[Nathan Zachary]

NO, that would be wrong as well. the rule to be a Catholic priest is you have to be selebet. NO SEX of any kind.

That rule is being broken in a few instances, there are a couple married Catholic priests in the USA, One in Ireland, and now, one in Canada. There may be a few others in Europe as well.

[Petronski]

The rule about promising or vowing celibacy is irrelevant, the guy left the seminary. My statement is accurate.

[tjwmason]

That rule is being broken in a few instances, there are a couple married Catholic priests in the USA, One in Ireland, and now, one in Canada. There may be a few others in Europe as well.

First, it is only the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church which madates celibacy. The Greek Catholics are more than happy to ordain married men (but if you are ordained whilst single, that's it for life).

There have also been an array of former Anglican clerics who converted and were married. The Holy See permitted these to be ordained whilst remaining married. There are many here in England who left en masse after the Church of England decided that it could ordain women (and many many more waiting in the wings, b.t.w.).

The rule is perfectly simple. All sex must be within marriage, all sex must be open to procreation. Gay sex fails on both counts under all circumstances.

[TASMANIANRED]

This goes back to Henry VIII and the church of England.

Because Henry was not allowed to divorce and marry Anne Boleyn he caused a schism in the church.

He broke off the Church of England, the Episcopalians, got rid of the parts of the faith he didn't like and kept everything essentially intact.

The parts of doctrine he didn't care for were no divorce, no married priests and lowered the status of reverence that Mary the Mother of Jesus was held in.

All of the sacraments and all of the teachings stayed the same otherwise.

I have been to Episcopal services and they are indistinguishable from Roman Catholic.

As a result of this a few Married Episcopal priests have reconverted to Roman Catholic. Because they were trained and ordained they were allowed to keep their spouses.