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So with all of your altar girls, what are you and your priests doing to foster vocations and a Catholic spirituality in young men? Anything? I certainly do not mean youth group or lifeteen.

What specific programs do you have for the young men and boys?

Let me guess...

Poor babies. I feel really sorry for the modernists who have gained NO ADHERENTS from the younger generation. Poor little babies...

Whatever you do, do not EVER address the content of the message. Just look for ways to pick one point apart which you determine to be the weakest. Don't ever address the real issues. "We have a priest shortage. We are overworked. Woe is me."

Boo hoo hoo... Go cry in your mother's milk. What a bunch of crybaby whimps.

This is a problem the Roman Church will of course have to work out on its own. That said, as an Orthodox Christian I must say that having had a married priesthood for the past 2000 years doesn't seem to have hurt us any. In Orthodoxy we have either a married priesthood or celibate priest monks. In our parish we have had over the past 15 years or so a couple of priest monks. They are definitely different from the married priests, better in some ways, not as good in others. My spiritual father is a priest monk and for me that's better. For others, a married priest would be preferable. Married priests certainly know more about what people living "in the world" and married are going through than celibates, and their wives are often a big help in a parish, even if their kids can be trouble (there is a Greek saying, " Son of the priest, grandson of the devil."). On the other hand parish work is tough on families and marriages and we do occasionally have the spectacle of a divorced priest. I did note in the article that the statement said, "Priesthood is a gift, celibacy is a gift: they are not the same gift,". That certainly would be the experience of Orthodoxy, but no one should think for a moment that a married priesthood will somehow or other solve the problems the Roman Church faces in this world.

No, he's right, I'm sorry to say. The calling of priesthood is strong in some - and the Vatican II's comments on the 'common priesthood' gives us a way to live it out, partially, very quietly, without necessarily entering the sacramental priesthood. But it doesn't do the body of the Church as much good as it could.

There is no theological bar to a married priesthood.