I’m a married man with four young children. There’s no reason why I could not be ordained as a Catholic priest. That’s because I’m a former Anglican minister who has converted to the Catholic Church.

How does it work? It’s simple. If a married former minister applies to his Catholic bishop and the diocese approves his application, the bishop can ask Rome to grant a dispensation from the vow of celibacy.

This means the married former minister can be ordained as a Catholic priest. Rome is not changing the rule on celibacy — it’s making an exception to the rule.

It’s not just former Anglicans either.

Those of us who work with convert clergy know that around the world, married former Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and Pentecostals have all been granted a dispensation from the vow of celibacy and been ordained as Catholic priests.

In England, we have the largest concentration of married Catholic priests outside the Eastern Catholic churches. This is because of the large influx of Anglican clergy after the Church of England’s decision to ordain women just over 10 years ago.

For complicated reasons, no one can be sure just what the numbers of clergy converts from the Church of England were, but conservative estimates put the numbers at about 700 over 10 years. Nearly 500 of them have been ordained as Catholic priests; about 200 of those were married men.

Is this a careful experiment on the part of Rome to get the Church ready for a relaxation of the celibacy rule? Are the whispers correct that with a new pope, Rome will decide to adopt the Eastern rite and also Orthodox discipline that married men may be ordained priests, while priests will not be allowed to marry? Some people have this on the agenda and say it is only a matter of time until the Catholic Church ordains married men. Pressure groups have been established to get Rome to allow men who left the priesthood to get married to return to ministry.

Others are pushing for the rule to be relaxed completely, allowing men who are already ordained to marry if they wish. Voices from Africa and South America claim there are high levels of concubinage among the clergy. They say celibacy is foreign to their culture and that priests should be able to marry.

A careful look at the situation in England will help put the matter straight. Although the married former Anglicans are fully and totally Catholic priests, from a practical point of view, they function differently in the dioceses.

Rome has said that married men are not to be parish priests. Most of them serve as chaplains in schools, hospitals and prisons. Some have diocesan posts or teaching positions that help to supply the salary a family man needs. Many of them are retired and serve as assistant priests in parishes. They’re doing a great work, and they have been universally accepted and appreciated, but they are simply not as easy to deploy as a celibate priest.

Bishops recognize that a married man cannot simply be uprooted and moved to a new parish without great difficulty. Suddenly, there is a whole range of new considerations: the children’s school, the wife’s job and the need for a salaried post.

With a few exceptions, the Catholic Church in England has been very generous and the married former Anglicans have fit in well. They are making a wonderful contribution, but is this the thin edge of the wedge? Are married priests about to be introduced worldwide?

Could be. Theoretically, Rome could change the rule overnight. The celibate priesthood is not a matter of doctrine or divine revelation. It is simply a Church discipline.

There are many people who argue for married priests from a pragmatic point of view. They think that allowing priests to marry will solve the priest shortage, solve the sexual-abuse scandals and the loneliness of priests all in one quick fix.

These arguments are superficial. Catholics share a shortage in vocations with all the Christian denominations in the West. Protestants allow their ministers to marry, but they are still experiencing a shortage. Sex scandals exist in the denominations that allow their ministers to marry, and clergy marriages are notoriously difficult. It’s possible to be married and to be lonely. Marriage will not solve these problems, and if marriage could solve some problems that some priests encounter living their celibacy, it may very well create greater problems in the long term.

Those who want to have married clergy need to think carefully about the practical problems involved. St. Paul said to his fellow ministers, “I wish you to remain as I am (that is, single); a married man must please his wife, but a single man can serve only the Lord.”

 If the married man must look after his wife and family, so must the Church. I hear many people say they want to have married priests, but when I suggest that they would have to pay for this by giving sacrificially, they soon clam up.

Celibate priests can serve God for very little. It’s not fair to expect a man’s wife and children to suffer poverty and a life constantly on the move simply because he has a priestly vocation.

It’s true that a husband-and-wife team serving the Lord together can be a great asset to the Church. In New Testament times, the husband-and-wife team of Aquila and Priscilla were colleagues and assistant evangelists to St. Paul. It even seems that St. Peter’s wife may have traveled with him on his missionary journeys (I Corinthians 9:5). The experience of other Christian denominations shows this to be true today.

Husband-and-wife teams in the parish, or on the mission field, are a great example of the Christian family and are truly inspiring. However, in my experience as both a Protestant and a Catholic, these wonderful examples are the exception, not the rule. More often, Christian ministry puts intolerable strain on a marriage, and very few couples are up to the ideal that such a burden puts on their relationship.

Those who say they want married priests must consider the complicated situation of a clergy marriage. It looks good from the outside, but is rarely clear sailing.

The Church will need to face the problems that come with clergy marriage. How will they handle marriage breakdowns? What happens when the priest has marriage problems? What happens to his wife if they divorce? Who looks after her and the children? It is easy to look at the married couple serving God in the parish and idealize their relationship.

This is unrealistic. Marriage is tough. A vocation to the priesthood is tough. The Church, in her wisdom, realizes that one vocation of total self-giving is enough for any man. I was a celibate Anglican priest for seven years and a married priest for three. St. Paul was right. A single man can serve the Lord alone. A married man has to think of his wife and family, too, and that must lead to a conflict of interests.

Finally, there is one more practical problem that I have never heard mentioned. A Catholic priest is rightly expected to hold to all the Church’s teachings and live out those teachings in his own life. Have we forgotten that the Catholic Church teaches that artificial contraception is forbidden? We have to assume that a married Catholic priest would be living by the Church’s teachings. If he and his wife are of child-bearing age and are fertile, we would have to build bigger presbyteries, wouldn’t we?

Do dioceses and parishes want to invest in large clergy families? Maybe so. We’re pro-life. Maybe a rectory flowing over with little Catholics would be a great blessing, but could a father of six or seven or 12 children really be as devoted to his priestly vocation as he needs to be? I doubt it.

Here in England, the married former Anglican priests have made a wonderful contribution to the Church, but their presence is more of a historical blip than a radical experiment in the Church’s discipline. We’ve absorbed a large number of married former Anglicans, but most of the ones I talk to agree with me that they are not radical pioneers.

They’re grateful to have been admitted to the priesthood, but being a Catholic priest has put strains on their marriage, and it has been far harder than they had anticipated.

The married priests themselves are cautious about any change in the rule. Almost unanimously they agree that the culture in the whole Catholic Church would need a radical overhaul to be able to handle married clergy efficiently. Quite frankly, they don’t think it’s worth the trouble. The difficulties far outweigh the proposed advantages.

If you’re in favor of married priests, talk to the ones we already have. Most of them agree that the current discipline is best and that married priests are not only an exception, they’re the exception that proves the rule.

Dwight Longenecker’s book,

Adventures in Orthodoxy, is a creative

consideration of the Apostle’s Creed.

It is available through Dwightlongenecker.com.