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jwaneeta at 10:07pm on 09/10/2003
jwaneeta at 10:07pm on 09/10/2003http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,1059068,00.html
I got this link from Herself's LJ -- which I read compulsively, though I have managed to get myself on her bad books.
What in God's name is going to happen next? I infer from this story what a non-Catholic reader would not: that the clergy in Africa is resorting to scare tactics to get people to abstain from sex. Condoms won't keep you safe, they are saying. The church councils chastity, not safe sex. It's not about birth control, but complete abstention.
Ach, God! For one thing it won't work: people *will* have sex. For another, it is a lie, a pointless lie. A lie in pusuit of enforced virtue? This must be the fucking end. I can't stand it.
This comes on top of something many people may not know, something I read in an intra-Catholic publication, when I was still a nun: in Africa the celibacy of the male clergy is, in custom, a state of mind. Celibacy is considered so fantastic as to be mere theory, and African Abbesses write repeatedly to Rome asking for intervention, because rectors visit to demand that they provide nuns for sex with thier seminarians and priests -- "because if you don't they will have to go to the laity, and they will get AIDs."
It's one monstrosity piled on another. Simony. Pedophilia. Hypocrisy, pride -- the GALL, the absolute gall, to issue a statement against homosexual *marriage* in the teeth of this ocean of filth and shame! To *back up BUSH!* A bit of chastened, humilliated silence might have been more apt, but apparently this is the end of the world.
I remain a Catholic because to abandon this difficult faith/practice -- one that can raise not only a participant with goodwill but anyone they touch, theoretically -- is to leave it in the uncontested hands of pedophiles, freaks, careerists, and pigs. And there's no honor in that. Just quitting? Not there yet.
But this is hideous.
I got this link from Herself's LJ -- which I read compulsively, though I have managed to get myself on her bad books.
What in God's name is going to happen next? I infer from this story what a non-Catholic reader would not: that the clergy in Africa is resorting to scare tactics to get people to abstain from sex. Condoms won't keep you safe, they are saying. The church councils chastity, not safe sex. It's not about birth control, but complete abstention.
Ach, God! For one thing it won't work: people *will* have sex. For another, it is a lie, a pointless lie. A lie in pusuit of enforced virtue? This must be the fucking end. I can't stand it.
This comes on top of something many people may not know, something I read in an intra-Catholic publication, when I was still a nun: in Africa the celibacy of the male clergy is, in custom, a state of mind. Celibacy is considered so fantastic as to be mere theory, and African Abbesses write repeatedly to Rome asking for intervention, because rectors visit to demand that they provide nuns for sex with thier seminarians and priests -- "because if you don't they will have to go to the laity, and they will get AIDs."
It's one monstrosity piled on another. Simony. Pedophilia. Hypocrisy, pride -- the GALL, the absolute gall, to issue a statement against homosexual *marriage* in the teeth of this ocean of filth and shame! To *back up BUSH!* A bit of chastened, humilliated silence might have been more apt, but apparently this is the end of the world.
I remain a Catholic because to abandon this difficult faith/practice -- one that can raise not only a participant with goodwill but anyone they touch, theoretically -- is to leave it in the uncontested hands of pedophiles, freaks, careerists, and pigs. And there's no honor in that. Just quitting? Not there yet.
But this is hideous.
HI, and ahhhh--
Re: HI, and ahhhh--
Yes, I was a nun for a few years. A novice -- I never made it as far as vows. I was in a traditional cloistered monastery, with the full habit and enclosure and the whole ball of wax.
I've been out almost six years now... still miss it. It's really a beautiful life, strange as that may sound.