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Mark 1:30 and Luke 4:38 does not claim Peter to be currently married. Even in our own time, longevity is not to be taken for granted. How much more so prior to antibiotics. Peter's wife may well have died ten years before he met Jesus Christ but opened his home to his mother-in-law to care for her as a filial obligation.

No one denies that Peter had a mother-in-law and therefore must have been married at some point in his life. I personally think it would have been rather rude of Peter's wife if he still had one and, as would then seem likely, she was home when her mother was delivered from a great fever, to have left it to her mother to serve the guests including Jesus Christ Who had cured her mother and including her own husband. If she was home on her own deathbed, one would think that someone would have asked Jesus to deliver her as well. Likewise, if she was crippled. But Luke 4:40-44 and Mark 1:32-39 clearly indicate that, after Jesus had delivered Peter's mother-in-law from that great fever, many others were brought to Him and cured and some were exorcised of demons by Him. No direct mention whatsoever is made of Peter's wife as though she were living. That is not conclusive but it is very strong circumstantial evidence that Peter's wife was at least not present and pretty decent evidence that she was no longer his wife aince two evangelists did not see fit to even explain her absence and they both would have known the truth as would their contemporaries.

All that having been said, and you having achieved the triumph (I am not being sarcastic here, honest!) of making a Roman Catholic curmudgeon read some Scripture, and conceding, for example, that if membership in the Sanhedrin required marriage (I personally have no idea of that; feel free to point to a Scriptural reference and I will read it), may well suggest that Paul was OR had been married IF he was a member of the Sanhedrin and not merely its enforcer. Does available evidence indicate that a member of the Sanhedrin who was widowed or abandoned by a faithless wife or whose wife was stoned to death for adultery would be expelled from the Sanhedrin as an additional misfortune? Or that exceptions were never made. On the other hand, the suggestion that "many" of the other apostles were "probably" married is weak and not supported even by circumstantial evidence. Could be. After all, none of us have real evidence on this (such as Scripture or even secular histories such as that of Flavius Josephus worthy of respect if not disagreeing with Scripture.) None of us are really sure. God certainly knows but He did not see fit to tell us.

It is a pleasure corresponding with you since you are serious and respectful and have actually taken up the challenge that both of us recognized as difficult at the outset of trying to prove by Scripture the marital status of the Apostles. We may come to differing conclusions but yours and, I hope, mine are advanced in good faith. I would also agree that, whether or not any apostles were married after being called by Christ, will not matter one iota to your salvation or mine.

I certainly accept the obvious fact that Jesus Christ was and is my personal Lord and Savior. Since our sins are crimes against God Himself, we are entirely incapable of making adequate restitution or undergoing adequate punishment to be able to require salvation. I also celebrate the infinite magnificence of God, as displayed in John 3:16 and in so many other places in Scripture. I do not believe that my mere acceptance is in and of itself a guaranteed path to salvation. I do believe with the Epistle of James that faith, without works is dead. My works do not save me but they evidence my Faith.

I have elsewhere described my understanding of the views of other Christians who are evangelical or Pentecostal or otherwise "born again" as the 95-yard pass play that might win the game. That is not disrespectful whatever it may sound like. I just do not agree that a one-shot acceptance of Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior as a fifteen year-old, let's say, is a guarantee of salvation regardless of future behavior. We are, after all, sinners, Catholic, Protestant and everyone else.

The Catholic view is of a lifelong struggle against those powers and principalities, armed by the actual graces which flow from God through His Sacraments, but still requiring militant resistance to evil and to Lucifer and, that when we fall, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and start all over again with a redoubled hatred for evil and love of God. This would be the Woody Hayes/Ohio State theory of seeking salvation with mostly undramatic 3 yard running play after three yard running play after four yard running play, none of it possible without God and none of it likely unless we are determined, until death is the means by which God calls us home. If I should die without unrepented mortal sins on my soul, God will keep His promises. He is no liar.

In any event, it has never been claimed to the best of my knowledge that no priest was ever married at all, or that no priest was ever married during his priesthood. Quite the contrary. History will easily reveal numerous instances, particularly in the First Millenium after Christ, in which priests were married and, very likely bishops, as well. It may well be that there were married popes. We know their identities prior to Constantine's good relations with Pope St. Sylvester I and have a good idea of how they died (mostly martyred by Roman persecutions) and something of the religious controversies decided by them and where many of them are buried but we have very little information on who was ever married among them. This is not unusual. We do not know a lot about some very important secular figures in the ancient world because of the horrendously tragic fire which destroyed the Library of Alexandria and its collections. We have lost great literary works although we are certain that they existed because of references to them in surviving works of others.

Please understand that, as to this matter of married Catholic clergy, we are talking about a changeable discipline, a practical rule, prudential judgment and not an unchangeable dogma or doctrine. If the rule were changed by the pope tomorrow, I have no problem with that and will lead where he follows. We already have marriued clergy in the Eastern rites (which are fully Catholic and not of the ancient Eastern Orthodox faith) which allow what the Eastern Orthodox Churches still allow. We even have exceptions within the Catholic clergy of the Roman rite who have converted as married clergymen from Anglicanism or Lutheranism. They are not allowed to marry again after the death of the wife to whom they were married at the time of ordination.

As to the Blackhawks, I have only lived in Illinois for two years. I used to root for them in my New England youth because I liked their name and their uniforms and eventually Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita. Their management is like Carl Pohlad of the Minnesota Twins or Bud Selig in thinking that franchise owner is a status that entitles one to income, earned or otherwise.

My great sports passion has been, for more than fifty years, the New York Yankees (hides behind computer to avoid tin cans and rotten tomatoes). You have to admit that their management is pretty good. Steinbrenner and friends bought the ranchise for $8 million with an m in 1972 or 1973. The latest estiamte of value is $1 billion with a b. Not bad for a guy who ran his ancestral shipbuilding firm into the ground and was dumb enough to contribute to Ted Kennedy. God bless you and yours.