Blogger Priest

A number of years ago, I had regular association with seminarians. As a young priest, I discovered certain truths which I lamented were not shared with me in my own formation. I passed them on to these good men. The most pressing of these revelations was that the seminarian and priest had less to fear from the bad girl as they did from the good one. Clergy are religious men, generally turned off by overt seduction, fragrant immodesty and sexual vulgarity. However, their hearts are very vulnerable to the woman whose piety is reflective of their own. A pretty girl who loves the Church and the priesthood can very quickly start loving one particular priest. Priests are men and their temptation is ironically found in their seriousness. A religious woman, modest and demure, will come to the priest for spiritual guidance and the sacraments. She will be the first to volunteer and the last to go home. She will sympathize with the priest and defend him against his critics. She never misses Mass and expresses how she is deeply moved and enriched by his preaching. In short, if priests could marry, she is everything he could ever want. He seeks, within the sphere of ministry, to be a father-figure and spiritual physician for her soul; but according to nature, a part of him begins to long for physical intimacy with her, for a shared life, and for a home where he could claim her as wife and mother to his children. The priest has no choice but to minister to her and other women like her. We cannot neglect the very ones most drawn to the faith. However, the priest must be honest about his emotions and very circumspect about his actions. He must not fool himself— this woman is dangerous to his vocation as a celibate priest. And he might pose a threat to her. No excuses can be tolerated so that he can spend more time to be near her. The priest needs to focus less on friendship with such a woman and more upon his duty to her as a priest. His energies must not be directed exclusively toward her. His promise mandates that as a priest, he should remain morally strong, for his own sake, for hers and for the larger believing community. Along with others, he gives her the sacraments; but he should not go out of his way to give her special favors and gifts. The Eucharist is enough for her; anything more constitutes the beginnings of flirtation. He might presume that she is safe with him; certainly more so than with other men who would quickly take advantage of her. But he is lying to himself and placing them both at risk. Unchecked, one day they notice their eyes upon one another and there comes the full awakening of what they have done. He holds her hand or gives her a quick embrace or maybe they even share a tender kiss, and a boundary line is crossed. It is still not too late but to break it off now will wound them both, possibly for a lifetime. He could have spared them both something of this pain. Some priests will leave ministry and if there is marriage, the woman will always carry guilt. She will think, “Did I cost the Church the services of a good priest? Did I selfishly steal him for myself?” If the priest makes distance, then they will be haunted by a love unfulfilled and a friendship that was needlessly destroyed by their weakness. There is a lesson learned. Sometimes you cannot be with the person you love. You cannot have everything you want. We usually associate love with presence and union; however, there is a sacrificial love that lets go or surrenders the beloved. Many priests have had this experience and can say, even many years later, “I loved her so much, I let her go.” Such a business can take a man to the Cross. One priest confided that he accidentally ran into a girl that he had fallen in love with over a quarter of a century earlier. It tore him up inside but he made distance from her to preserve his priesthood and to protect her honor. She was very cordial and introduced him to her husband and children. He tried desperately to keep tears from his eyes. Afterwards he was visibly shaking. Although older he thought she was still beautiful. All his old feelings returned and he spent the night in tears. He realized that he still loved her, that he would always love her. She could have been his. Her children could have been his children. But they went their separate ways. She was happy and had her family. What did he have? Hopefully he would look upon his years of priesthood with a sense of accomplishment and joy. Quickly as possible he needed to shrug off the ghost of unexplored potentialities. The fact that he had not ruined her life should have given him a degree of peace. He did the right thing, for both of them.

Filed under: Catholic, Celibacy, Priests, Sexuality |