Should priests be allowed to marry? My answer is: Yes, of course. I am still a Roman Catholic, but I do not understand the RCC at all when they still do not allow priests to marry.
Anglican priests are allowed to marry, of course. Question: Are there also Anglicans who think that they should not marry?
The Eastern Rite churches follow the custom of the Orthodox. A man must marry prior to his ordination. Bishops are not selected from the married clergy. The case where things get foggy is the widower. There's no broad consensus on what to do with them. This is further complicated if they have smaller children.
Yes, provided the male priests marry women, not men! That would have gone without saying just a few years ago, but no longer.
Yes, priests should be allowed to marry. Anglican and Orthodox priests can marry and many do. Whether a priest marries or not, I believe, is a matter for his own discretion. I strongly disagree where Anglican churches allow homosexual priests to live in a relationship with a man and in some cases to marry.
Saint Peter had a wife, as did most of the Apostles, as did most of the Church Fathers, and most of the Old Testament clergy.
I remember reading Through the Eye of A Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD by Peter Brown. It was surprising, for someone new to Christianity, to read about the commonality of Bishop and Presbyters being able to Marry. I now understand that Romanists are sort of alone in their celibate practices. The other Apostolic Churches allow Presbyters to marry, but I'm not sure about Bishops.
I've always understood the Roman Catholic prohibition on clerical marriage to be a "discipline" rather than a matter of soteriology, but there is a theology behind it. The RC church believes that presbyters (bishops and priests) are standing in persona Christi, and thus are already married -- the bride of Christ is the Church. Jesus was never married, ergo (the thinking goes) if priests and bishops wish to emulate Christ, they should remain unmarried also. Also see the apostle Paul's thoughts on marriage in 1 Corinthians. The RC church doesn't prohibit clerical marriage because marriage is sinful in any way -- they prohibit it on the ground that priests "marry" the church when they are ordained. Priests cannot take a second wife. Nuns likewise model the Church as brides of Christ. (I may be mistaken, but RC nuns actually wear wedding rings to make this notion explicit.) To allow clerical marriage in the RC church is to sanction a kind of adultery. I disagree with this notion, of course, but it's a serious argument which non-RC people often misinterpret as "institutionalized misogyny" or some other such rot. The RC church is making a theological point, however misguided, and we should argue the point theologically. I think the RC church does allow already-married clerics to enter the faith through the Anglo-Catholic pathway. Eventually, I suspect the RC church will have to abandon the practice entirely or face further decimation in the priestly ranks.
I forgot to answer the actual question posed: yes, it is perfectly fine for a (male) Anglican priest to marry (a woman). In fact, I encourage Anglican clergy to marry and form families; it helps them in their pastoral ministry.
Catholics and Orthodox do not allow bishops to be married. That is why in the Eastern Orthodox churches, where priests are often married, that most bishops are chosen from hieromonks (monks who are priests). In two of the three personal ordinariates their ordinary is a piest not a bishop because he is married. The North Amercian Ordinariate does have an ordinary who is a bishop but he has come from the Latin Catholic Church and is not a former Anglican.
It is discipline, not doctrine, in the Roman (Latin) Catholic Church. Former Anglicans and Eastern orthodox clergy who are married can become Latin Catholic priests. The Catholic Church that submits to the Bishop of Rome is a communion of 23 churches, of which the Latin (Roman) is the largest. There other 22 are collectively known as Eastern Catholic churches. As far as I am aware all of them allow married clergy up to the grade of priest. Bishops must not be married. Those of us in the West may not notice this because where these churches exist in the Diaspora, rather than in the places from which they originated*, and thus where the Latin Church is predominant, their clergy are very strongly, i.e. forced, not to marry. *Eastern Europe, Middle & Near East, North Africa, India
Yeah, why should the RCs to Paul? A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; (1Tim 3:2)
The "husband of one wife" is better read as "married only once". As in bishops must be monogamous, not polygamous. Therefore that verse is precisely what a Roman Catholic would argue forbids a Bishop from having a wife. If a Bishop marries the Church, and marries a wife, then they cannot be "married only once".
I can see what you are saying, the RCs are saying, and like me you probably don't believe a word of it. If a RC bishop is married to the church does that make the church his wife and should be subject to him? How many husbands is the church allowed? How can women and men both marry the same entity? How does the RC church defend the notion that people are married to the chuch?
I am a Roman Catholic. And I would say that about 99 percent of all Catholics are for the possibility of married priest. Only the most stupid and stubborn types somewhere in the darkest corners of the Vatican could possible be against it. And when I say married priests, I mean of course also married bishops and maried popes.
I am afraid I would not rely on someone saying that 99% of Roman Catholics are in favour of a married clergy when that person cannot (1) know that and (2) when that person comes from Germany. Germany and other Central European states do have a more liberal view of Roman Catholicism. I believe they have the right to that view. I am neither anti-German nor anti-European. However, to say that a view held in a particular region is common across the entire Roman Catholic Church is making an extrapolation without any foundation.