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Friday, April 08, 2005

60% of American Catholics think women should be ordained as priests
and (concidentally)
60% of American Catholics think that priests should be allowed to marry.

according to an ap-ipsos poll reported at pollinggreort.com.

One very odd thing is that, overall only 69% of Americans (in a 22% catholic sample) think that priests should be allowed to marry. IIRC the catholic church is the only one which requires priests to be celibate (I think the Orthodox churches require bishops to be celibate).

There is an extreme case of the general pattern in polls that results for catholics and non catholics are virtually identical on the issues where Catholic teaching is very clear but controversial. Why would non Catholics think that priests should be celibate ?

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