Max Von Sydow and Jason Miller in “The Exorcist” (1973)
Today, I came across this article on the BBC.
Shockingly, yes.
But, there’s a big difference between being voluntarily celibate because you believe it strengthens your faith, and abstaining from putting pederastic thoughts into action because you don’t want to get caught. The latter is basically lying, which as I understand it, is a bad thing in all religions.
A certain level of priests in the Russian Orthodox Church are allowed to get married and have children. However, if they want to rise higher in the ranks, celibacy is required.
I disagree with the fellow in the article who implies that women’s sex drive can be lower than men’s. Both can wax and wane, depending on many different factors.
Oh, women are evil for seeing priests as “forbidden fruit”? Please.
They’re also discounting the platonic friendships and camaraderie – perfectly legal ones – that can develop among priests or nuns who live together in monasteries. There is nothing in Christianity that says priests or nuns have to live their lives alone.
Gandhi wasn’t such a saint: yes, he did indeed slept with young girls to test his own level of resistance to temptation. How is that not wrong on so many levels? It is not a “worthwhile experiment” because it reduces the object of the experiment to nothing more than a piece of meat. But when most of us think of Gandhi, we don’t automatically think of pedophilia or racism. Those were things he espoused.
Judaism, by contrast, has a lesser level of prohibition on premarital sex. If possible, (Orthodox), you shouldn’t do it, but it’s less of a huge sin than in Catholicism.
