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The priest is considered the "sexless one", the man to whom all, men and women, may come in complete freedom and openness with their counselling problems. Any woman can see the priest who is not some woman's husband, which is a freedom for her and an advantage for the independent priest.

Women go to married counselors all the time. They also go the married Anglican converts who have been ordained to the priesthood.

Any person who requires that a priest be celibate in order to receive counselling has bigger problems than they thought.

I recall a dedicated physician who claimed he would have been much happier and more fruitful if he had never married. Ideally, he urged all doctors not to marry for more freedom for their patients, and 2. not to rear sons who often are neglected because of his pressing practice. (The record shows some truth here, for sons, not for daughters.)

I wonder what this doctor's wife might have said.

Indeed, I wonder what this neanderthal's daughter might have said (if he said this; perhaps Fr. Levis is being a bit apocryphal).

I don't know any doctor whose practice has been inhibited by being married. Maybe some who have nagging wives might wish they had chosen celibacy, but, for those who have happy marriages, they seem to be able to mesh marriage and a physician's practice.

Indeed, I know married deacons who outwork even the most devoted priest, yet still manage to care for their wives and a family.

They don't play golf or go to the racetrack, however, as very many celibate priests do.

The priest is considered a groom, like Christ the Groom, married to the whole Church
The vocation of the priest is to stand in the person of Christ
The Priest is a light shining in the darkness of the modern secular world. His fullest energy must be spent on his vocation

These statements are TRANSCENDENT, and the issues you raise are IMMANENT.

But then, this is the very fault line between Catholicism and "liberal Catholicism": the former attends to the heavens, and the latter remains existentially on earth.

Ha Ha Ha...I read these threads and I see you constantly promoting a married priesthood.

So, if we get rid of celibacy, why not get rid of poverty and obedience also?

I was learnt that celibacy, poverty and obedience were Evangelical Counsels..("This distinction between the precepts of the Gospel, which are binding on all, and the counsels, which are the subject of the vocation of the comparatively few, has ever been maintained by the Catholic Church. It has been denied by heretics in all ages, and especially by many Protestants in the sixteenth and following centuries, on the ground that, inasmuch as all Christians are at all times bound, if they would keep God's Commandments, to do their utmost, and even so will fall short of perfect obedience, no distinction between precepts and counsels can rightly be made. The opponents of the Catholic doctrine base their opposition on such texts as Luke, xvii, 10, "When ye have done all that is commanded you, say, we are unprofitable servants". It is impossible, they say, to keep the Commandments adequately. To teach further "counsels" involves either the absurdity of advising what is far beyond all human capacity, or else the impiety of minimizing the commands of Almighty God. The Catholic doctrine, however, founded, as we have seen, upon the words of Christ in the Gospel, is also supported by St. Paul. In I Cor., vii, for instance, he not only presses home the duty incumbent on all Christians of keeping free from all sins of the flesh, and of fulfilling the obligations of the married state, if they have taken those obligations upon themselves, but also gives his "counsel" in favour of the unmarried state and of perfect chastity, on the ground that it is thus more possible to serve God with an undivided allegiance. so, if we are to embrace marriage to solve the current crisis, why not alos embrace wealth and willfullness as ways to strengthen/populate the priesthoood, or, is sex the only answer to this, transitory, crisis?