Friday 12 February 2016

BEING A CELIBATE PASTOR

'Not for the first time, he found himself full of misgiving at the topic of their conversation. Sex was not of his world; it could not be; he should be able to say, to any inquirer: "Do not ask me that - I am a priest."
Yet, absurdly, it was because he was a priest that people plagued and swamped him with such questions so intimate that if he taken a doctorate in sexual technique, magna cum laude, he would still have found his qualifications tested to the limit.
There was something ridiculous, even indecent, about a celibate giving advice to married couples, even seeking to regulate their cycle of sexual intercourse; or instructing engaged lovers in the permissible limits of a caress.'
Nicholas Monsarrat, The Kappillan of Malta, p.243.