Can I Go to Seminary If I Have Not Yet Achieved Sexual Integration?

Transcription

1 Can I Go to Seminary If I Have Not Yet Achieved Sexual Integration? A certain amount of sexual self-mastery must be demonstrated before a man can begin seminary studies. It is true that during their seminary years, men grow tremendously in this area. They learn about celibacy and chastity. They develop the prayer life required to live celibately. They gain the ability to establish mature, deep friendships with both men and women. The seminary is a place where a man can make significant advancements in this area. And no man has ever been ordained a priest having already achieved perfect sexual integration. However, a man must be able to demonstrate that he can live chastely for a significant period of time. But what exactly does this mean? I will answer this question by giving five examples. Example 1 A man comes to his vocation director and says that he was sexually active with his girlfriend up until six months ago. But they have broken up now, and he has been to Confession and begun seriously discerning priesthood again. He had been thinking about priesthood since eighth grade but it was put on the back burner when he began dating in college. He wants to know if he can go to the seminary this fall. This man needs to demonstrate that he can live his life chastely for about two years before he goes to seminary. He needs to get a spiritual director and develop a good prayer life. He needs to go to Confession regularly. If he dates, he should date chastely. He is not ready for seminary this fall. He has not done a diligent discernment of celibacy. He may even be rebounding from his breakup. 226

2 Celibacy, Chastity, Charity, and Cheerfulness Example 2 A man who is a senior in college comes to his bishop and asks about seminary. He is heterosexual, but has never been sexually active with a woman. He has viewed pornography off and on since high school and masturbated. In his first two years of college, he did this fairly regularly but he has not viewed pornography in the last two years. He has been meeting with his spiritual director monthly, attending daily Mass, and serving in his parish. He has significantly cut down on the occasions of masturbation. This man would likely be permitted to begin seminary studies after graduation. He has demonstrated that through prayer, study, and spiritual direction, he is both fighting and winning the battle for sexual integration. He likely will make much greater progress once he begins seminary. Example 3 A man tells his spiritual director that he has some occasional same-sex attraction, but he also has heterosexual attractions for adult women. His attraction for women is actually much stronger and it bothers him immensely whenever he experiences a homosexual attraction. He has never been homosexually active, but several years ago he did have a few heterosexual experiences, short of sexual intercourse. He is now attending daily Mass, adoration, praying his rosary, seeing a spiritual director regularly, and his prayer life and moral life are really improving. This man s bishop and vocation director would have to make a prudential judgment, once they have gathered all the information, whether to accept this man to begin seminary. Since this man has a strong prayer life, a good spiritual director, and completely embraces the Church s teaching on sexuality, he likely would be accepted at least to college seminary or pre-theology. 227

3 He has demonstrated that he is both fighting and winning the battle for sexual integration. Example 4 This man has been discerning priesthood all through high school and college. He has attended discernment retreats and is active in his parish. He is approaching his last year of college, the obvious time to apply to seminary. When his vocation director asks him why he is delaying, he finally admits that he is struggling with chastity. This man s spiritual director has been working with him on this for four years and yet he still habitually views heterosexual pornography online and masturbates. This happens four or five times per week. Upon further questioning, he also reveals to his vocation director that he was sexually abused by an uncle four or five times when he was seven years old and things have not been right sexually as a result. It has also contributed to low self-esteem and depression. Even worse, this man has never been able to tell his parents or his spiritual director about this abuse, because he is afraid of what it will do to his family, and also because his spiritual director is a priest he greatly admires and he does not want to disappoint him. This man is clearly not ready to go to seminary. Because of the sexual abuse and his lack of full disclosure about it, he has some serious psychosexual dysfunction, which is manifesting itself in addiction to pornography and masturbation. This man has some deep internal pain and he likely will need Christianbased psychotherapy to experience healing. Had he been able to disclose four years ago to his spiritual director the fact that he was sexually abused, he would be much further along toward healing and sexual integration today. Still, it is possible that this man could one day become a priest, but he is not ready to go to seminary now. 228

4 Celibacy, Chastity, Charity, and Cheerfulness Example 5 A man applies to go to the seminary for his diocese and he is very humble and fully disclosing about every area of his life. He is an excellent student, has good social skills, prays very faithfully and serves in his parish. Every area of his life seems to be in pretty good order except chastity. He still commits the sin of self-abuse (masturbation) about three or four times per month, even though he is trying very hard to overcome it. It does not happen every week but when it does happen, it usually happens more than once. This man prays and attends Mass daily, goes to Confession regularly and discusses this with his spiritual director. He is constantly saying to his spiritual director, Why can I not stop committing this sin? I don t want to do this. I want to be holy. Perhaps I am not called to become a priest? Maybe this is a sign? His spiritual director assures him that he should go to seminary and that eventually, with the grace of God, he will overcome this sin. The man is not so sure; but his spiritual director is correct. All things considered, this man is fighting the good fight for sexual integration and he is winning many of the battles. When he loses a few of these battles, because he is a righteous man, he feels great shame and disappointment. He beats himself up about it and it causes him to doubt his vocation. This scenario is very common for men entering seminary today. Dealing with Masturbation Fr. John Hardon, S.J. spoke of the providential purpose of sin in his retreats on the Spiritual Exercises. This expression does not mean that God wants a man to sin, but it means that sometimes God permits a man to keep falling in a particular sin, precisely because he is trying to prevent him from committing a greater sin. And God is also preparing him to be a compassionate confessor for other sinners when he is a priest. If the particular 229

5 man in example 5 had prayed to overcome his impurity and God had immediately answered his prayer (which God is very capable of doing), and he had never committed self-abuse again, this man would likely have become extremely proud of his purity. And pride, in the long run, is a much more serious sin than a sin of passion like masturbation. A proud priest is an unmerciful priest. He treats God s people and his brother priests poorly and he is harsh in the confessional. God will sometimes use a man s struggle with sin to keep him humble, to keep him on his knees praying for help to help him be merciful to other sinners. St. Augustine wrote, We learn to do good by having done bad. 56 God is orchestrating all things to make us into the saints he is calling us to be within the vocation he is calling us to embrace. And God is so awesome, so good, and so powerful, he can even use our sins to accomplish this. In this ongoing, arduous battle for sexual integration, your spiritual director or confessor is the one who can guide you. With regard to masturbation, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: To form an equitable judgment about the subject s moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety, or other psychological or social factors that lessen or even extenuate moral culpability. CCC #2352 In other words, even though masturbation is always a grave matter, every occurrence of masturbation in a young man s life is not necessarily a mortal sin. With this in mind, some spiritual directors recommend the following to some of their directees, if they fall by masturbating: Immediately try to make a perfect Act of Contrition: Jesus, I am sorry for this sin and for all of my sins 230