WARNING WARNING. Matthew enters earnest, serious mode. WARNING WARNING. Prior to the sexual scandal that's rocking the Catholic Church (a scandal primarily of ephebophilia1 and homosexual behavior, not pedophilia), I had no issue with chaste gays in the priesthood2. Why should I have an issue? If I accept the belief that one's sexual preferences are pretty unchangeable after puberty, which I do, I can't reasonably believe that simply being physically attracted to a member of the same sex is a sin.3 It's acting on that attraction -- whether in the flesh or in the heart -- that's the issue, and any priest who is able to keep his mind pure and his zipper zipped is a-okay with moi on the issue.
But it was only this morning that I'd finally heard of a hetrosexual side to the scandal; without fail, every other case that'd reached my ears was either a gay priest and a young male adult or a gay priest and an older male adolescent. I've been thinking about why this might be, and I had come up a few theories:
1) The media finds man-man priestly lovin' more exciting to report on than man-woman priestly lovin'.
2) Because the first few prominent cases to, ahem, come out regarded gay sex, it's more likely that males who had sex with priests (either consensually or non-) are going to come public than women who had sex with priests (either consensually or non-).
3) Since much of what is being reported in the media is hush payments to victims, perhaps the Catholic Church is more likely to give such money to men than women, since they would rather see a priest's affair with a woman be publicized than a priest's affair with a man.
4) I suspect priests with, um, girlfriends are more likely to leave the priesthood to get married, etc., than priests with, um, boyfriends. No real controversy there.
And I believe that all of these are true to a degree, but I don't think any of them are the major reason. The major reason, alas, deals with the reason why gays join the priesthood. (I may come off condescending to gay priests here; if you know any gay priests who read Prinsiana, tell them to skip this journal entry.)
Okay. A heterosexual who becomes a priest seems a bit perverse to me.4 Even if I were Catholic, I couldn't do it; I couldn't give up the chance of finding the woman of my dreams just to, you know, serve God. Do I really owe Him that much, anyway? (Uh, sorry Dude.) So why would a heterosexual become a priest and thus never ever his attraction to women?
a) He really, really, really feels a calling from God, a calling from God so huge that it overwhelms his romantic and sexual desires, and thus he feels he has no choice but to accept God's plan for him.
b) Maybe he doesn't have many romantic and sexual desires -- some people don't, I've been told -- and so the chastity part of calling from God isn't such a big deal for him.
c) Um, I dunno. There are probably some small individual reasons -- a priest saved him after he had fallen in a well, etc. -- but I think those first two cover the majority of cases.
Obviously, those three reasons hold for more than a few gays who join the priesthood, too. But there's a fourth reason, a reason that I suspect is motivation for a plurality of homosexual priests:
d) He believes the Catholic dogma that homosexual behavior is wrong, but yet he has these impulses and wants to act on them. He thinks, "Okay, let's think about the priesthood. The chastity issue isn't a problem for me, because I'm not allowed to have sex with who I want to anyway under Catholicism's rules. And I do want to obey Catholicism's rules, I really do, so maybe by becoming a priest, God will fill up this gay-romanticism void in my life with his love and mercy, and I will feel complete. By being more like God, his rules5 will become easier to follow, and maybe these urges I have will start to fade, fade, fade away."6
I was worried about that sounding condescending because it is: it implies that our Mr. Future Priest is a Mr. Future Priest for egomaniacal reasons rather than because he wants serve God. "...I will feel complete." "...[T]hese urges I have..." "...[V]oid in my life..." I'm sure he wants to serve God, too -- I don't see a rash of gay atheists converting to Catholicism, then becoming priests -- but I wonder if he feels a calling, a real calling from God.
And we all know where this is heading. Becoming a priest will not reduce his longing for male companionship, and since he neither feels the difficult calling of the priests in (a), nor the lack of romantic and sexual desire in (b), he will be severely tempted. Some will resist temptation, some will not, and some who do not will get caught.
1 An sexual attraction to a postpubescent or late pubescent adolescent; compare/contrast to "pedophilia," which is a sexual attraction to a prepubescent child.
2 Some American bishops and Vatican officials have said otherwise, I should note. I feel so...progressive.
3 Ditto with me being married and still finding, say, Janeane Garofalo attractive.
4 Great. Now I'm going to tick off all priests. Lovely.
5 As interpreted by the Catholic Church, of course.
6 Our hypothetical priest would probably not use the word "fade" three times in a row. That was dramatic license. I oh so apologize if that confused, confused, confused you.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
