Back in the 1950’s and around that time there was no shortage of candidates for the priesthood in Ireland. As one Irish priest told laughing told me, it was my mother who had the vocation to the priesthood which she could not fulfill, so she sent me to the seminary in her place. There were also a number of Irish gay men who would entered the seminary or brotherhood to escape marriage.
The priests mentioned in the Bible are the descendants of Aaron. Only sons descended from Aaron could be priests. Only they could do the butchering and offering of sacrificial animals in the Temple. Rabbis were and are teachers and scholars, and not sacrificing priests. The Jewish faith today is lead by Rabbis and not priests. 'Got this from a Jewish friend.
The joke Sister Mary-Catherine used to tell is “not in my children’s time but maybe my grandchildren”. 
The RCC does allow married, permanent deacons, I think the rule is though if his wife dies, he’s never allowed to remarry. I always thought the issue with married priests had to do with what Shodan wrote upthread, in a nutshell, it becomes a headache because of issues as to who owns what, the archdiocese or the priests’ families? I also wonder if there were married priests with children what would their salary be like? It’s not as though they’d be living in a rectory with the wife and kids and not have living expenses to deal with, and I imagine it would have to be a full time job. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen, but I see the church allowing married men to become priests before women.
There is at least one exception to the rule. If a man who was a priest before becomes a Catholic priest after switching from another religion, say Lutheran, and he was married before, he is allowed to remain married. But if his spouse dies, he is expected to remain celibate thereafter.
Let’s not say Lutheran. (See upthread.)
Mentioned upthread, from when this was a new thread, back in November. 
And, such priests (there aren’t very many) tend to have converted from either the Anglican / Episcopal churches, or Eastern Rite Catholic churches.
Edit: ninja’d by Thudlow!
RCC deacons aren’t required to be unmarried, nor is it exceptional for one to be married. Most men who enter the deaconate nowadays do it as a step prior to the priesthood, but if you stop there you can get married without needing any kind of special permission.
Back when Seminaries were one cheap way to get a good education, it was quite common for boys to get ordained as deacons and then decide that they weren’t interested in the priesthood. That’s multiple generations of married deacons, who usually wouldn’t be working as deacons but could (I’ve personally known several instances, including one of my uncles).
Over the past couple of years, I’ve had three friends (all of them in their 50s) become Catholic deacons – one was a friend from grade school, one a friend from high school, and the third is a member of my D&D group. The first two are married; the third is a widower; none of the three of them are planning on pursuing ordination as priests. They assist with ministry, and celebrating Masses, at their home parishes, and love doing so.
(As it turns out, the friend from grade school, and the friend from my D&D group, were in the same deaconate class. It’s a small world.)
It’s actually that the Catholic Church puts a lot of emphasis on there being an unbroken chain of ordinations stretching back to St. Peter himself (i.e. Peter received his authority straight from JC himself, and then ordained some bishops, who ordained some more bishops, < and so on for 1500 years>, who ordained Martin Luther, who ordained Lutheran bishops, who ordained some Lutheran bishops, and so on until the present day) .
Since Anglican and Lutheran pastors derive from the Catholic Church, they fulfill that requirement, so they can “transfer” in, so to speak. If a Baptist minister decided he wanted to be a Catholic priest, he’d have to go back to seminary and get ordained as a Deacon, then Priest in the Catholic Church, presumably because there isn’t that chain of unbroken ordinations that his ordination would be part of, and therefore not valid.
And my suspicion is that we’ll either see ordained female priests or married priests in the Catholic Church within another 50 years. The priest shortage is pretty acute, so they’re going to have to do something pretty soon.
Right. My girlfriend is an Episcopalian priest and they have people transfer in and out of the Catholic Church fairly frequently. Some transfer from the Catholic Church to the Episcopal church because they want to get married. If you want to know what it is like dating a priest, I can start a thread about it but it is basically like any other girlfriend but with better values.
I agree that we’ll see married priests before female priests. Unless it’s a twofer: A priest can get married, but only if both are priests!
Back in the olden days, I had read that some Mother Superiors had some priestly rites they could perform. They could possibly bring that back. Or if a Female Episcopal priest wanted to become Catholic, then maybe.
Yes, and something else I got from a very orthodox friend. There has to be a temple to ordain a priest, but only a priest can sanctify a temple, so there is a real conundrum there, which is one reason Israel hasn’t attempted to build a temple. What did they do, I wonder, for the second temple?
Definitely. I just pointed out women priests because that’s essentially the other option that the Church could try, in hopes of alleviating the priest shortage.
But married priests is something that has both historical precedent, since the early Church priests were typically married men, and something whose original reason has long passed. The original reason was most likely because at the time, the worry was that you’d end up with ecclesiastical dynasties, and some rather convoluted thinking about the continence and celibacy of priests.
There’s also 501 years of Protestant experience with married clergy to examine; I suspect many would argue that having the pastor and his family integrated into the congregation is a different animal than having a celibate man be the head.
“The early church priests” plus “501 years of protestant experience” happens to equal “the whole history of Christianity” (the recommendation for celibacy only became a requirement, all together now - [chorus]in Trent![/chorus] very good, very good, I see you’ve read me before), and there’s also the Orthodox, Coptic and others who never took that step. Such as, hey, the Episcopalians/Anglicans, who some call Catholic-lite. So yeah, it isn’t exactly unknown grounds.
I am a practicing Catholic.
As stated elsewhere here, married men who are priests/pastors of certain liturgical churches, upon conversion can become priests. However, parishes have a reputation for finding this hard to adjust to. Life must be very hard for the wives who find the role of pastor’s wife they had as a protestant is now closed to them.
I think that it might be possible for the next step to be allowing married deacons to become priests. I doubt that men who take a vow of celibacy to become priests will be allowed to break that vow, so having priests marry is probably right out.
Women in the diaconate? Yeah, it’ll come. There were deaconesses in the early church, so there’s no biblical restrictions against it.
We already have women as extraordinary deacons, what’s being studied is allowing it as an ordinary matter.
And ordinary priests didn’t use to take a vow of celibacy, that’s a newish-by-RCC-standards requirement; the requirement could be removed.
Nuns are not a sacramental order. Women cannot (currently) be deacons.
(I always thought it was unfair that becoming a nun didn’t count as a sacrament. But then, I find a lot of stuff about the Catholic church unfair and misogynistic - which is why I’m no longer Catholic)
Should the Pope permit ordination of women deacons, I can see a lot of nuns choosing to pursue ordination as a deacon, but I agree, it may not be limited to nuns.
The part I’ve never quite understood with the Roman Catholics allowing married Anglican priests who convert to Roman Catholicism to remain priests is: it implies a recognition of the validity of the Anglican priesthood.
If I didn’t know about this already, I’d have assumed that if a male Anglican priest of any sort converted to Catholicism, his status would be that of congregant, not priest: I’d have figured that being an Anglican priest didn’t make you a priest as far as the RCC was concerned. But apparently it at least sort of does.