A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy

Richard Sipe's study of how celibacy is lived providea challenge to the Church and to celibates themselves. The issues that Sipe raises uncovers the need on the part of the Roman Catholic Church to become engaged in the issues of celibate living from the beginning of a priest's training in the seminary to ongoing formation throughout his life.For the celibate Sipe's study is comforting as well as disconcerting. It is comforting because it demonstrates various ways of coping with celibacy in which many have achieved a lilfetime of celibate living. It is disconcerting because Sipe's revelations challenge the celibate to become more conscious of things he might take for granted.Sipe begins his study by reviewing the origins of celilbacy as well as defining the meanings of celibacy, The practices of celibacy take up a major portion of his study. While this section may disturb many, Sipe's research is based on 25 years of intervieiwng priests and male religious as well as other forms of research. Perhaps the fact that celibates engage in some sort of sexual activity, be it masturbation or sexual fantasies, pornography or sexual liasions demonstrates that celibacy, while a gift, is developmental. For those who lilve religious life, many do not express shock when they live less than ideal lives in the practice of poverty or obedience. Yet somehow something less than complete abstnence is the area of chastity is a shock.And that is where the challenge to the Church comes is. In the last secion of his book Sipe notes how archaic is the Church's teachings sexual morality. The human develops. And so does human sexuality develop. If celibacy is to be practiced it, too, will have to be adapted to human development. The implications actually go further then the Roman Catholic Church's value of celibate ministering. It impacts on the total teaching of sexual morality. Most of it is cognitive, or prophetic, as Sipes would have it. That means it prohibits or allows. Without a context of! an objective or lyrical voice, this prophetic voice sounds empty and certainly uninspiring. As Sipe points out, however, to attract men into celibacy, the Church needs to present a sexuality that is coinherent with one's human development in a transcendent experience. The Church's present teaching is integrated with deformative accretions from misguided applications of various philosophies to an ignorance of celibacy and sexual practice of Christ and his apostles.Sipe's study is most welcome and provides challenges, information and inspiration. He is not against celibacy and in fact promotes its achievement. But that achievement is a lifelong process whose appreciative formation can be realized only through a varieties of prayer and appreciative service, physical development among other things. This is long overdue. Sipe's reflections can be helpful in developing celibate formation programs.