The priest shortage is primarily in the west. In the Third World seminaries are full. I still think the Church should start ordaining those married deacons. That is a good point though...how many celibate priests will feel peeved if they start ordaining married men. (this is not already including ex-Lutherans and episcopalians)
Bishops arrive for the first day of a three-week meeting of the world's bishops at the Vatican Monday, Oct.3, 2005. More than 250 bishops, cardinals, heads of religious orders and others from about 118 countries will take part in the Synod of Bishops.
**its ban on giving communion to divorcees who remarry without getting an annulment.**
I think this will stay in place. As long as a divorced person does NOT remarry they can receive Holy Communion!
I guess I'm the first guy to show up looking for Albert Pujols on this thread.
Mandatory celibacy has for clergy has no root in the Apostolic Tradition. The Apostle Paul himself, who wished that all men were as he was (1 Corinthians 7:7) namely celibate, also assumes in 1 Timothy 3 that a Bishop would be married. From the very beginning of the Church it was assumed that marriage itself was no impediment to ordination although the Church did, in fact, address the issue of who a Priest could marry (no actresses, etc.) and how many times (basically once) in its various canons on the subject. This is the Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Churches to this day with the exception that we have canonically nullified married men from the episcopacy for practical but not scriptural or historc reasons.
But is that the central problem of the Catholic Church? I don't think so. Rather the Church has for too long allowed wolves in sheep's clothing into the fold and they have done much to destroy the faith of many. There are any number of clergy and monastics in the Church who have maintained celibacy but not the Faith.