"In the years immediately after the council, nuns discarded their habits, priests discovered women (more than 100,000 left the priesthood to marry)" This posit

"In the years immediately after the council, nuns discarded their habits, priests discovered women (more than 100,000 left the priesthood to marry)" This position on marriage for priests is intriguing. Even Peter was married - see Matthew 8:14 (why would Peter have a mother-in-law if he wasn't married...?). And why does Paul warn about people who will say that you cannot marry? (1 Timothy 4:3) ??? "in this struggle it has been forced into the defence of an untenable absolutist position, whereby ..... all sex outside one lifelong marriage" is banned. "As Francis recognises, that’s not how people actually behave." This is not true. Just because many people do not stick to their beliefs does not make the beliefs invalid, nor does it mean you should adopt the common mis-practice. Like the Oxford versus Collins dictionary - Oxford tells you what the word means and how it should be used; Collins tells you how people typically use it (which might be an abuse of the word or incorrect usage). I'd rather go with Oxford. Who of us likes ignoring our programming language specs and then argue that the compiler is wrong? BTW I am not Catholic.