[Recovering Ex-hippie]

Two excellant points.

and historically accurate. does anyone know why celibacy of priests came about?

[Diago]

Here ya go:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03481a.htm

[muir_redwoods]

There is no theology behind the celebacy discipline. The RC church already has lots of married priests. The Eastern Rite allows it and many married, converted Episcopal and Lutheran clergy take Holy Orders and remain married.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

and historically accurate. does anyone know why celibacy of priests came about?

No, historically inaccurate. Priests have never at any time in any part of the Church been allowed to marry after ordination.

IN THE PAST, men already married were allowed to be ordained provided that they took up celibacy, and often with the requirement that they seperate from their wives, with her entering a convent.

The celibacy of Priests is a tradition of Apostolic Origin reflecting the Christian teaching that it is good to marry, but even more excellent to remain or become henceforth perpetually chaste (1 Corinthians 7.1, 7-8, 34), and the statement of Jesus Christ to His Apostles that those who gave up having a wife for the sake of the kingdom would receive a 100-fold reward in heaven (St. Matthew 19.10-12, 27-29).

At the dawn of the era of the Church coming out of the catacombs around AD 300, the very first Canon Laws prescribed perpetual celibacy for the Priests of the Church, a ruling that was endlessly repeated over the next 150 years by Popes and Councils.

The change in the Middle Ages was not to introduce celibacy as some new requirement, but to forbid the ordination from then on of any men who was still married, regardless of any pledge of celibacy they wished to make.

[starfish923]

The Catholic Church does regard men and women as EQUAL in value in God's eyes. But they are equitable in role and plan, that is, each has a particular role in God's plan.
This is not a SMALL thing. It reverberates throughout the Old and New Testament.
Thus, women do not become priests. That is a male role. That also is Old Testament. The Jewish priests were men. Once the priesthood disappeared with the destruction of their Temple, the rabbinical role became paramount -- and they were still all men.
Christians simply followed the Jewish tradition.
Orthodox Judaism still has no women rabbis.
[There are no Hindu women priests either. They go one step farther and say that, besides being men, all priests must come from the Brahmin caste. And they do. None of this holds true for gurus--which are simply teachers.]

The celibacy of priests is a very convoluted and non-simple story. I think the crux (simplified version) is that when men happened to be married, they could become priests. If they were single and became priests, then they didn't marry.

[Conservative til I die]

Two excellant points. and historically accurate. does anyone know why celibacy of priests came about

You haven't been here long, I'm guessing. There's not a Catholic here that doesn't know or readily agree that celibacy has not always been the case. However, that in itself doesn't prove anything. Give us a reason to not have celibacy in the Latin Rite of the Church. "It used to be that way" is not a compelling reason.

Also, the ignorant Bush nephew doesn't bother to note - and probably doesn't care since he's just being flippant - that while celibacy was not always the de jure rule, it's almost always been the de factorule in the Latin Church for priests. And of course, Bishops have always been selected from the ranks of the celibate clergy in not only both the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches and the Latin Church, but the Orthodox Church as well.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Historically inaccurate.