If by "traditional Catholic teaching" you mean St. Jerome et alia, no, it does not. They make no distinction whatsoever between ABC and NFP: the married exist to breed for the monasteries. That is why HV is devoid of patristics. Neither it, nor its apologists it seems, have found any to support its contention that "being open to life" is determinative.
And here is where we reach the point where we must just go our separate ways and agree upon the irreconcilable differences between our Churches. Catholicism believes that doctrine develops and is clarified
You mean deformed: every novelty the Vatican has introduced has muddled things, and clarified nothing. The filioque is a perfect example, each "clarification" in its, as every innovation's, defense further painting you into a corner.
and Orthodoxy believes it is stagnant.
You shall not add to the word that I speak to you, neither shall you take away from it: keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. Deut. 4:2
For I testify to every one that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book: If any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from these things that are written in this book. Rev. 22:18-9
You of course, to do whatever you like, "But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord, you have your choice: choose this day that which pleaseth you, whom you would rather serve, but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24:15.
If it's not broke, don't fix it. One would think that Vatican II would teach one all he needs to know about change for the sake of change and dogmatic pronouncements that are not needed.
Then we don't need a supreme pontiff speaking ex cathedra then.
Just because ex cathedra is not the sole way the Church receives her teachings doesn't mean it is never needed.
Name an instance that it was needed, and was exercised.
How it has been done, an affliction.
You are free to hold that opinion, although no one in the Latin Church is forcing men to become priests.
No, it is forcing men to deny their vocation, while accepting men which landed it into all the scandals and law suits.
They know the huge unnecessarysacrifice they have to make,
fixed that for you.
and still make it.
Many do, others don't. The drop in vocations and the scandals show that from two different angles.
Now there is the speculative aspect of this discussion about whether the discipline will be lifted in the Latin Church to help solve the priest shortage crisis, and that I do not know. I do know that whether it happens or not will not matter to me. I will support the Church either way.
Then what do you say of extracting from those who do not have the gift? It's like a tax collecting squeezing blood from a rock.
Why is celibacy in the western branch of the Catholic Church such a pet peeve for you?
The denigration of marriage that the Vatican depends on to uphold such a teaching in preference to the teaching and dogma of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. This sanctimony is often combined with that of anullment Corban.
Your friends St. Jerome et alia and their modern disciples see it differently, and openly display their abhorence for the idea of a man having touched a woman offering the sacrifice of the altar. St. Jerome, for instance, states "the blood of martyrdom does not wash away matrimony" as if it was filth one needed to be cleasned of.
That sounds like a snippet of something taken out of context to me,
Because of its inconvenience?
but as far as celibacy being the higher path...St. Paul seems to agree....
Doesn't seem so "Marriage honourable in all, and the bed undefiled." Heb. 13:4. As for your friend Jerome, take his context:
Coming to the Gospel he sets before us Zacharias and Elizabeth, Peter and his mother-in-law, and, with a shamelessness to which we have now grown accustomed, fails to understand that they, too, ought to have been reckoned among those who served the Law. For the Gospel had no being before the crucifixion of Christ— it was consecrated by His passion and by His blood. In accordance with this rule Peter and the other Apostles (I must give Jovinianus something now and then out of my abundance) had indeed wives, but those which they had taken before they knew the Gospel. But once they were received into the Apostolate, they forsook the offices of marriage. For when Peter, representing the Apostles, says to the Lord: Matthew 19:27 Lo we have left all and followed you, the Lord answered him, Luke 18:29-30 Verily I say unto you, there is no man that has left house or wife, or brethren, or parents, or children for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this time, and in the world to come eternal life. But if, in order to show that all the Apostles had wives, he meets us with the words Have we no right to lead about women or wives (for γυνή in Greek has both meanings) even as the rest of the apostles, and Cephas, and the brethren of the Lord? let him