Let's start with the question of who's in this Protestant surplus. Most of the main line denominations have long since ordained women, and in recent decades, they've ordained those in open same-sex lifestyles and even transsexuals. So a considerable part of the Protestant surplus would not be eligible for Catholic ordination on doctrinal grounds, which (let's hope) will not change. We must simply wish the Protestants well with that part of the candidate pool.
Let's also keep in mind that the current state of bourgeois culture, which is reinforced by a dysfunctional educational system, channels undergraduates into fields like law, media, art, "creative writing", the academy itself, and indeed the Protestant clergy, which generates huge and destructive surpluses in all those fields. These fields are thought to be prestigious, relatively high-paying, and at least in the popular imagination undemanding.
But let's look at the practical married straight male output of the Protestant surplus, which we can see closely in examining the OCSP's candidate pool. What we often encounter are individuals several years out of seminary who haven't been able to gain career footholds, let alone in main line denominations, but even in fringe ones, the various splinter Anglican groups especially, but not limited even to those. This is simply what we would expect. When there's a surplus, even the best candidates are being picked up by the main line denominations at bargain rates (there's a huge gender pay gap, for instance), leaving the rejects to scramble elsewhere.
Under such circumstances, a realistic appraisal of the market ought to encourage the most capable individuals to recognize their prior expectations hadn't been realistic, and it's time to recalibrate. This would be a reasonable part of a maturing process in early adulthood -- past a certain point, I had to recognize the academic field was too crowded for me to expect a good career, and I had to rethink my capabilities and find a way to move on. That some individuals would be building large families without this sort of situational awareness would call their suitability for any professional field into question.
So I just don't see how the crop of married ordinands from the last several years in the OCSP could offer anyone any sort of encouragement that allowing greater numbers of married priests in the Catholic Church would be much help.
But let's also consider the range of other problems married Catholic priests would present.
- Celibate Catholic priests actually receive a pay and benefit package that's at least comfortable for a single man. The US average is in the $25-30,000 range, although this does not factor in room and board, use of a car, and health benefits. Anecdotal evidence suggests this will allow fairly extensive vacation travel, as well as the ability to purchase a retirement or vacation condo.
- These amounts will not support a wife and multiple children, and the assumption is that this isn't part of the deal. OCSP priests, typically paid the same as celibate diocesan priests, whose incomes aren't supplemented by pensions must find additional work for themselves or their wives. How would this change if the Church allowed married priests more widely?
- In fact, bringing wives and children into the life of the priesthood would be profoundly disruptive to rectory culture. We saw in the case of the Stockport, UK parish that the rectory had to be vacated to accommodate Fr Kenyon's family, which clearly caused a level of resentment among the diocesan clergy who were affected -- but the Kenyon family didn't like the rectory anyhow. This will not be a recipe for large-scale success.
- But as Fr Ripperger points out, married clergy with their families bring in a whole range of parish issues that even Protestant denominations have never been able to handle well. These include affairs, not just with the priests themselves, but their wives (which we've already seen with the Reeses), but also the broods of often poorly supervised children who get into drugs and delinquency at early ages. Why would the Church want to borrow this sort of trouble?
- Another issue that I don't believe anyone else has raised is that OCSP priests themselves must often be given work in diocesan jobs to supplement their incomes. In the case of married priests, we might also expect their wives to be given equivalent lay diocesan jobs. The difficulty then becomes that, should the performance of either the priest or the wife be unsatisfactory, or should the bishop simply need to move the priest to a distant parish in the diocese, the welfare of the family would be held hostage to otherwise necessary personnel moves. If the wife works in the chancery, which is close to her husband's parish, what if the husband must move to a parish on the outer boundary of the diocese, for instance?
UPDATE: A visitor sent me a link to this YouTube from the vocation director for the Diocese of Dodge City, KS that echoes some of my views:
