During Vatican II, celibacy was not discussed. But in thousands of rectories it was. After more than 1,000 years of this special life, it was being contested by priests, young and old.

The recent encyclical summed up the Church’s teaching. So did Leger, Ancel and Suenens. Although they were liberals, they were opposed to a change. But the controversy continued.

In future weeks, because it touches laymen as well as priests, several columns will be devoted to celibacy. Recently, I was invited by Walter Cronkite of CBS to take part in a TV tape with two or three married priests. Allowing for “clipping” on the part of both sides, here is the telecast:

CRONKITE: The Roman Catholic Church is concerned these days with the quietly growing controversy over celibacy. Some estimates say as many as 1,000 Roman Catholic priests throughout the world each year ask to be released from their vows, often, it appears, to get married. The figure, if correct, represents only a small fraction of the priesthood worldwide. But there’s some feeling that the current shortage of priests is due, in part, to the doctrine of compulsory celibacy. Tonight, we’ll begin to take a look at the issue, with the first of two reports from CBS News Correspondent John Hart.

FATHER ALLEN CARTER: Ave Maria, Ave Maria. Come, oh holy spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Alleluia.

HART: In this Roman Catholic Church, the mass is for its people, but the prayer is for its priests, those of the celibate elite who find a cornerstone of their calling has become a millstone on their necks.

FATHER CARTER: For all of those priests who have left the practice of the ministry, that Almighty God may be ever with them, to guide them, to strengthen them, to give them joy in his service, that all their brother priests may live in unity and harmony, one with another.

HART: The man who prays for his priesthood also works to change it. Father Allen Carter is Vice President of the National Association for Pastoral Renewal.

CARTER: I feel that there is plenty of room in the life of a priest, a good priest, doing his work in the apostolate, there’s plenty of room for him to have a very holy love for a woman.

HART: All of these men are Roman Catholic priests. Two remain celibate; the other two have married and are working outside the church, though they insist they are still priests. All four argue that priestly abstinence should be chosen, not required. They argue that Christ’s commandment was to love, with no restrictions on gender, that ten of the 12 apostolates were married, that celibacy is not commanded by any scripture. Thry quote a survey of 3,000 American priests in which two-thirds wanted the option, at least, to marry, and the other surveys in which nearly half of the laity support the liberty of choice. They point to the papacy itself. Some forty of the early popes had wives. The last of them was Adrian II, who lived in the Vatican from 867 to 872 with his wife and daughter. The dissenting priests say they wish not to abolish the priesthood, but to save it.

CARTER: I don’t want to change the priesthood because to do that I would have to change Christ, and I cannot do that. But I think I would like to change some - I know I would like to change, there’s no question about this -- some of the forms in which this priesthood is exercised, because I think some of these forms are just not practical today for all men and also I might say I don’t think they are even just for all men.

HART: These Roman Catholic priests who demand the right to marry are meeting in the home of one who did, and whose marriage was not blessed by Rome. He insists he is still a priest. Mr. and Mrs., or Father and Mrs. Herbert Hooven.

Mrs. Hooven, how did you meet your husband?

MRS. HOOVEN: I met him through a girl friend of mine who was double-dating. She was dating a priest, and she asked me if I wanted to double date with her, and I said, well, all right, it’ll be different, all right, I’ll go and that was it. One date led to another and five months later we were married.

HART: You are Catholic?

MRS. HOOVEN: Yes, I am.

HART: What were your feelings about dating a priest?

MRS. HOOVEN: Well, I just didn’t. I felt well, if he, if he feels all right to date someone, then I shouldn’t have any feelings about it, any wrong feelings about it, any guilt feelings, so I went out, too.

HART: Were there any problems in dating a priest?

MRS. HOOVEN: It was kind of touch and go at that time, sort of hide and seek really. You couldn’t go out in normal company and go into a restaurant and enjoy yourself without feeling that maybe there was somebody there and that he would know and would see us, and go back and report it.

HART: Well, is there considerable dating among priests? I mean, by priests?

HOOVEN: Well, I think it has to be said honestly that there’s a good deal more dating going on than the bishop knows about, but on the other hand I think dating is rather small in comparison to the number of priests.

