Preamble
The impact of some new story involving sexual misconduct involving a priest has become so commonplace that it’s almost not news at all. Nothing has provided me with an adequate answer as to why only priests are involved and not others who have chosen not to interactively engage in procreative type activities.
I was born into and so raised within the professions of Catholicism. My identity likewise includes that of being an attorney. I have come to conclude that the word “celibacy”
Is an attorney’s dream!
Take John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton for example:
“Ask not what your country can do for you….” J.F.K.
“I did not have sex with that woman!” Bill Clinton.
Yes, both were trained as attorneys. But, notwithstanding the Kennedy matter with Marilyn Monroe, Bill Clinton (note: not a Catholic) finds such delightful elasticity in the definition of what having sex means, hence please find my thoughts below the following caesura.
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An ejaculation, sometimes called an aspiration, is a short prayer meant
to be memorized and repeated throughout the day. The English writer,
William Wordsworth, in his Ecclesiastical Sonnets writes:
**************************************************************************************************“The simple ejaculation of Robert Burns used by Coleridge as a motto in his embryo, ‘The Brook’….”
Premise
The question of why it is that Catholic Priests are seemingly more prone to sexual deviancy than monks or nuns has been one of a Catholic curiosity to me.
Conclusion
I believe that it has to do with the difference in the “vow” taken by each. Nuns and monks make a deliberated vow, as with marriage, to refrain as a matter of fidelity. It’s called “Chastity.” Priests don’t. However sinful, sexual actions can be forgiven but no sacred vow has been broken. Theirs is the vow of “Celibacy.”
The English word celibacy is derived from the Latin caelebs, meaning "unmarried."
The words abstinence and celibacy are often used interchangeably, but they are different.
Sexual abstinence refers to abstaining from sexual intercourse. The term "celibacy" is used to refer to an unmarried state.
Clerical celibacy is the required discipline by which members of the clergy make which involves solely the promise not to marry.
Priests make a vow to this discipline.
The words "chaste" and "chastity" stem from the Latin adjective castus meaning "pure."
The vow of chastity however forbids all voluntary sexual pleasure. Its scope includes within it a matrimonial impediment. From “Ask A Catholic.” It means that all sexual desire is "offered up" as a mortification and a sacrifice to God. There is no room for the qualification of actions as it mandates “everything.” *
Both nuns and monks vow to this discipline.
* i.e., excluding any predicated pleasures resulting in nocturnal emissions. (Who doesn’t hate being ‘goosed’ by their own Id?!)
Just One Final Postscript:
Thirty Nine Popes Were Married
