04 June 2010

Celibacy is nonsense...

if the priesthood is seen merely in terms of function. Fr. Ray Blake puts it beautifully:
Those who choose celibacy voluntarily accept loneliness and a sense of being unfulfilled by anything here on earth. Doing that all one's life confronts one with a deep craving, a desire to both possess and to be possessed, so often that can be sublimated: golf, hypochondria, cats and dogs, or plain eccentricity; but real celibacy is about living with an open wound, totally unsatisfied by anything here on earth. It should be prophetic, about the Creator not creatures.

Like a hair shirt celibacy is constant reminder and an expression of the bald fact that God alone can satisfy our deepest longings.