Celibacy and Self-flagulation

Healthy.

In the Dominican House of Studies in DC there is a chapel on which walls appears a whip to remind the House-broken boys that it was better to whip oneself silly than suffer the demon lust as they broke them into believing celibacy was the only path to holiness worthy of a priest. The Vatican Press machine is aflutter with the new expedited laicization rules for priests deigning and daring to challenge the mandatory "gift" of celibacy that the church gives its priests.

We are historically removed from how holiness got defined like this. Once upon a time there was no such rule - and Christ never imposed one. To the contrary, Bishops had to be the husband of one wife with their houses and kids in order. Timothy warned that in the end times there would be those who forbade marriage. It is titled "false asceticism."
All the "brothers of the Lord", Cephas (Peter) and "all the other Apostles" wrote Paul were married, and this was a "right."

Around the 11th or 12th century after earlier conventions, it became mandatory that all Priests had to renounce marriage (and give up wives if they had them). Up until then about 39 Popes were married. For the first ten centuries of Christendom there was no such requirement of mandatory celibacy. Consequently, the entire Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine rites have no such rule. The Catholic church operated under it for about 400 more years until the Protestant Reformation. No Protestant church makes celibacy mandatory. The Augustinian monk theologian Martin Luther who led the reformation by accident while protesting abuses of a system of "indulgences" used for the Vatican building finance campaign, married an x-nun and had five kids.

Now, it has its merits, this mandatory celibacy "gift" that the church gives his priests- or that they allegedly all have of the Holy Spirit. But it also has severe draw-backs.

Imagine for example that the American Bar Association came out with a rule that said No lawyer may ever marry- they must be celibate to best serve the needs of the community and maintain a quality of professionalism. Nothing about being a lawyer intrinsically requires that one cannot have a spouse while there would be obvious advantages- for example, one would not be burdened with
time diverted from writing briefs or running a law practice. One would not be inclined to spend long hours with ones spouse in the morning and get to work early. One would not have to spend money on kids that could be advanced for client costs, etc. Someone could develop a whole theology on why it maximally serves the profession to have lawyers that are forever lifetime celibates. After time, it would be unthinkable to have a married lawyer. If a lawyer got married it would offend everyone's sensibilities and he should be immediately disbarred. An entire class of people who were prideful lawyers would insist that there is no way possible to be a married lawyer because these are ontological contradictions. Pretty soon a distinct class of people who had no interest in being married (the conflicted repressed gays, the unfit to marry, the misogynists and those who drank the kool-aid) would pridefully insist that they were best qualified to be lawyers and no married people could be lawyers. People in healthy marriages or inclined to be attracted to the opposite sex desiring of intimacy would be self-vetted out or thrown out of the Bar. It would create a Bar of a particular psychological bent of people.
In the same way, nothing about being a priest intrinsically requires that one cannot have a spouse. Nothing. It is a cultural creation of the church. It has created a particular psychological bent of people as priests. It has self-affirmed the myth that these are the only truly qualified people to be priests, it has defined circularly its qualifications by what it wants to perpetuate.
And it excludes definitionally the healthy heterosexuals who desire intimacy with the opposite sex.
Is there any wonder then, that five states now, without credible moral opposition have legislated in "Marriage Equality" for Gay Marriage? Is there any wonder that women revolt against this intrinsically misogynist view of holiness that definitionally precludes them from
attaining requisite Christ-closeness "holiness" because they are women and mere conjugal association with them disqualifies a priest from the priesthood.

This doctrine is harmful to women. It is emotionally destructive to women. It is insulting to women. The Marriage Priesthood Option should be implemented. The harder the Pope cracks down against it, the more over 70% of all polled Americans think that the Church is harmful to them.

Moreover, the view that "Christ wasn't married" is not scripturally definitively sound.
Who would have to officiate to Christ for him to be married? Clearly there is no one with more
spiritual authority than Christ on earth. If he was committed to, for example, Mary Magdalene, with the sort of love that had her not leaving his side even while he was nailed to the Cross and later camping at his grave site Tomb all night, in a sense he was married to her. Who did Adam and Eve have officiate their wedding? Christ's words create life. For there to be a marriage vow with him and Mary Magdalene, all he would ever have to say is "You are coming with me"- and she did until he left the planet, came back and left again.
Jesus came as a baby to a human woman who had cosmic sex with the Holy Spirit. God took a human spouse. But women don't rank according to the Pope. What's wrong with this picture. What's seriously perversely wrong with this picture.