More on celibacy

In the first hundred years there were Pastors (another word for bishop or overseer) and deacons (which did include females and with all such being prayed over like an ordination.

Priests were a later invention when city churches became larger than a parish, mostly because the pastors became hierarchs rather than having each congregation having its own overseer - making some Pastors more equal than others and violating what the Lord said to James and John - do not give yourselves titles as the Gentiles do.

There were four patriarchs in the early Church. Peter at Antioch, Paul in Rome and Asia Minor, Mark in Alexandria and James bar Hoses in Jerusalem. 

Ordination of women deacons and their functioning as apostles who had seen the risen Lord is well documented. Pastors did not inherit this role until the last such witness had died.

Paul was celibate, which was rare for a Pharisee (unless he had been in Quomran, possibly with John the Baptist - likely guesses except for the founding Patriarchs). 

Clement of Antioch is a good example of how Patriarchs went from founders to the bishops we know. We don't know whether he was married.

Celibacy was practiced individually, mostly by the Dessert Fathers and mystics but sacred continence was Roman and misogynistic (you have offered no reason refuting that because you cannot. Any amount of research into both its ancient and current practice makes it obvious as do Augustine's Confessions.).

Anachronists cite ancient history using language that is as much superstition as tradition. The first is either bigotry or cowardice (in general, not just you) and the second is mutable because it is a practice by the Church rather than eternal truth. It collapses once we (like the Orthodox) repudiate it as anathema and heterodox.

Sacred Continence is a Hellenistic (Neoplatonic/Stoic) imposition on the Church. It was part of the culture which killed Jesus Maccabees and his brothers, Jesus of Nazareth and his brothers and later brothers who died by the hands of Nero and Diocletian.

It is still in practice and is the source, not the consequence of an all male asexual priesthood. That it regards congress with women as a source of impurity is without question, This view also colored Augustine's doctrines on Original Sin as coming through sexual congress - so of course ordaining women, even as deacons, became unthinkable (he did not understand that Eden was an allegory about blame, not a transactional view of salvation as posited by Ambrose, his contemporary).

Adding hellenism aka stoicism to the Church was misogynistic. Celibacy came about  when the practice of daily Mass became standard. It only became a question of medieval property rights during the high middle ages, when it was definitively instituted.

If you look at Catholic Hellenistic sexual doctrine from the Sacred Continence of the 4th Century to Humane and Evangelium Vitae, the asexual bias is most clear. Neither doctrine is the result of normal sexuality. It thinks of the eunuch as  blessed rather than outside the standard normal distribution (aka disordered as in out of the "normal" order).

The most extreme form of male asexuality is misogyny, upon which sacred continence is based (because it considers women to be a source of impurity) and continues to the resistance to female ordination (by the she-man woman haters club) because they fear spiritual intimacy with women. Their loss and ours. The only way out is ordaining both the married and women, starting with abandoning the Hellenistic relic which is Sacred Continence.

St Thomas Aquinas is a prime asexual example if you believe the apocryphical tale that his father tried to dissuade him from joining the priesthood by hiring a courtesan to seduce him,. A heterosexual celibate would have thanked her for her attention gently and showed her the door. Thomas came at her with a torch. A hetero gentleman does not do such things.

Sadly, the glorification of this kind of sexuality does affect Catholic males, including my father's generation, which led to both the sexual revolution as the next generation said bosh and to its damage due to its unrealistic nature. Many left the Church, never to return. It is why many people ignore Reconciliation. because of the focus on sexual scruples and the normal activity of masturbation, which likely helped identify immature males to asexual predators whose only sexuality is malformed. At least the gay ones are polite enough not to pick on children and look for consensuality rather than practicing rape.

Luckily, the bad old days are almost over. If the Church were honest about the Orthodox declaration in 1922 under Melitos that Anglican Orders are valid (and it was the whole Synod and therefore authoritative), their adoption of female ordination is well within their patricial authority. This puts the kibosh on Roman efforts to bring back the high church protestants, especially when (not if) Francis recognizes the 1922 declaration as being for the whole of Christendom, which will allow the Anglicans to be the organ of unity, especially for the English speaking world and the American Church.

This may sound fanciful but it makes sense if you desire Catholic unity rather than Catholic exceptionalism. The latter is what the Lord promised when he said that the gates of Hell will not overtake the Church. This guarantee does not extend to any Rump exceptionalists that will likely look to Burke as their messiah. No matter. The old view will die off. Unity will bring the Nones back to the Church, especially the youth.