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I said the pope was reaching back.

Okay, so why doesn't the current pope reach back and change it? If married priests was no big deal at one time why not reach back to that time.

It's your church not mine, I don't have as dog in this fight. My life experience tells me that married pastors with children have a perspective that single pastors don't. As you have pointed out being celibate has not always been required by your church and I've never seen anything in Scripture that requires it.

Catholic sacramental ordination to the priesthood is apparently something you don’t favor or appreciate.

It has served the Church well in its current basic form for 2000 years.

The groups who have fashioned their own variant of priesthood have not done too well despite the constant reformulation of the role in order to fit contemporary fashions.

In an age when sexual activity is the false god responsible for so much physical, emotional, and spiritual damage, it is quite wonderful to have leaders who are de facto witnesses to the folly of that falsity. The clergy will never be without sin - and the sin of clergy will often be scandalous - but that is no reason to upend the tradition of a priesthood that imitates the chastity of Christ and so many of his disciples.

For the simple reason there is no need to do so. The only purpose would be to appease the protestant and unbelievers hostility to a celibate priesthood. Furthermore, we do have married priests in other rites, but understand that these priests marry before ordination. Nor may they marry again if they are widowed. This has always been the case. But just think about it: an unmarried cadre of people is an invaluable asset to any organization. Priests, monks and friars and nuns who take vows of poverty and obedience has been the main reason for the spread of the Catholic faith over two thousand years. Beyond that it has freed many talented men and women of lower class from the shackles of drudgery and given them a great mission. Theresa of Avila was very candid about one reason why she chose the religious life. For a woman of her class, the choices were early marriage, many children and probably an early death. She and her father early on realized how great her talents were and what an opportunity
the religious life gave her. But also early on, she felt the need to spread the Gospel, and unlike many other nuns who went into the convent to scape an unsure life, she felt a great calling. So we have a woman of high intelligence and great organizing skills who was able to break out of the restrictions of a patriarchal society and rise in terms of influence and reputation to a level above any bishop in Spain. One one famous occasion, a bishop who greeted her knelt on the ground before her and asked for her blessing. St. Francis of Assisi had the same effect on people, except Teresa, I think, was not as odd as Francis. Read her works and one finds a kind of sanity that is rare among great men/women.