Oh, please. The indulgence racket was a shameful scandal, and the reformers were right to protest it. As for marriage, I don't know about the others, but Luther got married after he was kicked out of the Catholic church.
while Thomas Cranmer already had one hidden in Germany
Don't confuse the Anglican Schism with the Protestant Reformation. Although the Anglicans eventually adopted many Protestant ideas, the Anglican church, unlike Protestantism, was indeed born of sexual sin...and poetically, it is now dying of sexual sin. It's worth pointing out that many priests have been secretly married throughout church history, and felt no need to protest. Simply wanting to marry, isn't usually enough. Even the married Rent-a-Priests mostly would come right back to Catholicism if allowed.
he was up all night with one of his children who was seriously ill. Feeling drained and haggard, he went to Mass the next morning, and the priest celebrating Mass ...had been up all night with a parishioner’s child who was dying of meningitis. A light bulb went off over my friend’s head: You can’t do both.
In all but the smallest Protestant churches I've attended, there have been plenty of pastors, elders, assistant pastors, etc -- there's always somebody on call. If one has a family emergency of his own, another one can fill in. Opening the Catholic priesthood to married men would greatly increas the number of priests, achieving the same result.
Those who live celibately are... an “eschatological sign” for the rest of us
It loses its value as a sign, when the general public is no longer confident that the "celibate" priest, is actually celibate. Scandal taints the reputation of the honest ones, unfortunately.
for those priests who still chose not to marry: Might there not be a corresponding diminishment of their public image, so that they would tend to be regarded more as pious bachelors than a special sign among us? Their freedom to get romantically involved with female parishioners gives such questions even more point.
The Eastern Catholics and Orthodox require marriage before ordination. Problem solved.
Another practical consideration is the financial cost of allowing priests to marry
An excellent point. If you want married priests you gotta pay for them somehow. Consider tithing. Or ask the Orthodox how they do it.
Also, the ministry could be greatly expanded at very low cost by elevating married deacons (who are generally employed and supporting families on their own) to the priesthood. Such men could lighten the burdens of the celibate parish priests (eg, by being on call an occasional night, performing weddings, that sort of thing).
It is clear that not a few homosexual men have entered the priesthood partly as a “cover” for their condition. Arguably, it would only make matters worse if they had to take on a wife as additional camouflage.
If married priests were considered normal, and straight men who intended to marry were numerous in seminaries, the homosexuals would not be able to use it as a refuge in the first place! It's well documented that homosexuals have bullied a lot of normal men out of seminary. One married Catholic deacon who posts at FR, pointed out that the homosexual priests fear nothing more than the possibility of a married priesthood being introduced.
In any event, it wouldn’t stop some of them from going after teenage boys, as has been amply demonstrated in other clerical milieu.
One Protestant church I attended, had 5 pastors. 4 were married; the single one was caught messing with a boy. So yes, it happens in other clerical milieu.
if you don’t find a sexual outlet, you become neurotic, or even worse.
If you don't have the gift of celibacy, that's true. I was unwillingly single, and a virgin (barely) til 38, and I can tell you that being single way too long was very damaging.
the libido doesn’t plot revenge if for whatever reason one is continent for a period of time.
Well, mine does.... LOL!
For what it's worth, I'm an Evangelical who - in spite of the venom of the FR Torquemadists -- has seriously considered swimming the Tiber. (Though I must say that the Bosphorous has its attractions as well.) I find that there are issues I can't resolve, at least not yet, but my quest has made me much less antiCatholic than I used to be. In fact one of my prayers now is that Christendom will be reunited in my lifetime. So please understand my earlier post, not as an attack on Rome per se, but simply as an attack on the faulty logic of this article.