The Byzantine Catholic Forum

The east has, I mean, we have our faults. Don't let me mislead anyone thinking that we have no faults. But one of the blessings of the east is that they were always able to maintain that distinction between the monastic life and the clergy. The West on the other hand, for reasons that would take longer to explain, the West collapsed the two into one. And so therefore the priest has to be a celibate as the monks are. So that's just kind of some history there of how the East and West evolved differently in that question.