The real challenge comes after ordination, when the observing eyes of superiors are far away. Over the past 30 years, the number of priests has been going down dramatically. Young priests are often sent to parishes alone after minimal on-the-job training with an older colleague.
This can be heady, exciting, frightening, anxiety-producing, and even intoxicating. It is also easy in this context to feel lonely, misunderstood, and powerfully desirous of solace beyond the purely spiritual kind.
It is here that love can bloom more easily. Not the theoretical, theological kind of love discussed in training, but the actual, sensuous, immediate, and non-intellectualized power trip of falling for someone. The space where moral imperatives can easily get fuzzy and slip into the background. [...]
Why not? The world of the priesthood as I have observed it is, curiously, a male, even a macho one. Christian values might be called "feminine" (patience, forbearance, gentleness), but the purveyors of those values are expected to carry on often intense work in a solitary way with minimal support.
Bitching? Moaning? Those are for weaker men. It is the job of the priest to be strong in the midst of others' weakness. His own weakness, sadly, is a private affair. [...]
The other issue here is violation of integrity. By "integrity" I mean simply being the person you claim to be. Once a priest presents himself as a chaste, committed celibate but is actually sexually active, he has destroyed one of the pillars supporting his mental health.
The significance of this can hardly be underestimated. While it is fashionable these days in mental health circles to conceive of anxiety as a free-floating condition, it is often related to such profound violations of personal integrity. [...]
A more challenging development would be to expand priests' knowledge of human sexuality and intimacy as well as increase their regard for those critical parts of the human experience. This would require more candid and less judgmental communication about these aspects of life and would reflect a move away from the idealized role of the priest as a person without need. That is, after all, just a facade.
While some efforts have been made in this direction, there is a longstanding tendency in the Catholic tradition to value sexual abstinence over sexual relationships, committed or otherwise. Measures that level the field between priests and parishioners would help bridge the distance between the two, opening up more options for actual friendship and genuine collaboration.
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