WHO WANTS MARRIED PRIESTS?

S0 much is being heard of priests wanting to marry, but isn't it time we learnt whether the laity want married priests. I. for one, do not want a married priesthood.
Of course (as St. Paul says) it is better to marry than burn, but if a man hasn't made up his mind by the time of his ordination at 23 or 24 years, then obviously he is even too immature to be a priest and should withdraw before it is too late.
While the Orthodox and Eastern Catholics have married priests, it is not generally known that they must be married before ordination and not after, and that a married priest cannot become a bishop.
As an Anglican for a great part of my life I have seen both sides of the coin and it is true that ". . . the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided." (1 Cor, 7, 33).
I know that comparisons are invidious, but I can't help comparing the selflessness of the celibate Anglo-Catholic clergy in the East End years ago with their married brethren's laissezfaire.
In any case, who is going to pay these married priests? I am bound to support my pastors and this I am glad to do for dedicated men, but will not pay more to support a priest's wife and children and to educate the latter.
Graham 'Young London, SW. I.
IT is rather upsetting that
Desmond Albrow finds that the right thing to do in our "open" Church is to criticise — in his article of December 20 "Priests on the Pyre" — the style of a letter. The Church needs less of this, and more kindness.
However, I am pleased that this question of celibacy is at last coming to a head. It's such an unChristian attitude to dismiss a priest from his duties on this count alone.
With fewer vocations and more dismissals each year something drastic will have to be done. Those priests who wish to marry and stay on in the priesthood are not looking for means of destroying the Church. They desire to remain and strengthen it.
I can see this problem like a big bubble that is being blown up bigger and bigger by pleas from all over the world. One day it will burst.
The problem will not be solved by the Vatican reinforcing the law of celibacy but only by accepting that married clergy will be good and not bad for the Church.
Jane M. Wilson Rose Grove, Lancs,