Celibacy

[poliphilo]

"No-one chooses the monastic life," said the monk, "unless they have serious problems with their sexuality." That took me aback. Up until then I'd supposed- if I thought about it at all-  that monks and nuns and celibate priests were heroes of spirituality.

So that's the first and biggest problem with the celibacy rule. You're going to attract a whole lot of people to the priesthood who are running away from themselves-

People who are confused,  immature, cowardly.

And the second problem is that you're attracting them on a false promise. The Church isn't the refuge from the world they think it's going to be. The new priest is the man he always was- with the same old urges- only now he can only satisfy them furtively.   Shut the door on  sex and it'll walk through walls to find you. So there you are- you and your sexuality- and instead of having the whole wide world to prance about in you're locked up together in a teeny-tiny cell.

Comments

[internet-sampo.livejournal.com]

I agree. You are going to attract a lot of people running away from themselves. But I also thing there's a second type. Something Penn Jillette said made much sense: when he was talking about religious celibacy he said it was, "a kink." When I hear some (a lot) religious people talk about celibacy and when they also talk about the virtues of "suffering", what Penn said makes a lot of sense.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of that, but, yes, I believe Penn is onto something there.