“It would be one thing if you were staying here.” His father dropped his eyes to the floor. “You could come home every day. We could talk. I could keep you from becoming someone I don’t recognize.”
“You want me to become like you.”
“No, Joseph.” His father turned sharply. “But neither do I want you to become like your mother: terrified and ashamed of your own—” He stopped and began again. “I want you to have the chance to becomeyourself, Joseph.” His father pushed off the wall, but he still looked unsteady. “You’re barely thirteen years old!”
“Many boys start studying for the Priesthood when they’re?—”
“Even younger! I know! That doesn’t make it right! You can’t possibly understand what you’re sacrificing—and that’s precisely why they take you so early. I know what happens in those seminaries. The Church locks boys away from the world and tries to prevent them from ever becoming men. They’ll tell you: ‘virginity is as superior to marriage as Heaven is to Earth.’”
Itwas.
“The Canon that mandates celibacy, do you know the reason it gives? ‘Since Priests ought to be temples of God, vessels of the Lord, and sanctuaries of the Holy Ghost, it is unbecoming that they give themselves up to marriage and impurity.’ As if the two were interchangeable! Even between husbands and wives, the Church will not permit pleasure. It is obsessed with purity—animpossiblestandard.”
Impossible for him, perhaps.
“All celibacy does is make Priests miserable. It is unnatural and unhealthy and ridiculous. God is not enough—human beings need each other.”
That was heresy. God waseverything. And Priests were no longer human. They were something more, something greater. Ordination changed them, made themsupernatural.Of coursethat came at a cost.
Joseph winced and stepped back as his father threw open the curtains to let in the afternoon sunlight. He scowled. He musttryto make his father understand. “‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman.’”
“‘It is not good for man to be alone.’” His father laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “You’re quoting Saint Paul. I’m quoting God.Hedoes not demand celibacy—the Church does.Men.”
Divinely inspired men.
His father pulled open the glass doors of his bookcase and began hunting for something. “Priests are taught to hate half their parishioners! The things Fathers and Doctors of the Church have said about women! ‘Youare the Devil’s gateway,’ Tertullian tells them. Women are blamed for all sin.” His father pulled a wornvolume from a bottom shelf and leafed through it. “Blessed Albertus Magnus—Albert the supposedly Great, teacher of Thomas Aquinas, Bishop—he went even further.” Joseph’s father found the passage he wanted. “Thisis what Albert taught: ‘A woman is nothing but a devil fashioned into human appearance. … One must be as mistrustful of every woman as of a venomous serpent.’” He slammed the book shut. “Iwon’thave you thinking of your mother or sisters that way. Milton had it right: woman is ‘Heaven’s last, best gift’.”
You cherished a gift. You didn’t abuse it. Again his father proved himself a hypocrite. “The Church doesn’t hate women. Ithonorsthem. You’re forgetting Our Lady.”
“Mary is honored only because she is ‘alone of all her sex’—conceived without sin, sinless, and above all ‘ever virgin.’ Heaven forbid she and her husband should actually touch each other!” His father motioned with his book to that dangerous portrait of the Holy Family, where the Blessed Virgin nursed the Christ Child and the white-haired Saint Joseph stood aloof.
Joseph’s eyes strayed once more to the Virgin’s breast. He forced them back to Saint Denis.
His father continued: “Mary is the Mother of God, yet the Church doesn’t permit her to give birth! They claim she bore Christ as if He were light and she were a window!” Joseph’s father threw the book on his desk. “Human mothers must conceive and bear children vaginally, so they have to be ‘churched’ afterwards in order to ‘purify’ them.”
That had been a Jewish custom first; he couldn’t blame?—
“Motherhood is not a sin! And neither is sexual pleasure between a husband and wife! Don’t you ever tell your parishioners that!” His father stopped, but Joseph thought it was only because he was out of breath.
“You’re notforbiddingme to go to Rome, then?”
His father threw up his hands. “How can I? You would despise me.”
I already despise you, Joseph thought.
“I know what it’s like to have a vocation…” His father sank onto the chair behind his desk. “Butisthat why you want this? Don’t become a Priest for the wrong reasons, Joseph.”
He hesitated, but he knew he must ask. “What are the wrong reasons?”
“Are you doing this because of my mother?” His father leaned forward earnestly. “Because you see the Priesthood as an escape? Because you’re seeking sanctuary?”
“N-No.” He wasn’t really lying. That wasn’t theonlyreason.
“Is this some kind of Penance?”
Joseph shook his head again. “I—I want to do what you do. I mean: I want to be useful.”
“And that is laudable, son. But there are other ways.”
