Once upon a time every September local newspapers throughout Ireland carried reports of the number of students going on to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Young men thronged to our numerous seminaries. Their families awaited ordination day with great expectations. There was a time when St Patrick's College, Maynooth, was the biggest seminary in the world. In those days, being a priest in Ireland had the social cachet which incorporated the spiritual but went beyond it. In a society where the Roman Catholic Church was powerful and little questioned, having a son or brother in its clerical corps was a form of social mobility.

How different it is today. Vocations to the priesthood, in decline since the 1960s, are now in free-fall. A changed culture, a wide variety of job opportunities and recent clerical sexual scandals have all contributed to the current situation.

Church leaders are now facing up to the need to rationalise seminary structures. Some years ago St Kieran's College, Kilkenny, the first seminary founded in Ireland after the Penal Days, stopped providing courses. This week the Bishop of Ferns, Dr Comiskey, confirmed the closure of St Peter's Seminary in Wexford, bringing to an end a tradition that had lasted since 1819.

Bishop Comiskey used the occasion of the closure to reopen the debate on mandatory clerical celibacy. His comment that asking questions on this topic is "the normal intellectual exercise of rational mature adult people" is a refreshing antidote to the oppressive missives from the Vatican seeking to deaden debate. Did not the eminent theologian Karl Rahner SJ once write of "dead birds falling from wintry skies"?

I welcome Dr Comiskey's return to the debate which he initiated three years ago, not without consequent pain for himself. He was summoned to Rome to meet Cardinal Gantin, head of the Vatican Congregation of Bishops, and asked to retract his views and not to speak publicly on the subject again.

Since returning in February 1996 after his treatment for alcoholism in the US, Dr Comiskey has been relatively silent, at least in the national media. There are signs that he is now returning to an arena where his approach was always stimulating and thought-provoking. Some weeks ago, he conducted a service seeking forgiveness from the Church of Ireland community for Roman Catholic actions in Fethard-on-Sea in 1957 and wrote prophetically of the occasion in the pages of this newspaper.

Like Sir Andrew Barton - who called out to his colleagues in an old Scottish border ballad: I am but wounded, I am not slain, I'll layne doun and bleed awhile, And then I'll rise and fight again - Brendan Comiskey has returned to the fray.

Would the removal of mandatory clerical celibacy lead to an increase in the number of candidates for the priesthood? I expect it would. In my work as a secondary school chaplain over the years many have said to me they would be prepared to consider the lifestyle if the prohibition was removed. Young people today grow up in a culture where the value of intimacy for personal development is more highly recognised than in the past. They find it difficult to contemplate a life without the presence of a loving partner and the prospect of the joy of children.

Parents too can subtly encourage vocations to the priesthood and did so in the past. They rarely do so nowadays, partly at least because of the celibacy requirement. They fear for their children the loneliness and pain that often accompany celibacy. The celibate life can be lived joyfully and often is. In his memoirs published this week Cardinal Daly refers to his celibacy as "a joy and a blessing", but for most parents the darker picture predominates. Moreover in these ecumenical times, they are impressed by how the work of ministers in other Christian traditions is enriched by their marriages.

There is also considerable awareness that the Pope has allowed some married Anglican priests to be ordained in the Catholic Church, and they wonder about the fairness of once-off exceptions to the general rule.

The removal of mandatory celibacy might lead to an increase in vocations to the priesthood. There is, however, a deeper question which, I believe, should inform the debate. Is mandatory celibacy healthy and life-giving for all clerics? Part of the problem with the issue is that it has been embroiled in the conflict between liberals and conservatives, which has been a feature of Roman Catholic life since the Second Vatican Council.

Liberals want a change in the law, while conservatives favour a retention of the status quo. Usually missing from the debate are the voices of "ordinary" priests. What was it that Sherlock Holmes said about the significance of the dog which did not bark in the night?

Some insight into this world is given in Michael Harding's dark and compelling fiction Priest, while a Dublin priest, William King, explores the theme in his unfairly neglected novel, The Strangled Impulse, published last year. The priest-poet Padraig J. Daly too has often written memorably of the pain of celibacy: My flesh cries out For some enfolding love, Some ease from the pain I circle in. Any serious debate on celibacy will have to seek to divine the everyday experience of ordinary priests. In theory a seminary prepares one to accept celibacy freely, but the reality is different. Most in their desire to become priests were unaware of the life-long significance and struggle of the commitment.

Perhaps Dr Comiskey might now encourage the Irish Episcopal Conference to conduct a professional survey on priests' experience of celibacy.

In his memoirs, Cardinal Daly says it is essential that "liberal and conservative priests and bishops be open to one another, really listen to one another and be ready to learn from one another". The celibacy issue surely provides opportunity for such dialogue. Fair and free discussion is always healthy.

It would allow for a distinction between the charisma of celibacy, which is always a thing of joy, and mandatory celibacy, which is often a thing of pain and despair. Surely such a dialogue would reveal also that of those called to priesthood, some are called to the celibate life and some to marriage.

As the present papacy dwindles to a close, I suppose it is unlikely that this dialogue will happen now but it is necessary that it take place soon.

Kevin Hegarty ministers in the parish of Kilmore, Erris, Co Mayo