However, the West had mostly-celibate clergy for the first 1000 years, and all-celibate clergy for the next 1000 years, and no real recruiting problems EXCEPT when the standard of holiness and sacrifice were lowered. When there is a bracingly high standard of holiness and sacrifice, the men who want to fast like ascetics and train like Olympians, to give their all and be the best --- who want to be the Recon Marines --- come pouring into the seminaries.
When Queen Elizabeth I -- bloody Bessie! --- made being a Catholic priest a death-penalty offense, Douai was swarming with men begging to become priests and be sent to Britain. When the Mohawks were roasting and chewing the fingers off of Jesuits, the most whole-souled, Jesus-My-All, brave and beautiful-hearted men on God's good earth, wanted to be Jesuits.
Even during the brief monastic and missionary-flowering of the U.S. Catholic church, 1945-1965, they couldn't build friaries and seminaries fast enough. Even small dioceses had 2 or 3 seminaries (I'm thinking of Erie, PA in the late-50's) and everybody wanted to go to Tanganyika (as it was then called) or to the Trappists.
But you go fat and slack and faggotty, and the bishop is willing to maintain every and any priest until he's pensioned off, just to keep up the Sunday Mass at St. Casimir's.
Holiness first. And celibate male ordinandi will arrive in battle array.
I don’t know about the historical celibacy. Certainly during and probably before and after the renaissance there was a lot happening. Popes were having children and rulers were appointing their children as Pope to maintain power and some of these illicit children became popes and cardinals. All this plus the purchase of indulgences is part of what Martin Luther was rebelling against.
Actually I think you are confusing “bloody Bessie” with Bloody Mary the Catholic Queen daughter of Katherine of Aragon who was dumped by both Queen’s father Henry VIII. I have frequently read about Bloody Mary who killed far more than her sister did. Of course after Mary there probably were plenty of her victims who were happy to put the shoe on the other foot. I have read the term “priest hole” where priests were hidden, kind of like the “underground railroad” of slave times. I have never encountered the “bloody Bessie” name in my readings or historical shows on TV. Also what is Douai?