[GCC Catholic]

This whole article is reported badly. The issue is not about letting those already ordained as priests to marry (though some of the radicals are advocating allowing back those priests who did run off and get married), but rather allowing married men to be ordained priests. Miles is technically correct that Church discipline from the beginning has forbidden priests and deacons from marrying after ordination.

I think you are incorrect. St. Peter, the apostles and the early priests were married men. I have read that records from the middle ages show that the vast majority of Catholic priests were married.

And this is where the history gets complicated:
1) While the Apostles were married (most, John was not), their wives are conspicuously absent in the Scriptures, including Peter's wife. Were their wives deceased? Were they living continently (abstaining from marital relations)? Scripture is silent -- this is unhelpful in saying what priests should be allowed to do.
2) In the middle ages, there were many married clergy, especially in modern-day France and England. It was a custom that had arisen over centuries, but the custom was a corruption of the earlier practice, namely that from the earliest centuries married clergy were to maintain strict continence if their wives lived with them at all. The more common practice of the earliest centuries was that those wives of clerics were put into monasteries of nuns; by the middle ages, it had corrupted to clergy and wives living more uxoris, whether married before ordination or after. There was a great deal of strife involved with the Gregorian Reform ending those corrupted customs. So yes, the records say it... but those who were allowed weren't living "in marriages" as you might think, and those who were living "in marriages" as you think weren't allowed to do so.

[detective]

“While the Apostles were married (most, John was not), their wives are conspicuously absent in the Scriptures, including Peter's wife.”

At that time in history wives were absent from most written histories. I think the best assumption is that they had normal, conjugal marriages.

“the custom was a corruption of the earlier practice, namely that from the earliest centuries married clergy were to maintain strict continence if their wives lived with them”

I seriously doubt that the majority of married priests ever lived completely celibate marriages. It goes against logic, common sense and human nature.

Martin Luther said celibacy was against human nature and lead to corruption. That is one of the reasons for the popularity of the Protestant reformation.

http://www.lutheranlayman.com/2015/07/martin-luther-celibacy-is-contrary-to.html