[LiteKeeper]

Thank you for your "charitable" reply. As a Protestant minister I honestly do not understand the celibacy vow. I am not throwing stones. I just don't see Scriptural justification for it. I believe there are many issues that I deal with as a pastor that I relate to much more strongly ( such as marriage issues) because I "have been there, done that." I don't understand how celibate priests can deal with marriage and family issues. I thought I was an expert on child rearing until we had children of our own. My "pie-in-the-sky" ideas change to something out of the sky, which will remain unmentioned.

Again, thanks for your reply.

[sinkspur]

I believe there are many issues that I deal with as a pastor that I relate to much more strongly ( such as marriage issues) because I "have been there, done that." I don't understand how celibate priests can deal with marriage and family issues.

I see your point, but marriage counseling has some clinical points to it, without reference to one's own personal experience. A heart-surgeon needn't have had a bypass in order to clinically deal with one.

I'm a Catholic deacon, and my wife and I jointly counsel engaged couples and prepare them for marriage; I couldn't imagine doing this without her, as her perspective is simply unknown to me on lots of things, and very valuable (after 26 years of marriage).

I do feel that many priests are called to celibacy, and I've been lucky to have known some. But many others are not, and they try to shoehorn themselves into the lifestyle and are truly miserable men.

[ventana]

I just don't see Scriptural justification for it.

The scriptural support is certainly not hard to find is it? Jesus recommended it, Paul recommended it, and then there are the 144,000 male virgins in Revelations, who denied themselved for the sake of God, who stand with the Lamb.

To your rationale that you must be of the world to minister to it, well, the Catholic view would be that the relationship the Priest focuses on is that between the person and God, with the understanding that the correction of that relationship is the cure for temporal ills or at least the means of enduring them. This position allows a Priest to minister to an alchoholic, a murderer, a married man, tinker, taylor, tax-collector, etc. without having necessarily "been there, done that" but rather from a universally equalizing position.