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Well, it now looks like we agree on most of the points I was raising.

Well... okay. But I'm still not sure why you thought I hadn't said all of that from the very beginning; I didn't change my position in mid-stream... honest!

Hopefully I won’t be excommunicated, burned at the stake, or deemed a heretic.

I would hardly think so; and there's no honor lost in discussing them, in any case. But I'd gently suggest that there are lots of ill-advised things which are not quite heresy, grounds for excommunication, or worthy of the death penalty!

We seem to have some disagreements on what St. Paul is trying to convey here. I do not know if St. Paul was ever married or not. His marital status is never discussed in the Bible.

Right. My only reason for pressing that point was as a response to a suggestion that you'd made--i.e. that St. Paul's recommendation was due to the fact that he was old and disinterested in sex/marriage. I was pointing out (as gently as I could) that such a hypothesis is baseless, with no evidencde to support it (a bit like hypothesizing that there's an invisible teapot in orbit, directly above us).

Paul does in fact praise abstinence. He also praises Holy Matrimony. He does say abstinence is a gift and in his opinion is the best way to live. No where does he say it is a requirement for service in the priesthood.

All true. St. Paul, however, spent a good deal of time (and zeal) promoting the idea, though... and it's of a piece with his plentiful teachings elsewhere (especially Ephesians 5).

There are MANY Catholics who question the policy.

I only wish I could be impressed by that! I don't mean to disparage them... but popularity is a rather wretched standard by which to judge anything. Many Catholics question the Church's teaching on contraception, for example (some estimates say that over 90% of Catholic couples use artificial contraception, and don't think it's wrong). Over 50% of Catholics question the Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist! No... merely counting noses and viewing opinion polls tells us nothing useful. I wish it did... because that would indicate a Catholic population which was well-catechized and well-formed!

We are not all liberals.

"Liberal" is a political term which doesn't have much use, here. (Granted: liberals are far more prone to reject Church teaching on sexual morality and life issues than are conservatives; but that's neither here nor there.) The question of celibacy for the Catholic clergy is not a political issue, so you'd never catch me (God willing!) calling a celibacy opponent a "liberal". I may well call him mistaken or misguided... but not "liberal".

I know many fellow Knights who question the policy as well

Ditto, my comment above: I wish I could be impressed by that! But after the Knights refused to institute a policy of removal for pro-abortion and pro-gay-marriage members (cf. this link), and after a local KoC member was one of the deciding votes in allowing "Rainbow Boys" (an aggressively pro-gay book written for jr. high and high school children) into the school library at taxpayer expense, I don't allow myself to use the KoC's as a litmus test for anything, anymore.

as theologians who teach at Catholic universities.

Ugh! Triple the ditto, above! "Catholic" universities, such as Notre Dame, Georgetown, Boston College, etc., are hotbeds of dissent... and they have been for decades. You can't swing a dead squirrel without hitting a dissident theologian at virtually any Catholic college in the USA (with a few blessed exceptions)!

Even the Pope has said the policy is subject to change.

He's saying nothing new (though I seriously question his wisdom in saying so to an audience of secularists who are itching to do away with celibacy, and any other restriction on sex). That statement can apply to hundreds of things... such as the practice of allowing children to receive Holy Communion at age 7 (or the age of reason)--when it used to be age 13 or more; the practice of allowing the general public to receive Holy Communion every day, or even twice per day (the Church has the freedom to restrict Holy Communion reception to once per year, if it chose); or even the practice of private Confession (it used to be public, in view of the entire congregation, and penances consisted of years of brutal mortifications... not just the "3 Our Fathers" version we have today! Be very careful how freely you embrace the idea of "it can be changed, so it should be changed"!