Dear Jon:

I am surprised that a "devout" Catholic would say that women priests are likely. It is not. In fact, it is impossible for the Church to ever authorize women priests. It is an infallible teaching that men only may be ordained to the clerical state as deacons and/or priests. This can never change.

As for the second issue of married men allowed to be ordained priests, that could change, but is very unlikely. St. Paul advises that priests be celibate since a married priest will end up neglecting his wife or the church. I know this from personal experience when I was a married Baptist minister.

The practice of celibate priests applies only the Latin Rite anyway. Married Priests in the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches is a norm, but Eastern Rite Bishops must be celibate.

One thing that will never happen is to allow already ordained priests to get married. That has never happened, even in the Eastern Rite Churches.

Rather, the state of the man at the time of ordination is the way he must remain during his priestly life. So, if a man is already married and then ordained, he will be a married priest. If a man is single at the time of his ordination, then he must remain celibate. If a married priest loses his wife, he cannot remarry, but must remain celibate from then on.

If the Church allows married men to become priests in the Latin Rite as a norm that is how it will be done.

By the way, there are married priests in the Latin Rite right now by special dispensation. For example there have been some Anglican and other Protestant ministers who converted to the Catholic Church and were allowed to be Catholic priests. This is rare but it does happen sometimes.

But, woman priests? Impossible! As Pope John Paul II said, the church does not have the authority to ordain women as priests. Christ appointed men, not women, to be priests. Thus, no one, not even a pope, can ever change that.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary