Dr Ciara Kelly: Celibacy is the elephant in the room
IRELAND
Irish Independent
Ciara Kelly
PUBLISHED
15/08/2016
Nearly 30 years ago in the early 1990s, when I was first in college, I had a pal who had just left a seminary. He was a young gay man who, like a lot of young gay people at that time - and before and indeed since - found Ireland to be a cold house for him. He decided, after much reflection on what he could do to better fit into Irish society - and because being gay was a very hard road - to enter the priesthood.
He was in a seminary - not Maynooth - for about a year. He entered it very young, directly from school, and was a virgin. But over that year he became sexually active with many of the other seminarians and he left, because he had become increasingly comfortable and happy with being gay. He said everyone in the seminary was doing it, and even if he was exaggerating, I presume that meant it was lots.
Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the one other ex-seminarian I knew from Rome, told the exact same (albeit slightly racier, Italian) story. He described the Vatican in the 1990s very simply as 'an orgy.'
It has always seemed self-evident to me, that young gay men in the homophobic past would have been drawn to the priesthood. The combination of celibacy and penitence could so easily be perceived to be the 'answer to their prayers' as it were. It might contain them. It might save them if not from actually being homosexual then at least from the terrible sin of being a practising homosexual. Or from having to live a lie with a woman.
Irish Independent
Ciara Kelly
PUBLISHED
15/08/2016
Nearly 30 years ago in the early 1990s, when I was first in college, I had a pal who had just left a seminary. He was a young gay man who, like a lot of young gay people at that time - and before and indeed since - found Ireland to be a cold house for him. He decided, after much reflection on what he could do to better fit into Irish society - and because being gay was a very hard road - to enter the priesthood.
He was in a seminary - not Maynooth - for about a year. He entered it very young, directly from school, and was a virgin. But over that year he became sexually active with many of the other seminarians and he left, because he had become increasingly comfortable and happy with being gay. He said everyone in the seminary was doing it, and even if he was exaggerating, I presume that meant it was lots.
Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the one other ex-seminarian I knew from Rome, told the exact same (albeit slightly racier, Italian) story. He described the Vatican in the 1990s very simply as 'an orgy.'
It has always seemed self-evident to me, that young gay men in the homophobic past would have been drawn to the priesthood. The combination of celibacy and penitence could so easily be perceived to be the 'answer to their prayers' as it were. It might contain them. It might save them if not from actually being homosexual then at least from the terrible sin of being a practising homosexual. Or from having to live a lie with a woman.
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