Rome, Italy - Under Pope John Paul II, the question was barely up for debate. But over the last week, the deep shortage of Roman Catholic priests has dominated the first gathering of bishops under the new pope, Benedict XVI, with an openness and urgency that the Vatican has not been used to in recent years.
"Celibacy has no theological foundation," Gregorios III Laham, who attended the synod as the patriarch of the Melkite Catholics, an Eastern Rite church, said at an early session, official briefers reported. "Married priests are admitted," he said.
After that bombshell, the Vatican cut back on the detail provided to reporters on the talks unfolding among 256 bishops, who came to discuss on-the-ground concerns from around the world.
Still, it seems clear that the private deliberations of this first synod of bishops under Benedict, in office for six months now, are a departure, even if the discussion is kept within relatively narrow confines.
Since the synod opened Monday, bishops have raised other delicate and rarely aired issues: whether to allow communion to divorced Catholics who remarry without an annulment, and whether Catholics can vote for politicians at odds with church teaching on issues like abortion or euthanasia.
This broader discussion of church issues was encouraged by Benedict himself. But whatever taboos are being carefully cracked in this first synod, church experts caution that the chances that church policy on traditions like priestly celibacy will be changed soon remain slim.
Synods are, for one thing, purely consultative. So far, too, there has been little discussion of possible solutions, though the synod runs until Oct. 23. Further, while Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Benedict in April, allowed wide internal debate in his years as doctrinal enforcer, experts note that his decisions in the end often reflected some of the church's most conservative thinking.
"It's one thing to listen and to allow conversations," said Lawrence A. Young, an American sociologist who 20 years ago co-wrote, with Richard Schoenherr, one of the first scholarly examinations of the priest shortage, "Full Pews and Empty Altars." "It's another thing to shift one's opinion vis-à-vis key theology and church practice."
Others are not so certain: Benedict, they note, is 78, a man who by his own admission may not have long in office and so may move more quickly than a younger pope if he decides a problem needs fixing. In the meetings, he has shown up with a briefcase, not taking notes but listening intently with his chin on his hand, said an official church briefer.
"This pope is very astute, and I think he might be a surprise," said R. John Kinkel, a former American priest whose book, "Chaos in the Catholic Church," discusses the priest shortage. "It's sort of like the United States Supreme Court. You get someone there, and maybe they will do something you can't predict."
The topic of this first synod under Benedict is the eucharist, the sacrament of bread and wine in which believers commune with the body and blood of Christ.
But at this synod, many bishops are asking a down-to-earth question: What value does the church place on communion if it does not have enough priests to distribute it regularly to the faithful?
"Let me make a confession here, and I know our canon lawyers will get mad at me," Bishop Luis Antonio G. Tagle of the Philippines said at a news conference on Monday. "The first Sunday after my ordination as a priest, I said nine Masses, and that is regular in the Philippines."
The Vatican had already signaled that the priest shortage was a major issue surrounding the eucharist. A working document prepared for the synod noted that in 1978, there was one priest for every 1,797 Catholics. In 2003, it was one for every 2,677 Catholics. In the United States, it is one for every 4,723 Catholics.
Some church experts predict that the shortage may become worse, especially in the United States, if the Vatican releases a long-expected document on excluding homosexuals, even celibate ones, from seminaries.
Liberal Catholic groups were prepared for the shortage to come to a boil in this synod. Two of the most active groups, We Are Church and Future Church, said they had collected more than a million signatures asking the church to rethink issues like mandatory celibacy and the ban on women's serving as deacons, lay members who perform many functions of a priest.
The bishops themselves have made clear how deep a problem it is: on Monday, Bishop Roberto Camilleri Azzopardi of Honduras said his diocese had only one priest for every 16,000 Catholics.