Priests as sexual as anyone else
Compulsory celibacy can hinder sexual maturity
How can a priest explore his sexuality?
It is difficult for a Catholic seminarian or priest to explore his sexuality and become a mature, self-aware adult, especially if he began studying for the priesthood as a sexually inexperienced teenager; as is the case with so many priests.
Committing to a life of celibacy as a teenager, with celibacy presented as an ideal and compulsory for the priesthood, can lead to loneliness, isolation, confusion, failure, anger, guilt and shame.
Limitations of an all-male community
Living in an all-male community with teenagers, young men and priests, is not the optimum environment for human sexual development and maturation.
Committing to compulsory celibacy, the seminarian is not meant to take sexual initiatives with others. But the normal inner dynamism of the human spirit is to find a sexual partner and soulmate. This normal human need is stymied by compulsory celibacy for priests. It is all the more senseless as it is based on what the Church admits is a man-made law.
Priests often seen as asexual
Celibacy hangs over you as a barrier to human intercourse, let alone sexual intercourse; hindering personal growth and inhibiting relationships. Priests are often seen as asexual, lacking sexual feelings and desires. Many presume that priests are not attracted to anyone.
Shocks and scandals
The widespread, misplaced perception of priestly asexuality accounts for some of the shock to the Catholic psyche occasioned by public scandals when it became known that clergy fathered children in secret, had homosexual relationships, or sexually abused children.
Priests, like any human, are sexual
Priests are as sexual as anybody else. They can be as sexually confused, as sexually frustrated, as sexually potent, as sexually active, as sexually deviant, as sexually faithful or unfaithful as anybody else.
Sexual fantasies, activities and affairs
Priests have sexual fantasies just like any other human being. They become aroused, have nocturnal emissions, masturbate, enjoy sexual liaisons, have crushes, fall in love or in lust, like anyone else.
Their subconscious can run riot with graphic sexual dreams when they sleep, just like anyone else. It is little wonder that compulsory celibacy motivated by man-made rules and mythologies of religious nonsense so often ends in tears.
From #86 of Joe Armstrong’s first memoir In My Gut, I Don’t Believe
#priests #celibacy #humanism #memoirs