Marriage is not for everyone, but there is no reason why a priest can be married.
the Lord Jesus said it best, Matthew 15:2 "Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.
Matthew 15:3 "But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?
Mark 7:6 "He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
Mark 7:7 "Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
Mark 7:8 "For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.
Mark 7:9 "And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.
PCY
the apostle Paul echoed those word of our Lord. Colossians 2:8 "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ".
After all your scripture ranting maybe you can tell us the name of Jesus' wife.
And Paul's wife while yer at it.
Are you aware there are good Traditions we are to follow and bad traditions we must not? Looks to me you emphasize only bad traditions. That's not what the Bible says about Tradition.
The best definition of celibacy, I think, is the definition of Thomas Aquinas. Thomas calls celibacy a vacancy for God. To be a celibate means to be empty for God, to be free and open for his presence, to be available for his service. This view on celibacy, however, has often led to the false idea that being empty for God is a special privilege of celibates, while other people involved in all sorts of interpersonal relationships are not empty but full, occupied as well as preoccupied. If we look at celibacy as a state of life that upholds the importance of God's presence in our lives in contrast with other states of life that lead to entanglement in worldly affairs, we quickly slip into a dangerous elitism considering celibates as domes rising up amid the many low houses of the city.
I think that celibacy can never be considered as a special prerogative of a few members of the people of God. Celibacy, in its deepest sense of creating and protecting emptiness for God, is an essential part of all forms of Christian life: marriage, friendship, single life, and community life. We will never fully understand what it means to be celibate unless we recognize that celibacy is, first of all, an element, and even an essential element in the life of all Christians. Let me illustrate how this is true in marriage and friendship.
Marriage is not a lifelong attraction of two individuals to each other, but a call for two people to witness together to God's love. The basis of marriage is not mutual affection, or feelings, or emotions and passions that we associate with love, but a vocation, a being elected to build together a house for God in this world, to be like the two cherubs whose outstretched wings sheltered the Ark of the Covenant and created a space where Yahweh could be present (Ex. 25:10-12, i Ki. 8:6-7). Marriage is a relationship in which a man and a woman protect and nurture the inner sanctum within and between them and witness to that by the way in which they love each other. Marriage, too, is therefore a vacare Deo.
Celibacy is part of marriage not simply because married couples may have to be able to live separated from each other for long periods of time, because they may need to abstain from sexual relations for physical, mental, or spiritual reasons, but also because the intimacy of marriage itself is an intimacy that is based on the common participation in a love greater than the love two people can offer each other. The real mystery of marriage is not that husband and wife love each other so much that they can find God in each other's lives, but that God loves them so much that they , can discover each other more and more as living reminders ; of his divine presence. They are brought together, indeed, as two prayerful hands extended toward God and forming in this way a home for him in this world.|
The same thing is true for friendship. Deep and mature friendship does not mean that we keep looking each other in the eyes and are constantly impressed or enraptured by each other's beauty, talents, and gifts, but it means that together we look at him who calls us to his service.
Thus marriage and friendship carry within their center a holy vacancy, a space that is for God and God alone. Without that holy center, marriage as well as friendship become like a city without domes, a city forgetting the meaning and direction of its own activities.
Living reminders
We can now see that celibacy has a very important place in our world. The celibate makes his life into a visible witness for the priority of God in our lives, a sign to remind all people that without the inner sanctum our lives lose contact with their source and goal. We belong to God. All people do. Celibates are people who, by not attaching themselves to any one particular person, remind us that the relationship with God is the beginning, the source, and the goal of all human relationships.
By his or her life of nonattachment, the celibate lifts up an aspect of the Christian life of which we all need to be reminded. The celibate is like the clown in the circus who, between the scary acts of the trapeze artists and lion tamers, fumbles and falls, reminding us that all human activities are ultimately not so important as the virtuosi make us believe. Celibates live out the holy emptiness in their lives by not marrying, by not trying to build for themselves, a house or a fortune, by not trying to wield as much influence as possible, and by not filling their lives with events, people, or creations for which they will be remembered. They hope that by their empty lives God will be recognized as the source of all human thoughts and actions. Especially by not marrying and by abstaining from the most intimate expression of human love, the celibate becomes a living sign of the limits of interpersonal relationships and of the centrality of the inner sanctum that no human being may violate.
To whom, then, is this witness directed? I dare to say that celibacy is, first of all, a witness to all those who are married...
Clowning in Rome by Henri Nouwen
