What the Pope doesn't Get 

Celibacy is an honorable and legitimate lifestyle. What is terribly wrong is abusive and authoritarian Church leadership interfering in a person's private choice, encouraging an unalterable vow. Some people who have made a vow of celibacy in their youth will experience a sexual awakening later in life. Even Saint Paul, who once recommended celibacy did not make it an irrevocable vow. In fact he said that it is better to marry than burn with passion (1 Corinthians 7:9), an option made impossible by a cruel irreversible vow. What the popes have not understood, is that an irreversible vow which would mandate someone scarring their conscience if broken, is wrong in the first place. Many people in and out of the Catholic Church see the need to return to common sense. Even the early Apostles recognized that an elder would normally be someone married with a family (1 Timothy 3:1-7).