[James]

I did a fairly comprehensive posting on this at CM (now unavailable). In short, the current majority Latin position - that there is a valid law requiring celibacy on the part of tbe secular clergy - is false legally, theologically, and historically. It also fails "the good tree produces good fruits test." This has NOTHING to do with the infallible teachings ot the Ordinary Universal or Extraordinary Magisteria, neither does it discredit the church's indefectibility. Many trads think so, because of a defective understanding of these things, and because of a certain psychological resistance to clerical marrrage grounded in a kind of gnostic attitude to marriage (read: sex) or ritual purity, which survive in a residual Jansenism (not the condemned errors of Jansenius). However, more and more trads are beginning to admit that the compulsion of celibacy has been a mistake. It is the kind of administrative error that Our Lord never guaranteed that He would prevent His apostles's successors from falling into, and that includes the Bishop of Bisbops, the Pope himself.