It was routinely ignored, which is why Hildrebrand required total celibacy. It had turned into something of an open joke. And not only among parish priests. Even among the major orders ordained men lived with their wives.
I don't understand why this is so difficult for Catholics. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ROUTINELY ORDAINS MARRIED MEN. And I mean really married. Men who have wives with whom they have normal marital relations. These men are Catholics.
We have married Catholic clergy as it is. It would be a simple step to make this the norm throughout the Church.
Would that be a wise move in our present circumstances? It seems to me that the answer is very obviously that it would be. Let's face it - most of the American Catholic clergy is gay, very often openly so. If you meet a Catholic priest you should assume he's gay until proven otherwise. Very often, and based on my very considerable experience, they'll go out of their way to rub your nose in their "lifestyle choice.
Having a predominantly gay clergy puts families in a bad situation. First, as I said, the parish "father" looks and acts usually like a "mother" or actually more like a problematic dowager aunt. And of course homosexuals being what they are, it leads to the routine molestation of boys. But since they're mostly gay and we laymen are overwhelmingly heterosexual, the Catholic clergy winds up feeling more like a persecuted minority that pits itself against us despised heterosexuals. Far too many Catholic priests see themselves as a sort of Special Operations Bureau of the broader Gay Liberation Movement. We saw this again and again as gay Bishops covered up for gay priests who indulged their boy-lover compulsions.
Gay activity among the American Catholic clergy wasn't - and still isn't - discouraged, much less in fact condemned. It is rather celebrated and even REQUIRED in most American seminaries. If you're not gay in most American seminaries, or at the very least a heterosexual who is perceived to be sympathetic to their dilemma - then you won't get ordained.
We Catholics need to look at this and accept it. This is a terrible truth, and we resist it. But it's the way it is. The problem is deep-rooted and can only be extirpated by radical measures. Heterosexuals must oust the homosexuals from the entire clergy - starting with the parish rectories - and defrock any actively homosexual priest.
The only way we can accomplish that is to un-do Hildebrand's right-for-the-time rule and make the Roman Catholic Eastern Rite rule of married parish priests the norm throughout the Western Rite.
And the celibacy rule doesn't just encourage gay men to seek Holy Orders. The American clergy seems to have become something of a dumping ground for social and emotional misfits of all kinds. Judging from my very extensive experience, if a Catholic priest isn't gay he almost always suffers from some other serious emotion disorder that renders him incapable of playing the role of "father" to a parish family.
C'mon, my fellow long-suffering Catholics, you know this is true.
We have a life-threatening problem because we can't seem to get our minds around the fact that we're not living in the Middle Ages and that we are, like it or not, competing for the same pool of young, healthy and idealistic young men as every other employer.
Viewed strictly from a management perspective, the current policy is very bad HR. Just disastrous HR policy. Remember that, frothy appeals to the lofty, all-giving celibate vocation notwithstanding - the modern world presents far many more opportunities for financial and social advancement to intelligent and ambitious young men than the military, the royal bureaucracy and the Church. In order to compete in the competition for talent in the world in which we actually live the Church will have to radically change its HR policy. It will have to offer prime candidates the chance at a normal family life and a measure of affluence. And that means we laymen would actually have to pay for the solidly middle class status of a priest and probably his large family. And when we get right down to it, that's what we don't want. We want our sacraments on the cheap. But nothing is free in this fallen old world of ours. We pay for the costs upfront by supporting a priest and his family in a measure of comfort, or we pay on the back end with a clergy that mostly fears and often loathes normal families and all too often presents a terrible threat to the physical safety and spiritual well being of our children. And not to mention the multi-billion dollar judgments against so many of our diocese.
I have yet to meet an openly gay priest, or even one who is effeminate. I have met meek, humble men, ones not given to loud, brash talk. Being meek and humble of heart may seem to some to be “gay”. I contend they are christlike, and I do not find them to be girl like. I am not sure where you attend Mass, but since there are many places that I would not consider going to Mass( San Fransico being one I could see this being a problem) I have yet to encounter it. My son is off to seminary next fall. He is meek, humble and soft spoken. He is a sensitive warm loving young man. He has the gift of tears, and quietly and lovingly spreads the word of God in his specially ordained way. He is quite attracted to girls, not boys, but also understands that everyone has to crucify the flesh, each just in the way they were called. His is within the vow of celibacy, mine and others are within the vow of marriage. You cannot have adulterous sex, pornography, birth control, abortion, or deviant sex within the confines of marriage; it is a discipline. You cannot have sex in celibacy; it is a discipline. your chastity is offered up to God on both accounts, just in different ways. It is only questioned by people who are unwilling to discipline themselves, and then project their failings on others, who through their own FREE WILL become Eunichs for the kingdom BY CHOICE. I guess it should not be so surprising that so many call for its end in such a selfish, undisciplined, all about me world. I pray it never changes!