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You're overstating your case. There are, to be sure, a number of heterosexual men called to celibacy and the priesthood. But, their numbers are not as near as many as are currently in the priesthood, even with its depletion.

As I already said, the rest are made up of homosexuals and men called to marry who shoehorn themselves into a celibate lifestyle and are miserable.

>>>You're overstating your case. There are, to be sure, a number of heterosexual men called to celibacy and the priesthood. But, their numbers are not as near as many as are currently in the priesthood, even with its depletion.

You are accusing him of overstating his case (which is probably a fair accusation), but then you do the same. How can you know what these priests were called to? Discerning a vocation isn't something where most people can readily look at the man and say this one is called to this or that. Unless you have a special gift for reading souls, I'm left to assume you are merely reading the sad state of affairs today and making an assumption.

However, that assumption is unwarranted. A man may have sinned by having an affair while in the priesthood -- as so many of our now married priests did. These sins do not mean that he didn't have a vocation, just that he didn't life up to it. If I were to have an affair and cheat on my wife, would that mean I hadn't been called to the married life? Of course not. My sins do not change what my vocation was.

Like you I see the current sad state of affairs and make guesses about things. I see the number of late vocations, men who had a career they are now leaving to enter the seminary, and I think that for a time so many men were called, but ignored it, or missed the signs. Now, they are starting to hear the call, and returning. But I can't know that for sure, its just a guess.

We cannot know how many men were called to the celibate priesthood. Only God can know that.

patent