Ping!
Yes, it is Apostolic, but it is not Dogma. To be honest, I have a difficult time finding a
First of all, priestly celibacy is a venerable tradition (small-t, that is) and, as such, I defend it and respect it as a great facet of the Catholic faith.
However, I am a historian as well as an adult convert to Catholicism and I’m fully aware the priestly celibacy, while ancient (even apostolic) in roots, was not universal in practice in the Western Church for many centuries. On the one hand, I appreciate the defence and preservation of priestly celibacy, but I also think that the Church should consider letting the practice be a personal decision instead of a mandate. I think there would be great value in allowing married men to seek ordination.
Theologically and dogmatically, marriage and ordination are not mutually exclusive, as attested by the many married men who’ve received a papal dispensation from the vow of celibacy and ordained as priests in the past century.
Let me be clear: I DO NOT support allowing already-ordained priests to marry (this has never been allowed in the Church, East or West -— married men have often been ordained, but ordained priests have never been allowed to marry after ordination). And I certainly DO NOT support the ordination of women. The Church has spoken definitively on the subject of women’s ordination and rightly declared it to be a modern invention devoid of Apostolic or Scriptural basis.
Just my two cents on the matter at hand...