this isn't a theological difference though, only a practice difference. it could, and should probably, be overturned. it was necessary to keep secular authorities from turning on the church as accumulating too much power. byzantines didn't have the issue due to their cesaro-papist sharing of power within a single empire -- and even so, bishops were forbidden to keep a wife, for the same reasons. nowdays, given the crisis in vocation, and the hard life it is to live without a wife and family in the modern world where solidarity is non-existant, and the absence of threat the church represents to secular rulers, it would be appropriate for priests to marry.
France