\u201cAllow Catholic priests to marry; \u2018I would have been a good priest.'\u201d<\/a> is the title in the online version of the story. (As usual, I can\u2019t tell if this is publically available or behind a paywall that cookies let me past, but you can search for de vinck priest to find it.) <\/p>\n(The one by Steven Chapman was a doozy, too \u2014 there\u2019s no way to stop illegal immigration without infringing on our liberties, so the Tea Party should just suck it up and accept it as a permanent part of our country. But I digress.) <\/p>\n
The piece itself starts off with the author\u2019s love of the Catholic church and its rituals growing up as a child in the 50s and 60s, and his desire to emulate the \u201cgood priest\u201d of the movies of that time, and his genuine desire to minister in the ways that priests did, and do \u2014 baptisms, hearing confessions, ministering to people\u2019s spiritual needs. But he couldn\u2019t accept the requirement for celibacy, so became a teacher and married. <\/p>\n
But here\u2019s what bugs me: not that he felt that he personally could not forgo married life, but that he writes that being unmarried or lacking a sexual relationship more generally means \u201cgiv[ing] up what it means to be a man. . . suffer[ing] . . . repressed sexual passions and [being] lonely.\u201d He believes that being unmarried means to \u201csuffer debilitating loneliness for his entire life\u201d and to \u201creject what it means to be a human being, suffer; isolate yourself from physical love, marriage and children.\u201d <\/p>\n
Now, I know that he\u2019s not alone in believing that sexual relationships are psychologically or even physiologically necessary, but how insulting to single people everywhere to categorically state that they suffer debilitating loneliness! I have a sister who never married, and who has reached the point where it\u2019s unlikely that she will marry, based on probabilities alone, so perhaps I take particular offense on her behalf. <\/p>\n
Funny \u2014 the old line about \u201ca woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle\u201d (while pretty awful to the extent that this has transformed into \u201ckids don\u2019t need fathers\u201d) does have some truth to it!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Part of the purpose of this blog is to be able to comment on articles\/opinion pieces in the paper that I want to \u201ctalk back to\u201d and there was one that fit this category in today\u2019s Tribune: \u201cAllow Catholic priests to marry; \u2018I would have been a good priest.’\u201d is the title in the online […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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