Welcome to the Married Priests Web Site where we believe the Roman Church should adopt the discipline of the Orthodox Church with regard to clerical celibacy.
Both celibate and married men are ordained to the priesthood, but bishops are chosen from celibate priests. Read the following article on the Orthodox position and leave your comments in the guest book.
Graham Briscombe founded the Married Priests Web Site in 2002. Its purpose was to explore issues surrounding mandatory celibacy in the Roman Church.
In 2008 the web site was reconstructed to reflect the belief that the Roman
Church would be served well by adopting the Orthodox Churches position on clerical celibacy.
God calls some to marriage and others to celibacy. A man-made call to celibacy cannot override a God-made call to marriage.
But this is what happens,sometimes when, under the present discipline of the Roman Church, a man is called both to marriage and to the priesthood.
The Orthodox position on marriage and clerical celibacy has been fixed by the long patristic tradition and practice of the Church as regards the profound theological content of the sacrament of marriage and the eminently personal spirituality of the discipline of celibacy. Marriage according to the Lord and celibacy for the Lord’s sake are two different spiritual paths, it is true, but both are incontestably valid for a true living of the content of the faith.
The Orthodox Churches and Priestly Celibacy
by Damaskinos Papandreou
Orthodox Metropolitan of Switzerland
Priesthood.., according to the canonical tradition in force, constitutes an impediment to marriage.
