[RushingWater]

Please declare that priests can marry! He can do it. Just look to the first pope Peter, who had a sick mother in law!!

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Please declare that priests can marry! He can do it.

Yes he can. But, what would Jesus do?

"there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."

[Tax-chick]

Please declare that priests can marry! He can do it.

No, he cannot. Priests cannot get married in any orthodox Christian church.

[NotTallTex]

Jesus, John the Baptist, John and Paul were not married. Peter was most likely married before he ever met Jesus. Not going to happen anytime soon.

[Recovering Ex-hippie]

THE priests are married to the church....if you don’t like that there are LOTS of other Christian churches.

I wish people would quit trying to remake the Catholic church or remake our country!

[tiki]

It doesn’t mean he had a live wife though. Truly, we don’t really know but I don’t imagine that Jesus would choose a man to abandon his wife and follow Him. Marriage is a sacrament and it is so because Jesus made it clear how important it was.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Actually, Peter was either a married man or a widower at the time he became an Apostle. Not t'other way around. He did not becdome an Apostle and then get married.

Matrimony ---> then ---> Holy Orders (priest): yes (sometimes)

Holy Orders (priest) ---> then ---> Matrimony: no (never)

In the same way, in the Catholic Churh there are married men who have become priests (usually in one of the non-Latin Churches, or possibly priest-converts from Anglicanism) --- but nobody who is a priest, first, can THEN get married and continue to serve as a priest.

It has always been in this way, in the Catholic and Orthodox churches, going back to the time of the Apostles.