HART: Having had no dating experience, how do you go about dating a girl for the first time? This must be a tremendous problem.

HOOVEN: Well, no more so than, I think, for any adolescent. I think it has to be said that on that score priests are frequently rather adolescent in their dating partners, but I think we’re all human enough to learn rather quickly.

HART: Into this path of the movement, Pope Paul has thrown this document, an encyclical which in another era would have ended the debate, but it has already provoked new views of papal authority itself. That is part of our next report.

This is John Hart, CBS News, Washington.

CRONKITE: Last night we began a look at the Roman Catholic requirement of celibacy in the priesthood. Pope Paul supports the traditional view of celibacy, most recently in a Papal encyclical, dealing with the issue. Now, in our second and final report, John Hart, the correspondent.

ARCHBISHOP PAUL HALLINAN: Man, created in God’s image and likeness, is not just flesh and blood. The sexual instinct is not all that he has. Man is also, and pre-eminently, understanding, choice, freedom. Thanks to these powers he is, and he must remain, superior to the rest of creation.

HART: In the recent encyclical on priestly celibacy, Pope Paul with careful tenderness, reviews the argument of priests who wish to marry, and with the finality of church tradition, rejects them. Reading the papal encyclical is Archbishop Paul Hallinan of Atlanta, whose convictions remain with the pope and tradition.

HALLINAN: Many are plunging in here without regard to the tradition, the heritage of about a thousand years which has produced much good, and saying, “let’s make it optional.”

HART: Father Allen Carter, vice president of the Association for Pastoral Renewal, a leading voice for change, does not see the encyclical as the final word.

FATHER CARTER: I honestly feel that we’ve got to try and understand -- what did Christ want? What was in the mind of Christ when he picked his married apostles, Peter, James and John and the rest of them? What was in his mind? Did he say, well, after you fellows, no more marriage, or did he leave it open? And thoroughly believe he left it open.

HALLINAN: The emphasis, rather than being exclusively biblical here, is the example of Christ himself, of the total giving to God of his life. It is the need of detachment from the world.

CARTER: These are good men we are losing, so many, many of our priests who are leaving. And there are many of them, good men, they’re men who have been up to their eyes in work, but who are just disgusted with the structural forms that they have to live under.

HALLINAN: Celibacy is a major contributing factor to a good priesthood.

REPORTER: Now, how do you tell that to the Protestants?

HALLINAN: Well, I know many Protestants ministers, and I would say that I admire all that I have met, as dedicated men. Several have given rather direct testimony, although they would not give up their wives for anything, they miss our freedom. I cite as an example of this the responsibility, say, of a minister in one of the southern states, let’s take Alabama. A number of them had to leave their congregations because they spoke against racial injustice. When a man has to consider his future, his wife, his family, this is a real problem.

HART: Do you think that married priests will be allowed in the church in your lifetime?

CARTER: I have faith in my prayer that Almighty God says whatever you ask the Father in my name He will give to you, and I believe that my own devotion to the mother of God, to whom I pray daily in the Mass, and this is one of my petitions to her, that this be granted, and I do not believe that she will turn a deaf ear to us. I believe it is coming and I think it will be a great relief to the church, to the hierarchy, to many priests, and a great consolation to the laity, also.

HALLINAN: We have always proceeded to go ahead on the basis that if a man said I will do this, he would do it. I think that our people, our laity, have a right to look to their priests for this. What the future development of celibacy might be, I do not know; I do not think anyone knows today, but suddenly to make it optional, to make it no longer a necessary part of the priesthood, that this going to stretch fidelity a great deal more, - to a point where our people will not be edified. Their priests will no longer be witnesses of this special kind of life which does involve courage, it involves humility, and it involves in many cases a certain amount of suffering and actually heroism. I’m not saying that in each individual case this is what would happen. I’m saying that a general abandonment of celibacy would be an abandonment of fidelity.

HART: A church is more than a building and its acolytes. It is the people who follow change, sometimes lead it, often wait for it. It was Pope John who resisted the Mass in English and Paul who later allowed it. Now Pope Paul resists optional celibacy, and it may wait his successor to welcome it.

John Hart, CBS News, Washington

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta