This is an important point that is missed far too often in the debate about celibacy within the Catholic Church. Actually two important points.
The first is that our modern view of sexuality, which is often described as "natural" is in fact anything but. We live in one of the most sex obsessed cultures the world has ever known. We've taken the healthy, normal, and natural human sexual desires and exagerrated them in frequently bizarre ways. This is hardly a healthy "baseline" from which to derive permanent rules of sexual conduct for a universal Church for the ages.
The second is that celibacy is therefore, not less relevant as many of the worldly contend, but rather more important than ever. It stands as a firm rebuke to the spirit of our overly lustful age. It is a constant reminder that there are more important things than sex, and higher callings than those of the body.
Any notion of opening the Catholic priesthood to married men (which I think is a healthy topic to discuss regardless of one's position on the issue) must be careful not to demean the value of celibacy for the message it sends to a society that increasingly cannot see anything more important than sex.
There is no Biblical reason why the church cannot have a married clergy and a celibate clergy. The two can exist side by side, and work well together. Much like a large family with married and celibate members.
Podles gets to the heart of the matter when he states that married or celibate, the clergy MUST BE strongly masculine.
I look forward to he new book by this very sensible man.
TM