Luigi Gioia’s article (“The clerical trap”, 5 October) is headed by the comment that “Priests are caught up in a dysfunctional system that makes a healthy emotional life impossible”.
Is this because the words of Genesis repeated by Christ have never been taken as revelation about sexuality and marriage: “It is not good for man to be alone”, so God creates Eve, and looking at her Adam says in delight: “This bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Again and again priests will meet that soulmate but are denied the right to marriage, a relationship causing a young man “to leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh”.
As one married for 50 years I believe these words mean that through the consummation of marriage God changes the couple from two separate individuals into a duality which no one should attempt to divide. This happens to clergy but the agony is that if they admit it they are dismissed from office instead of congratulated.
10 October 2019, The Tablet
Topic of the week: Agony of the ban on married clergy
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