That's an ad hom. :)
This will be my last post to this thread because I probably shouldn't have stopped here to begin with. The church says to it's seminarians, not it's converts who are already married, and if reports from Africa are true, not to some African priests either, if you want to be a priest you must take a vow of celibacy. Not chastity, as I understand it requires of its nuns, but celibacy. Now you can spin (ad hom!) that any way you'd like, but it won't pass the straight face test.
My Mother buried her 7-year old son and my brother when he was hit by his school bus and killed. The priests of the parish, who were nice enough and good enough men, could offer my Mother only the most perfunctory and rather useless thoughts and words.
As God would have it, a contrast was made ready: a Pentecostal Minister whose little girl had been a classmate of my brother's came to the wake. He and his five children, each just a head taller than the other, made a procession to my little brother's casket, and the minister's eyes filled with tears and he could hardly get any words out for my Mother, but he did more for her than the 3 priests in our parish combined. He understood what the priests could never understand: the gift that is the love of a woman and a man. The priests had nothing in the tank, because there was no possible way for them to fill their tanks.
Amen, AG. What bitter and sweet memories.
That's a distinction without a difference. Celibacy is technically the state of being unmarried. Chastity is the virtue which requires the right use of the sexual faculty according to one's state in life.
Nuns are certainly required to be celibate; priests are certainly required to be chaste. (As is everyone else.)
And I'm very sorry about your brother.
If you want to assert that a married minister is a better grief counselor than a single one, so be it. I would suggest that no childless person can ever completely empathize with the pain connected with losing a child; the difference here not being "married versus celibate" but "parents versus the childless".
Only to converts who are already married ministers in liturgical Protestant traditions (primarily Episcopal/Anglican), and then only as exceptional accomodation to their circumstances.
1 Cor 1:23-25 shows that the "straight face test" is worthless. The Gospel is a stumbling block to the world. The things of God are "foolishness" to men, so 'foolish' that often they do not pass the "straight face test".
That is why none of the fathers used the "straight faced test", though it is the de facto standard of truth in our talk-show driven manner of thinking.
-A8
You point to a very real difference between the Catholic and Orthodox faith on one hand, the Protestantism on the other. In this instance the difference appears a defect of the sacramental apostolic churches. But I don't want the whole depth of the difference to be left without comment.
It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption. 43 It is sown in dishonour, it shall rise in glory. It is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power. 44 It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body. If there be a natural body, there is also a spiritual body, as it is written: 45 The first man Adam was made into a living soul; the last Adam into a quickening spirit. 46 Yet that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; afterwards that which is spiritual. 47 The first man was of the earth, earthly: the second man, from heaven, heavenly. 48 Such as is the earthly, such also are the earthly: and such as is the heavenly, such also are they that are heavenly. 49 Therefore as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of the heavenly. 50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God: neither shall corruption possess incorruption. (1 Cor 15)The actual word St. Paul uses here, thranslated as "natural" is "psychikos". The meaning is that of the phychological nature, or of the passion, and it is contrasted tot he "pneumatikos", the spiritual. Our passions are to die, our spirit is to rise. St. Paul often returns to this theme, as he teaches to avoid anger and combat other strong emotions and attachments. This distinction, between the passionate and the spiritual, is reflected in the absence of emotion that is characteristic of the Catholic and Orthodox liturgy. Symmetrically, the evengelical service is often highly emotionally charged. Many complain about the absence of passion in Catholic service as indifference, -- they do not feel as if they are being fed. A supercharge experience of an evangelical altar call is a frequent basis of people joining evangelical churches. In contrast, a good priest serves as if the congregation is not there.
This is just the way things are.