But men eventually marry. Clergy don’t. Homosexuals never do. Seems clergy and homosexuals are more aligned within their lifestyles than married men.
Clergy should marry. It was a man-made decision for them not to, and it violates the tenants of the Bible.
You mean like, people who actually live there?
I'm sorry, I'm just funnin' with you. Although I never make tyspos i mean tpyosp I mean--- heck, you know what I mean.
In my humble opinion, most people should spend most of their adult lives married. It's always been so, and I think it's for the best. There's just only two ways to live decent, sexually: (1) well-and-truly married or (2) well-and-truly single; and if you're living right you're going to be one or the other, not messing around somewhere in between.
Most men eventually marry, but some don't. The Catholic Church just in the USA has more married clergy (15,000) than we have unmarried priests in religious orders (14,000) --- the former refers to ordained permanent deacons (mostly) and the latter refers to men in orders like Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, Benedictines, Maryknoll Fathers and so forth.
Our secular (diocesan) priests are all unmarried, except for the priests of the Eastern Churches, who are not very numerous in the USA but are more numerous in some other countries. Lebanon, I'm thinking, and the Ukraine.
Anyway, men who want to serve as Catholic clergy have these options, and I'm all for that.
I don't think a man should be pushed either way, if it's not his choice or he is pretty sure he's not called to it as a vocation. That's why I'm glad we have both choices.
So, what's the problem? You wouldn't want a man to be pushed into marrying because it's expected of him, if he actually has a calling to be celibate, would you?
I was just thinking about that. What would you say?
Things are much tougher if you're a same-sex-attracted man, because guys like that find it difficult to relate normally to males OR females.
A guy like that shouldn't be a seminary or a monastery or any other all-male environment, because there are too many temptations; he can't get married to a man; probably too stressful to be married to a woman; if he's a loner, fine, but if he's a person who doesn't do well living alone, it's going to be a tough life.
I've been asked from time to time what I think gay guys should do, but I don't really know what to say about that. Probably need to live single but have a spiritually-supportive group of friends that will help them not die piecemeal of a kind of emotional anemia.
People can live without sex but it's unreasonable, crazy, to think of living without love.
I realize I'm rambling here. It's almost bedtime. Your thoughts?