The Eastern Rite -- a Catholic paradox

A few days ago pope Francis ruffled some feathers by suggesting that the Catholic Church's long-standing requirement that its priests be celibate might be reconsidered.  This idea has been floating around liberal Catholic circles for decades, but has always been firmly rejected by the upper hierarchy, including -- until now -- by Francis himself.

It's not surprising that the idea keeps coming up.  Priestly celibacy is not an immutable Church dogma -- it's more of an administrative rule, first established in the eleventh century, though one which is now very entrenched in tradition.  In today's world it's a disincentive to join the priesthood (in general, men are not noted for their enthusiasm for sexual abstinence), contributing to the worsening shortage of priests.  And as we now know, completely suppressing the sex drive is quite unhealthy -- often, like a river dammed up and allowed no outlet, it bursts forth in some unexpected and disastrous direction, notably in the pervasive problem of priestly sexual abuse of boys, which anecdotal evidence suggests has been going on for centuries.  But the Catholic Church is very strict in the application of its intricate rules.

The real paradox here, though, is that there are already some Catholic priests who are exempt from the celibacy requirement.

Within the vast Catholic Church there is a category of small churches known as "Eastern Rite" or "Eastern Catholic".  (Historically they were called "uniate churches", but this term has been abandoned since many consider it derogatory.)  These are churches, mostly in eastern Europe or the Middle East, which historically belonged to Eastern Orthodoxy but at some point became administratively part of the Catholic Church.  They maintain all their Eastern Orthodox rituals, traditions, vestments, etc, but they accept the authority of the pope, they are recognized as being fully Catholic, and their priests are recognized as legitimate Catholic priests.

The reason this matters is that in most Eastern Orthodox churches, as in most non-Catholic sects of Christianity, the clergy are commonly married.  When the Eastern Rite churches joined the Catholic Church, those that had this practice kept it, along with their other traditions.  To this day, they continue to ordain married men as priests -- who are accepted as legitimate Catholic priests.

So if these legitimate Catholic priests are exempt from the celibacy rule, and God is apparently cool with that, why on Earth is it so important that priests in the mainstream Catholic Church abide by the rule?  I know that religious logic can be bizarre, and there is doubtless some contrived religio-bureaucratic justification for the difference, but it still defies common sense.  The Eastern Rite churches aren't even really geographically segregated any more, since the Vatican has allowed them to extend their operations to Western countries to serve their members among the eastern European and Middle Eastern immigrants to the West, and since 2014 explicitly allows them to ordain married priests even in the West.

In practice, it's probably mostly a matter of traditional inertia.  The eleventh century was a long time ago, and a tradition that has stood for a thousand years becomes so entrenched that changing it, especially in a massively conservative organization like the Catholic Church, just feels wrong.

Many liberal Catholics (including clergy), who are concentrated in the rich Western countries where most of the donation money comes from, support ending the celibacy rule or would at least accept doing so.  And it would probably help with that problem of too few men signing up to become priests.  But more traditional Catholics would be shocked at such an innovation.  Francis and his hierarchy will increasingly be under pressure from both directions, stirring up a hornet's nest of controversy and even threats of schism -- the inevitable fate of such a large and tradition-bound entity in a rapidly-changing world.