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Catholic Church needs to allow priest to marry. My wife and I are Catholic. She remarked a few months back the latest young priest look like the church is picking from the "bottom of the barrel" of males so to speak.

Respectfully, I would ask you to reconsider your position.

Remember that the priests of the Church have a great many responsibilities in serving their parishes - they have to be available 24/7/365 for the people of God for the rest of the time they are humanly able. For a priest to be married would force him to split his loyalties between the people of his parish and his family - this wouldn't be fair to either. Likewise, it wouldn't be healthy for either.

The seminarian knows that he is giving up something good - marriage and a family - for something that is also good - serving God and His Church. It is made eminently clear in the 6-8 years of formation that seminarians go through before they are ordained, and great care is taken that men are not taking a vow to celibacy lightly. (I would grant, however, that much of this great care has been in response to problems that have become legion in the last 50 years.)

I am curious as to what your wife means when she refers to this young priest as one picked "from the bottom of the barrel?" The men who I know that are in seminary formation are excellent men - some who have come straight out of seminary, others who have studied in numerous fields ranging from history to engineering, and still others who have worked as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and still others who have served in the military. Certainly, some seminarians have rough edges... but smoothing those is also part of that formation.

I know these men, because I am one of them.

And we are being prepared to give our lives in service to Jesus Christ fully and completely - including the vow of celibacy. We realize how important it is... even though there is the bitterness of not having a family, it is consoled by the anticipation of being a father to the People of God entrusted to our care.

Please, please, please make an effort to get to know some of us before labeling us as defective!

The seminarian knows that he is giving up something good - marriage and a family - for something that is also good - serving God and His Church.

During the era when the Roman rite mandated clerical celibacy (other rites -- and there are dozens, I think, do not.) the Jews had a contrasting practice. When a bright young man with pastoral gifts was asked to become a rabbi, the community also tried to find a bright young wife for him, taking up a collection for the dowry if necessary. The pastoral couple was then encouraged to have lots of bright young children.

The Catholics were content to squeeze one lifetime of service from each cleric. The Jews accepted reduced output for the current generation in exchange for expanded influence in generations to come.

"Jesus saves. Moses invests."

A missionary pastor sojourning in our church was going back to the field in a different European country. Said an opinionated member of this church to this husband and father of six girls, "Your family will be more than half of your ministry, on a continent where the Spaniards are not having little Spaniards, the Germans are not having little Germans, and the Italians are not having little Italians." Five years later, this has indeed proven to be the case. Most of the members of the church they started in their neighborhood were met through family-centric activities.

Celibacy is named after the earth goddess Celebe, whose priests castrated themselves during the hilarion, the "festival of joy." They believed that the sacrifice of their fertility made possible the fertility of the fields. The default setting for maximum human happiness and productivity is -- the normal family. I appreciate your sense of vocation -- but have you looked into non-Roman rites?