The Pope is reconsidering celibacy for priests? Maybe. After receiving a letter from a group of priests’ girlfriends last week, the Pope said, “The Catholic Church has married priests in the Eastern rites….Celibacy is not a dogma of faith; it is a rule of life that I appreciate a great deal, and I believe it is a gift for the Church. The door is always open, given that it is not a dogma of faith.”
For Catholics, such a papal utterance is akin to the parting of the Red Sea. Maybe this Pope, who has done so much to return the Catholic Church to the simpler, more human-family-oriented church of the Apostles and early Christians…just maybe he’ll return this “rule of life” to those same olden days. If priests could marry, the church would have more men joining up, which would help the dwindling ranks. There would likely still be orders that stick to this “rule of life”–a division in the church that Ireland had to work through in its early Christian days. A man could choose to join one of those if he felt it was the right thing to do.
Will that change come in Pope Francis’ lifetime? We’ll see, but I won’t hold my breath.
[Full disclosure: I am a practicing Catholic.]