Abbey-Roads2

Objectifying men in Holy Orders.

Catholic news is often full of stories about liberal nuns who want greater equality in a male dominated Church, along with reports of their counterparts who either lobby for female ordination or go ahead and have themselves ordained. 

Then there are the periodic reports of the occasional scandal involving a priest leaving orders to marry a parish worker or some Camille he may be counselling.  Media, including Catholic bloggers love to exploit these stories.  Such stories also provide an excellent opportunity for uber-Catholics to proclaim their orthodoxy and fidelity to everything traditional, while condemning the heretics.  It’s something to blog about.

However, I find it curious that women, like gay men, seem to have an inordinate attraction not only to the priesthood, but to priests themselves.  I’ve heard some very traditional women say they think the priest is sexy in his cassock - even if he may have ho-hum looks.

Of course, Donatella Versaci has been rather vocal about her attraction to Monsignor Ganswein, the Pope’s secretary; last year she based a portion of  her men’s collection on clerical wear because of him.  The Monsignor also seems to be popular with female bloggers - Catholic and non-Catholic, and as one would expect, gay men seem to have the hots for him as well.  The poor Father is just too sexy for his cassock.

Respecting boundaries. 

Fatal attractions for priests and religious are nothing new, the movie, “The Devils” based upon the book by Aldous Huxley, ”The Devils of Loudon”, contains several scenes of Vanessa Redgrave’s character lusting after the local parish priest.  She was especially turned on by her fantasy of him naked beneath a lacy alb.    I don’t really know what it is that women find so attractive about priests and seminarians - and although I have a few ideas, I won’t go there.  (Photo: Oliver Reed from “The Devils”, Ken Russell, 1971.  Shown here is his scene as a fantasy of Christ for the prioress [Redgrave] who lusted after him.)

Even the most devout and sincere woman can mistake attraction for  devotion and dedication to her faith or position in the parish, although in many instances, she is most likely in denial.  I expect that must be the case when it leads to a priest leaving ministry for the woman he either worked with or counseled.  There are all sorts of situations which can befall a priest, and although it takes two in cases involving romance, the woman may indeed have greater responsibility in the affair.  Why?  If, as studies suggest, women are more intuitive than men, they ought to be more sensitive to the onset of infatuation and lust.  Men, ordained or not, often just don’t see it until it  happens. 

In such cases women would do well to recall the old saying; “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”  Although before it gets that far, they ought to keep in mind the  other saying;  ”Where there’s fantasy there’s desire”.

It may be better to pray for priests, rather than to foster crushes on them.

Links:

Priests and Emotional Love, by Rev. Thomas G. Morrow - A very good article on the subject.

 [Top photo:  Monsignor Ganswein with another prelate.]

Yo! 

Traditionalists I worked with in the bookstore I once managed, made fun of me for putting out books on black saints for Black History Month.  Some very conservative people do not believe African-Americans need a special month of their own.  Indeed, some very nice people, white and black, don’t realize they are racists either.  I think if secular culture celebrates black people who have made history, we Catholics ought to celebrate black people who made it into the calendar of saints.

That said,  I completely overlooked St. Josephine Bkhita’s feast day this year!  (February 7)  She is one saint our Holy Father refers to by name in his recent encyclical, Spes Salvi.

St Josephine Bakhita

As a little girl she was captured in Sudan and forced into slavery.  Having the good fortune to be ‘owned’ by an Italian family, she was able to enter a convent of Canossian Sisters as a religious, responding to Our Lord’s call.  He chose her from birth, through her terrible ordeal and suffering, to be His bride.

That is so awesome to me.  Treated like an animal, she suffered abuse greater than most of us are able to comprehend.  She was dehumanised and treated as a commodity or a functional piece of livestock.

She is a patron for her Sudan, the poor of Darfur suffering genocide in our own time.  She is a patron of the abused, and the enslaved through sexual exploitation.  St. Bakhita is also the patron of our Afro-American brothers and sisters, descendants of slaves.  Her life can help us understand better the anguish of being kidnapped from their homeland and families, and sold into slavery. 

White people have difficulty understanding black people living under the burden of their heritage.  (Even the most affluent and successful people of color experience a sense of being ‘other’ by society.  It’s peculiar to Americans, although elsewhere in the world, not so much.  I know people will get angry with me for saying that however.  You just have to have been marginalized at one point in your life to understand it.)  Many believe, because of guaranteed equal rights, all the sins of the past should be forgotten.  Try to tell the same thing to the Jew whose family died in the Nazi concentration camps, or the Cambodian refugee - victims of that ‘other’ genocide… an effect remains in the unconscious of their descendants.  Unless one comes from a background of terror and abuse, one cannot fathom it’s dreadful legacy.

St. Bakhita is one who witnesses to the Lord’s providential design in suffering and abuse and slavery.  She shines with the healing mercy of the One who emptied Himself and took the form of a slave.  Her redemption from slavery, and exaltation to the glories of Heaven, give hope to all of us who suffer the ignominious slavery to sin, yet on a more natural level, those who are the descendants of slavery, and those who find themselves enslaved today - children exploited for labor or sex throughout the third world.

Go to the Vatican website for a brief history on the life of St. Bakhita.  Pray to her, asking her intercession that we may all live as brothers and sisters, without hatred, in peace.