When I was in seminary I had a reason to be in a class (?) with an RC student (a seminarian? I think so, but for the life of me I can’t remember why we were crossing the streams. Mine was a Protestant seminary.). Anyway, he offered (or another student and friend said this RC seminarian offered? Getting old sucks) his opinion on married priests/pastors, wondering how we Protestants made that work because it seemed to him it put so much strain on the marital relationship.
He wasn’t wrong.
He was thinking about the movement of pastors among congregations. My understanding is that the Catholic judicatory moves priests between congregations, and supports this by supporting the priest. If the congregation can’t support the priest and their church facilities, they move him and close the church. The priest is a member of the church, which is not the congregation. A Protestant minister (and yes, I’ve seen this even with Episcopal priests), is a journeyman who was looking for a job when he took the call to this congregation. He/she is generally (truer for Congregationalist than episcopal denominations) a member of the congregation only so long as she is minister there. So some church members are far more “members” than the pastor is , and never let him forget it.
Methodists come closest to this among Protestants. Or I should say Episcopalians do. I’ve seen the bishop remove a priest for “cause,” meaning whim. Methodists bishops have the ability to move pastors on an annual basis; but they don’t exercise the power too liberally. Other judicatory denominations facilitate movement, helping congregations search for a new pastor. Congregational denominations, at the opposite extreme from the Roman Church, handle pastors almost entirely by themselves. The further you get from an episcopal (bishop) structure, the more your term as a pastor depends on staying on good terms with the congregation. And the more you are a “free agent” hoping rather desperately, at the extremes, that you find a church that will take you in and not soon spit you out again. As I said, you’re a journeyman.
Now add a family to that. The strain and concerns on the pastor/priest become manifold. There is a distinct division in his priorities.
Mind, you have to stay on the right side of the bishop or the congregation, in either structure. But if the Church is taking care of your physical needs (food, shelter, clothing), then shifting about to serve the Church is much easier. Add a family to that equation, and you’re fundamentally changing the obligations.
I appreciate what must be the loneliness of the RC priesthood. I attended a Catholic funeral, and in lieu of a eulogy the priest mostly talked about having built the sanctuary where the service was being held. He had been the priest of that parish, asked back by the family to conduct the service. He was alas man whose life had been spent in the church; his perceptions were bent accordingly, and he was no stain-glass figure. I’m sure he was a good man; but he was also a product of a celibate priesthood, with no intimate emotional connections to any other adult over his lifetime. I felt sorry for him.
I’m not arguing a position, just pointing out that shifting the RC priesthood to married priests will bring its own challenges. Many episcopal denominations can give you examples of how to do it, but it would fundamentally change the episcopal culture of the RC. A millenia old culture. Such cultures don’t change quickly, or easily.
From the outside looking in, and strictly from an observation of the institution as an institution (I have no deep insights here), it would take more than the word of a Pope to make it happen. It would take the deep acceptance of the episcopate, the priesthood, and the congregations. IMHO it should be done. But it won’t be done easily.
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