GORHAM – Tim Higgins says he was an “active priest” for eight years in the Roman Catholic Church before he got married.

Higgins, a former chaplain at Maine Medical Center in Portland, says celibacy is “either a vocation or a discipline” for priests.

“For me, it was a discipline,” he said, “and I came to see it as an unhealthy lifestyle.”

In 1995, Higgins left the priesthood to get married to his wife, Maureen, a social worker at Maine Medical. He now manages the literacy program at the Portland West Neighborhood Planning Council and is a part-time sports clerk at the Portland Press Herald. The couple have two children, 2-year-old Maeghan and 1-year-old Garrett.

Higgins, 41, is among the men who have left the priesthood to marry. Through a national clearinghouse, they are promoting their availability to work in various pastoral settings.

The men, whose work is not recognized by the church, are available to perform for nursing homes and similar institutions “the sacramental and spiritual void left by the shortages in the priesthood,” said Louise Haggett, founder of the nonprofit CITI Ministries.

Haggett said she started the group after having trouble finding a priest to visit her mother in a nursing home.

The Framingham, Mass.-based group has spent nine years recruiting a pool of what it calls “rent-a-priests” from thousands of Roman Catholic priests who have married.

Maine, like the rest of the nation, faces a shortage of priests.

CITI, which stands for Celibacy Is The Issue, says there are an estimated 25,000 men in the United States who have left the priesthood to marry and more than 110,000 worldwide. In Maine, there are about 100.

In Portland, about 25 men who have left the priesthood to marry meet four times a year for prayer and discussion, “offering support for those in transition and who still do ministry,” Higgins said.

Marc Mutty, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, said those men “are not recognized officially by the Catholic Church as validly practicing their faculties” and “are operating outside of the norms of the church.”

The Catholic Church has ordained a number of married Protestant and Episcopal priests whose marriage took place before they converted to Catholicism.

A priest who marries is suspended from his “priestly duties,” said the Rev. Marc Caron, co-chancellor of the diocese, which encompasses the entire state.

“They would not be acting on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. They would be acting in their own behalf,” he said.

Still, men like Higgins are performing Easter Sunday services or Holy Week Mass for any group wanting to have such a service.

Higgins said he understands the church’s position, but he and others like him continue to perform Masses at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, including services for a group of gays and lesbians.

Higgins said he came to decide that priests shouldn’t be required to be celibate and that such a life wasn’t a healthy choice for him.

“I truly believe I still have a vocation that burns in my heart, the desire to continue to be a priest,” Higgins said. “Whether or not the church allows that, it comes from God.”