add what is found in the Greek copies, Have we no right to lead about women that are sisters, or wives? This makes it clear that the writer referred to other holy women, who, in accordance with Jewish custom, ministered to their teachers of their substance, as we read was the practice with even our Lord himself. Where there is a previous reference to eating and drinking, and the outlay of money, and mention is afterwards made of women that are sisters, it is quite clear, as we have said, that we must understand, not wives, but those women who ministered of their substance. And we read the same account in the Old Testament of the Shunammite who was wont to welcome Elisha, and to put for him a table, and bread, and a candlestick, and the rest. At all events if we take γυναίκας to mean wives, not women, the addition of the word sisters destroys the effect of the word wives, and shows that they were related in spirit, not by wedlock. Nevertheless, with the exception of the Apostle Peter, it is not openly stated that the Apostles had wives; and since the statement is made of one while nothing is said about the rest, we must understand that those of whom Scripture gives no such description had no wives. Yet Jovinianus, who has arrayed against us Zacharias and Elizabeth, Peter and his wife's mother, should know, that John was the son of Zacharias and Elizabeth, that is, a virgin was the offspring of marriage, the Gospel of the law, chastity of matrimony; so that by a virgin prophet the virgin Lord might be both announced and baptized. But we might say concerning Peter, that he had a mother-in-law when he believed, and no longer had a wife, although in the Sentences we read of both his wife and daughter. But for the present our argument must be based wholly on Scripture. He has made his appeal to the Apostles, because he thinks that they, who hold the chief authority in our moral system and are the typical Christian teachers, were not virgins. If, then, we allow that they were not virgins (and, with the exception of Peter, the point cannot be proved), yet I must tell him that it is to the Apostles that the words of Isaiah relate: Isaiah 1:9 Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like Gomorrha. So, then, they who were by birth Jews could not under the Gospel recover the virginity which they had lost in Judaism. And yet John, one of the disciples, who is related to have been the youngest of the Apostles, and who was a virgin when he embraced Christianity, remained a virgin, and on that account was more beloved by our Lord, and lay upon the breast of Jesus. And what Peter, who had had a wife, did not dare ask, John 13:25 he requested John to ask. And after the resurrection, when Mary Magdalene told them that the Lord had risen, John 20:4 they both ran to the sepulchre, but John outran Peter. And when they were fishing in the ship on the lake of Gennesaret, Jesus stood upon the shore, and the Apostles knew not who it was they saw; the virgin alone recognized a virgin, and said to Peter, It is the Lord. Again, after hearing the prediction that he must be bound by another, and led whither he would not, and must suffer on the cross, Peter said, Lord what shall this man do? being unwilling to desert John, with whom he had always been united. Our Lord said to him, What is that to you if I wish him so to be? Whence the saying went abroad among the brethren that that disciple should not die. Here we have a proof that virginity does not die, and that the defilement of marriage is not washed away by the blood of martyrdom, but virginity abides with Christ, and its sleep is not death but a passing to another state. If, however, Jovinianus should obstinately contend that John was not a virgin, (whereas we have maintained that his virginity was the cause of the special love our Lord bore to him), let him explain, if he was not a virgin, why it was that he was loved more than the other Apostles. But you say, Matthew 16:18 the Church was founded upon Peter: although elsewhere the same is attributed to all the Apostles, and they all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the strength of the Church depends upon them all alike, yet one among the twelve is chosen so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism. But why was not John chosen, who was a virgin? Deference was paid to age, because Peter was the elder: one who was a youth, I may say almost a boy, could not be set over men of advanced age; and a good master who was bound to remove every occasion of strife among his disciples, and who had said to them, John 14:27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, and, He that is the greater among you, let him be the least of all, would not be thought to afford cause of envy against the youth whom he had loved. We maybe sure that John was then a boy because ecclesiastical history most clearly proves that he lived to the reign of Trajan, that is, he fell asleep in the sixty-eighth