The New York Times, which just ran a discussion group on dropping the celibacy requirement for Catholic clergy. It was a “usual suspects” sort of panel, with the balance one would expect. Of 7 panelists 4 were in favor of married priests, one argued both for and against married priests, one halfheartedly defended the tradition of a celibate priesthood because Catholics would find it difficult to support a married priest with a wife and children. Only one priest actually defended the celibate priesthood as good and worthy and Godly.
This is the context within which yesterday’s radicals continue to rail against the unnatural, oppressive and out-of-touch nature of the celibate Catholic priesthood. They want priests to be natural, not supernatural. They want priests to be having sex just like the rest of us. What’s interesting is their critique has zero purchase among those living in the current chapter of the sexual revolution. Like so many online seductions, sex has become breathtakingly banal. We are a deeply lonely people. Sexual desire is hardwired deep within us and so we are reflexively drawn back to sex, or back to pornography which is a sad replica of sex, but we are inevitably disappointed, lonely and depressed. Coincident with the dramatic increase in the availability and the consumption of pornography, the destruction of the family and the tragic isolation of more and more of us, has been a huge increase in the incidence of depression and psychopharmacology.
But we are not abandoned.
The Contrast: you must watch CNN’s This Is Life with Lisa Ling, “Called to the Collar.” It is a 43-minute portrait of a town, a parish, a family and vocations which flow from that family.
I won’t say too much about it other than earlier this week I showed my philosophy class the Mail article and related Youtube clips on breakthroughs in sexbot technology, along with excerpts from The Brain that Changes Itself on neuroplasticity and how the brain is rewired through long-term consumption of pornography. I wove this together with what is abundantly evident in my class and everywhere in Canada and the U.S.
Two-thirds of students entering university next year will be female. Men have dropped off of the radar. Two generations ago the vast majority of university students were men, because there was an obvious correlation between education and income, and men wanted to support a wife and family. A generation ago, when I was in university, there was numeric parity between men and women, as women fully integrated into the workforce and the birthrate plummeted. Now, men in Canada and the United States are not interested in getting married and having children, and so they don’t bother going to university so that they might make more money to support families. The rate of marriage has dropped dramatically, but of those who are getting married, chances are the wife will have more education and therefore a higher income than the husband. This will make it especially difficult for the wife to take time off of work to have children.
Needless to say it was a rather depressing class. The next day we watched “Called to the Collar.” It’s not perfect—at times it’s cloyingly sweet and it’s very much the new journalism with emphatic solilloques to reinforce the emotional power of the story. But my students were transfixed. Fr. Gary, the young, newly ordained priest whose story drives the narrative, quotes a wise priest who told him: “when you feel loneliness don’t run away from it. Go over to Jesus and see what he does with it.”
The celibate priesthood is absolutely essential, no matter what the dinosaurs at the New York Times say.
By Joe Bissonnette
Joe Bissonnette teaches religion and philosophy at Assumption College School in Brantford, Ontario where he lives with his wife and 7 children. He has written for Catholic Insight, The Human Life Review, The Interim, The Catholic Register and The Toronto Star.
source : http://cnn.com, http://choosing-him.blogspot.com, http://slideshare.net
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