Pope Benedict's latest bid to expand the conservative wing of the Roman Catholic Church ("Vatican seeks to lure Anglicans," Monitor Nation & World section, Oct. 21) may come back to bite him.

Inviting disaffected Anglicans (Episcopalians, in the United States) to join the Church in large groups like congregations may be seen as hijacking church membership to increase the rolls of Roman Catholics. Vatican correspondent John Allen notes that in ecumenical relations there's typically a gentleman's agreement that "you don't fish in my pond and I don't fish in yours."

Numerous Episcopalians, notably in Texas, opposed to the ordination of women and the full inclusion of gays, have asked to join the Catholic Church, and some have done so.

But the interesting thing about the Pope's plan is that it will accept large numbers of married clergy (men) and married seminarians, who presumably will be ordained.

In one sense there's no problem with married clergy. Priests of the Eastern rites who stayed with Rome instead of joining the Orthodox Church have been allowed to marry all along. But in the United States, they are a nearly invisible minority.

If the Pope accepts married Episcopal priests whose orthodoxy he cherishes, how will this fly with celibate, red-blooded American Catholic seminarians and priests, who have put their sense of priestly call ahead of living as sexual people, whether straight or gay?

It looks like a two-tiered clergy, some fully realized, and some doomed to lives of self-denial. Perhaps if a Roman Catholic young man feels called to the priesthood and married life, he should become an Episcopalian and marry, complete seminary studies, then convert back to the Roman Catholic tradition.

There's another problem with Pope Benedict's plan. Has the Vatican done the math? For centuries, the Church got its services on the cheap. Will priests with wives and children be paid a living wage? Will there be no birth control and thus large families? A family plan for health insurance? Braces for the children's teeth? All the economic reasons the Catholic Church has avoided lifting the celibacy rule for priests will need to be addressed with a new contingent of married clergy.

(Cate McMahon lives in Wolfeboro.)