How can someone be certain? Life changes. I know one priest, he's about 73 or so, he's been kind of sorry the past few years that he never got married and has a family. I have a feeling most priests go thru this at some point in their life...you know, the road not taken.
Not enticed by sex? Is there such a thing? LOL.
I think there are some clues about how people will be as priests by observing how they behave in seminaries.
If they don't want gay priests being actively gay, why are some seminaries so gay? We had some here in the US; and now we find out they do in Brazil too.
Homosexuals In the Seminaries. A Startling Survey In Brazil - CatholicCitizens.org
First of all, the interviewees say, homosexuality in their seminaries “is a common thing, a reality ever more present.” So normal “that it even reaches the point of being trivialized.” It is the widespread conviction among them “that in reality 90 percent of seminarians today are homosexual.”
Spain had the same problem with gay priests when the Inquisition was to ferret them out. (I wish I could remember where I read this.) The Pope wrote to Spain asking how it was going; and the answer came back that if they got rid of all the actively gay priests, there wouldn't be enough priests to function. England had the same problem. Anselm was probably gay but I think also probably abstinent; but he knew there were lots of gay priests in the English church.
St Anselm
Most of the following letters were written during his early residence at Bec, though he was already becoming noted for his scholarship and philosophy, infectious enthusiasm, and spiky personality (his high principles would eventually create friction with his English rulers, William II and Henry I. There is little reason to doubt the purity of Anselm’s theological concept of friendship, or even his celibacy, but neither can we deny the erotic force behind his yearning and frustrated desire, his heartbreak and even jealousy. The intensity of his emotional experience with his pupils and the `beloved lover’ (dilecto dilectori) to whom he addresses his epistles makes clear his gay sensibility.
The Council of London in 1102 wanted to enact ecclesiastical legislation which declared – for the first time in English history – that homosexual behaviour was a sin, and they recommended that offending laymen be imprisoned and clergymen be anathematized. But Anselm as Archbishop of Canterbury prohibited the publication of their decree, advising the Council that homosexuality was widespread and few men were embarrassed by it or had even been aware it was a serious matter; he felt that although sodomites should not be admitted to the priesthood, confessors should take into account mitigating factors such as age and marital status before prescribing penance, and he advised counselling rather than punishment. St Anselm’s letters appeared during the last flowering of homosexual love before fanatical anti-gay prejudice swept across Europe in the twelfth century, as documented by John Boswell in Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (1980).
I think they just have to learn to deal with it. And some don't and create problems. Mostly they get changed from one parish to another.
What about heterosexuals in seminaries? Watch them to see if they're chaste. I think being married to enter a seminary might be a good idea.
I just read the entire chapter. There's so much there.
I see that it says that one should remain as he is when called...
It's just that the original, and catholic church did not practice this.
I do wonder what the ECFs thought about this....Will have to look this up and confirm it.
What's for sure is that Peter was married. I'm not sure when they decided men had to be unmarried, nor do I know what rules they had before that.
I've seen this with priests. One priest that was assigned to my hometown (not where I live)
had to be transferred because of one particular woman and she was MARRIED with a child.
Pretty dumb move on her part...the town is now without a priest, or I should say they share one with 5 or 6 other parishes. Good point about romances...
So you know what I mean, and the problems the practice seem to encourage.
The same problem is found today in some Protestant churches when the minister is married. There was one case recently when a man must have decided he wanted to be straight so he married a woman and became a minister. When it came out he was having flings with men, his wife stood by him at first; later she gave up trying to defend the indefensible.
I'm shocked about Aquinas....I never heard or read this.
As to Augustine, I've never liked him and have never understood why the church of that time was so enamored of him. Some time ago, recently, I came to believe that it might be because he was so good at debating and kept many heresies out of the church.
Ive always said the cc became lost after 325AD.
He also introduced what I'd call a heresy with his views on "original sin." That was his invention completely. There will never be a complete reconciliation with the Orthodox Church as long as the Catholic Church hangs onto that. I find the idea repugnant; and I also think he derived it as a way to explain his own spiritual failure.
I adore Augustine's mother, St. Monica. But I could do without him. He fell into bad hands when he met Ambrose. I see him as one of the worst ever influences on the Catholic Church. I would say he invented the "Apostles Creed" in its present form, claiming it had always existed.
Apostles' Creed - Wikipedia
The title Symbolum Apostolicum (Symbol or Creed of the Apostles) appears for the first time in a letter, probably written by Ambrose, from a Council in Milan to Pope Siricius in about AD 390 "Let them give credit to the Creed of the Apostles, which the Roman Church has always kept and preserved undefiled".[5][6] But what existed at that time was not what is now known as the Apostles' Creed but a shorter statement of belief that, for instance, did not include the phrase "maker of heaven and earth", a phrase that may have been inserted only in the 7th century.[7]
If they always had it, why was Ambrose the first to know of it? Why hadn't they produced it at Nicea?