennium, though not in the West; and no, the married Eastern priest or deacon was typically not abstinent, not separated from his wife nor living with her in the brother/sister mode.

I am not, by the way, personally in favor of changing the discipline of celibate priesthood in the West. I think there are significant spiritual and well as prudential reasons to uphold celibacy. But it's possible to take the other side without heresy, and without being somehow allied with the feminist priestess faction.

The parts of the Church which have married clergy are also pretty sturdily patriarchal, you might notice.

[ebb tide]

There have been married Catholic deacons and priests for well over a millennium, though not in the West.

But were they continent?

You keep bring up the East; Francis brought up the Orthodox on divorce and remarriage (on an airplane, of course) and look where he is today.

"The Orthodox have a different practice," he told reporters July 28 during his flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro. The Orthodox "follow the theology of 'oikonomia' (economy or stewardship), as they call it, and give a second possibility; they permit" a second marriage.

[ebb tide]

...and no, the married Eastern priest or deacon was typically not abstinent, not separated from his wife nor living with her in the brother/sister mode. Did you read Cardinal Stickler's research on deacons?

So the majority of the married Eastern clergy were incontinent? Does that justify the disobedience?

Doesn't sound much different from those Catholics who practice artificial birth control, because "everybody does it".