[NYer]

But the fact is, it does work and has for 2000 years in the Eastern Church. Does it cost more money? You bet! Parishioners have to dig deeper...but sacrificial giving is a blessing in and of itself.

Well, no surprise, I totally disagree! Our parish can't support the cost of one priest, much less a family. In fact, they can't support the cost of the current building (our original Church burned to the ground 60 years ago).

A married priesthood does have its own problems, but with all due respect to +Nasrallah, they don't rise to the level of what the Latin Church has faced with the sex scandals and all of the other problems which arise when celibates try to function "in the world" instead of "in the desert".

Puhlease! Such nonsense! These 'scandals' have not been a factor in the Maronite Church and you know it. The majority of our priests here in the US come from Lebanon, are highly educated and are polyglots. Many of them are bi-ritual, Maronite and Latin Rite. Our pastor has one set of vestments - white - and wears donated Latin vestments during Advent and Lent. There is barely enough money to support him, much less a wife and children. He has voluntarily chosen to live a celibate life, as have ALL the other priests serving in the US, Mexico, South America, Australia, etc.

[Tax-chick]

The sex scandals (with extremely rare exceptions) have nothing to do with celibacy. They have to do with homosexuality. It's not celibacy that leads men to hit on adolescent boys, almost universally.

[Kolokotronis]

"Well, no surprise, I totally disagree! Our parish can't support the cost of one priest, much less a family. In fact, they can't support the cost of the current building (our original Church burned to the ground 60 years ago)."

Maybe your parishioners aren't giving enough. We have a budget of about $118,000.00 per year. We have 105 "pledging units". Each "unit" is either an individual or a family. On that we pay an Archdiocesan "assessment" of $12,600.00, the priest, including salary, full, no deductible health insurance, car allowance, housing allowance, retirement and disability, both sides of the FICA and telephone allowance...then we pay all the other bills. We don;t get one dime from the Metropolis or the Archdiocese. Three years ago we raised $108,000.00 to install a three stop elevator. We are also located in the second poorest county in the entire Metropolis. It takes lots of work with suppers and festivals and pastry sales, etc and real deep digging/giving.

"Puhlease! Such nonsense! These 'scandals' have not been a factor in the Maronite Church and you know it."

NYer, I wasn't speaking of sex scandals in the Maronite Church here. I specifically referred to the Latin Rite. +Nasrallah sends celibate priests here because the Maronite Church has traditionally been deferential to Rome outside of Lebanon and Rome has, again traditionally, been opposed to married Eastern Rite clergy serving here in the States.

"Our pastor has one set of vestments - white - and wears donated Latin vestments during Advent and Lent. There is barely enough money to support him, much less a wife and children."

Why so little money for him? As for the vestments, doesn't anybody sew in your parish? Some of our priest's vestments and all of the altar clothes and altar boy vestments were and are being as I write, made by the parishioners.

"He has voluntarily chosen to live a celibate life...."

All monastics, I would hope, voluntarily choose that life.