Madam, – Having a whole class of people take a lifetime vow that they will never have a conjugal relationship is a grave interference with nature. One interferes with nature at one’s peril.
Such a relationship involves compromise, negotiation and sharing on a permanent, minute-by-minute basis. On the other side of the ledger comes companionship, support, being forced more often than one might like to face reality about oneself – and last, but by no means least, sexual fulfilment. If children do come they bring a component that is at once sublime and extremely challenging.
Of course there will be individuals who will not conform to the standard model.
They demonstrate essential personal freedom of choice and, sometimes, provide the elements of welcome diversity that nature itself has evolved.
The crucial factor is that they have not predisposed themselves to never knowing a sexual relationship. Even Fr James Good’s unmarried post-menopausal teacher (January 14th) will not necessarily have done that unless, of course, she is a member of a religious order.
In nature the sex drive is an extremely potent force. On occasions it overpowers everything else. Some of the perpetrators of sexual abuse are otherwise not bad people. Many of them have gone tragically wrong, even when married and with children. Therefore, at the best of times, dealing with sex is fraught.
No judgment in the matter of celibacy as a group policy can be made on the basis of individual cases or experiences. But when thousands of people involved with the welfare of children turn their communal face against the corrective of a relationship, they are not giving themselves as a body, or the young people who come into their charge, a chance.
The canard that Ireland would have no education were it not for religious orders needs also to be disposed of.
In our country the Hierarchy appropriated education (and health) in order to gain control and pursue their own agenda, which was not primarily even the kind of education best suited to an industrialised nation.
There is no evidence at all to suggest that, in the absence of religious involvement, a proper, government-managed educational system would not have been set up.
After all, we have well established judicial, taxation, local authority, military and police systems, to name but some, all without any religious participation in their creation. – Yours, etc,