year after our Lord's passion, as I have briefly noted in my treatise on Illustrious Men. Peter is an Apostle, and John is an Apostle— the one a married man, the other a virgin; but Peter is an Apostle only, John is both an Apostle and an Evangelist, and a prophet. An Apostle, because he wrote to the Churches as a master; an Evangelist, because he composed a Gospel, a thing which no other of the Apostles, excepting Matthew, did; a prophet, for he saw in the island of Patmos, to which he had been banished by the Emperor Domitian as a martyr for the Lord, an Apocalypse containing the boundless mysteries of the future. Tertullian, more over, relates that he was sent to Rome, and that having been plunged into a jar of boiling oil he came out fresher and more active than when he went in. But his very Gospel is widely different from the rest. Matthew as though he were writing of a man begins thus: The book of the Generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham; Luke begins with the priesthood of Zacharias; Mark with a prophecy of the prophets Malachi and Isaiah. The first has the face of a man, on account of the genealogical table; the second, the face of a calf, on account of the priesthood; the third, the face of a lion, on account of the voice of one crying in the desert, Isaiah 40:3 Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. But John like an eagle soars aloft, and reaches the Father Himself, and says, John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God, and so on. The virgin writer expounded mysteries which the married could not, and to briefly sum up all and show how great was the privilege of John, or rather of virginity in John, the Virgin Mother John 19:26-27 was entrusted by the Virgin Lord to the Virgin disciple.
And this is quite tame to other things he says in praise to damn marriage.
"For I would that all men were even as myself: but every one hath his proper gift from God; one after this manner, and another after that. But I say to the unmarried, and to the widows: It is good for them if they so continue, even as I." -1 Corinthians 7:7-8
...so does Christ:
"For there are eunuchs, who were born so from their mother's womb: and there are eunuchs, who were made so by men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it." -St. Matthew 19:12
4 Who answering, said to them: Have ye not read, that he who made man from the beginning, Made them male and female? And he said: 5 For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. 6 Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. 10 His disciples say unto him: If the case of a man with his wife be so, it is not expedient to marry.
Seems your friend St. Jerome didn't think much of that, not only desperately by "argument" trying to void the Apostles' marriages, but praising the idea that they abandoned their wives. Christ does not exempt Himself from "let no man," he tells St. Paul otherwise " But to them that are married, not I but the Lord commandeth, that the wife depart not from her husband. 11 And if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife. Let every man abide in the same calling in which he was called. Art thou bound to a wife? seek not to be loosed" I Cor. 7:10-1, 20, 27.
Seems Christ had other thoughts than St. Jerome on this matter. Matthew 16:23 The Vatican's essay, as I quoted, shows that the Church didn't see any relevance of Mat. 19:12 on this issue. But in the spirit of St. Jerome, rather than the Spirit of Christ, tries to be inventive to get around that inconvenient fact.
You're not reading closely:
It is clear from the New Testament (Mk 1:29-31; Mt 8:14-15; Lk 4:38-39; 1 Tim 3:2, 12; Tit 1:6) that at least the Apostle Peter had been married, and that bishops, presbyters and deacons of the Primitive Church were often family men. It is also clear from epigraphy, the testimony of the Fathers, synodal legislation, papal decretals and other sources that in the following centuries, a married clergy, in greater or lesser numbers was a normal feature of the life of the Church. Even married popes are known to us.1 And yet, paradoxically, one has to desist, when faced with this incontrovertible fact, from assuming that this necessarily excluded the co-existence of an obligatory celibacy discipline.
All this sounds like it is saying is that one cannot prove that celibacy did not exist, or rather co-exist, with a married priesthood in the Early Church. It is irrelevant though since the Church, by her God given authority to bind and loose, can impose the discipline if she wishes, just as she can remove the discipline if she wishes.
You're not reading closer: he is not claiming that celibacy co-exsted with a married priesthood, but within the married priesthood. "Perfect continence": I have to admit I find that phrase particularly dopey.
And the Church has spoken: as St. Paphnouti said at the First Ecumenical Council, we are not free to impose a burden the Apostles did not.
