Even though I have only one brain cell, as you so cleverly pointed out a while back, I must disagree with you about the necessity of having married priests.
There is one terribly important point which has not been discussed and which I believe is critical to understanding the celibate priesthood. It is the spiritual/mystical life of prayer and relationship with God which must be active and healthy in order for a priest to live his vocation, whether married or single. This gives him the strength to resist temptations, whatever they happen to be. (It is this which gives all of us the strength to resist temptations and to live our vocations faithfully, priests or not.)
It is not the lack of sex which is the problem, it is the absence of a deep relationship with God which causes vows to be broken. How many marriages have been destroyed because the husband-wife relationship was not nurtured, became distant and cold, and then someone 'better' came along? It is the same for the priest-God relationship.
How many of us who have been married for any length of time have not been attracted to someone else? The fact that we are married does not stop temptations from happening. The strength of our marriage relationship, and our relationship with God, are the sources of strength for fighting such an attraction.
pax
The FACT is, there are not many men called to celibacy. Some have shoe-horned themselves into the priesthood because they wanted to please their mothers, or they had sexual problems and wanted to suborn them, or they thought they could secure their salvation by being a priest, no matter what their other inclinations were.
I'm not saying that a married priesthood would eliminate problems. No, it would create new ones.
But we cannot have criminals in the priesthood, and bishops who cover for them. If you, like me, believe we ought to weed homosexuals out of seminaries, the only real way to do that is to recruit men from the ranks of the truly heterosexual.
It is not the lack of sex which is the problem, it is the absence of a deep relationship with God which causes vows to be broken.
A deep relationship with a woman is what I was missing when I was in the seminary. The sex, as you say, was secondary.
Many priests are simply lonely for the love of a woman. You can't substitute dogs, or other men, or even God.
How many of us who have been married for any length of time have not been attracted to someone else?
Well, I can tell you, that in 26 years of marriage, I have never been seriously tempted by another woman because I have NEVER allowed myself to be put into a situation where I would be alone with somebody else. I know what my limitations are.
I disagree with you, but I appreciate your thoughtful post.