When I was a little boy in the early 1950s, serving Mass daily and hero-worshipping my Irish parish priest, I supposed, as most English Catholics seemed to suppose, that all priests had emerged from some self-replenishing pool of male celibates. Such pools seemed to be located around the town of Emly in Tipperary or in the faraway hills of Cavan.
Twenty years later, and now myself a young priest, I was privileged to be a delegate at our National Conference of Priests. An impassioned plea was made, by a priest who had served there, for the Bishops of England and Wales to immediately send all their surplus priests to Latin America where this exotic species was apparently almost extinct. He was soon interrupted by another priest who, from personal and historical experience, assured the conference "the last thing Latin America needs at this time is yet another massive invasion of gringo celibates."
In recent years (I have now been retired for six) I have become aware that in some deaneries of my former Midlands diocese, four or five out seven parishes are now manned by married (ex-Anglican) Catholic priests. Many of these fine men rejoice in being surrounded by children and grandchildren.
In this day and age it stretches credulity, even to imagine, that little girls and boys, serving Mass, and hopefully, still hero-worshipping their parish priests, will still, having been thus attracted to priesthood as I once was, be knocked back by the double whammy that they have to be male and have to be celibate.
Edward Butler, Derrydruel Upper, County Donegal
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