"In this chapter, we have seen how the celibacy debate began as a relatively small component of a larger concern among Church officials about the post 1945 shortage of priests. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the issue of clerical celibacy took center stage, and an internal Catholic debate escalated into a public debate on the moral and structural authority of the Church. Via the media, Catholics and non-Catholics took an active role, and the Church became trapped in a public relations nightmare that further undermined its efforts trapped in a public relations nightmare that further undermined its efforts to recruit new priests. The debate metamorphosed again in the early 1980s when Catholic women entered the fray. Influenced by new theological and secular conceptions of womanhood, Catholic women drew connections between the preservation of a male celibate priesthood and women’s oppression in the Church and in German society. In this context, the debate on clerical celibacy became inextricably linked to women’s exclusion from Church office, including the priesthood. However, not all Catholic women supported change. Conservative women’s groups received the support of an increasingly conservative German episcopate, further alienating moderates and progressives. For conservative Catholics, the Church’s theological understanding of earthly marriage and of the suprasexual marriage between Christ and the church became the lynchpin of Catholic identity and Catholic politics. In closing, it is important to note that widespread, substantiated allegations of child abuse by clergy did not surface in the German Church until 2010. Consequently the clerical celibacy debate in Germany played out very differently during this time period than in the United States, where charges off child abuse surfaced in the 1980s, reminding us that although the clerical celibacy debate was transnational in scope, its articulation had distinctly national features."