River of Words and Straw of Silence

 The text which follows is an informal, but profound meditation on the importance of silence for our spiritual life. It is taken from a homily given by Pope Benedict XVI when he concelebrated mass with the members of the ITC, (International Theological Commission), on October 6, 2006. The saint of the day was St. Bruno, a man noted for his life of silence and contemplation. I have taken the liberty of removing those remarks that are exclusively for theologians in an attempt to make the universal relevance of the pope’s message stand out for us “ordinary” Catholic Christians.

“…silence and contemplation have a purpose: they serve, in the distractions of daily life, to preserve permanent union with God. This is their purpose: that union with God may always be present in our souls and may transform our entire being.

…since we are part of this world with all its words, how can we make the Word present in words other than through a process of purification of our thoughts, which in addition must be above all a process of purification of our words?

     How can we open the world, and first of all ourselves, to the Word without entering into the silence of God from which his Word proceeds? For the purification of our words, hence, also, for the purification of the words of the world, we need that silence that becomes contemplation, which introduces us into God’s silence and brings us to the point where the Word, the redeeming Word, is born.

….In this context, a beautiful phrase from the First Letter of St. Peter springs to my mind. It is from verse 22 of the first chapter. The Latin goes like this: Castificantes animas nostras in obedientia veritatis. Obedience to the truth must purify our souls and thus guide us to upright speech and upright action.

    In other words, speaking in the hope of being applauded, governed by what people want to hear out of obedience to the dictatorship of current opinion, is considered a sort of prostitution: of words and of the soul.

    The “purity” to which the Apostle Peter is referring means not submitting to these standards, not seeking applause, but rather, seeking obedience to the truth.

    And I think that this is the fundamental virtue…this discipline of obedience to truth, which makes us, although it may be hard, collaborators of the truth, mouthpieces of the truth, for it is not we who speak in today’s river of words, but it is the truth which speaks in us, who are really purified and made chaste by obedience to the truth. So it is that we can be harbingers of the truth.

    This reminds me of St. Ignatius of Antioch and something beautiful he said: “Those who understood the Lord’s words understood his silence, for the Lord should be recognized in his silence.”

….Only when we attain that silence of the Lord, his being with the Father from which words come, can we truly begin to grasp the depths of these words.

     Jesus’ words are born of his silence on the Mountain, as Scripture tells us, in his being with the Father. Words are born from this silence of communion with the Father, from being immersed in the Father, and only on reaching this point, on starting from this point, do we arrive at the real depth of the Word, and can ourselves be authentic interpreters of the Word. The Lord invites us verbally to climb the Mountain with him and thus, in his silence, to learn the true meaning of words.

…..We are silent before the grandeur of God, for it dwarfs our words. This makes me think of the last weeks of St. Thomas’ life. In these last weeks, he no longer wrote, he no longer spoke. His friend asked him: “Teacher, why are you no longer speaking? Why are you not writing?” And he said: Before what I have seen now all my words appear to me as straw.”

Fr. Jean-Pierre Torrel, the great expert on St. Thomas, tells us not to misconstrue these words. Straw is not nothing. Straw bears grains of wheat and this is the great value of straw. It bears the ear of wheat. And even the straw of words continues to be worthwhile since it produces wheat.

For us, however, I would say that this is a relativization of our work; yet, at the same time it is an appreciation of our work. It is also an indication in order that our way of working, our straw, may truly bear the wheat of God’ s Word.”

                              

Fire of Mercy, Heart of the World, Vol. III    Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, pp. 863- 865

Bergoglio and Giussani

A few weeks ago I read an article on the CL website entitled Bergoglio and Giussani. It was by Massimo Borghesi, and explained not only why Bergoglio like Giussani so much, but also showed some of the influence Giussani has had on  then Cardinal Bergoglio's (and now Pope Francis') thought.

Cardinal Bergoglio's esteem began back in the nineties when he first started reading Giussani's works. In 2001 Bergoglio publicly offered two main reasons:  "The first, more personal, is the good that this man has done for me, for my life as a priest, in the last ten years, through my reading of his books and articles. The second reason is that I am convinced that his thought is profoundly human, and reaches even the most intimate part of human yearning. I would daresay that it is the most profound, and at the same time, most comprehensible phenomenology of nostalgia as a transcendental fact." 

 Bregoglio was explaining and deepening what had said in 1999, when he commented on The Religious Sense "For many years, Monsignor Giussani's writings have inspired my reflection...The Religious Sense is not a book for the exclusive use of those who are part of the movement, nor is it only for Christians or believers. It is a book for all men who take their own humanity seriously. I dare say that today, the question that we must primarily face is not so much the problem of God - the existence of God, the knowledge of God, but the problem of man, the knowledge of man, and finding in man himself the imprint that God left there, in order to meet him...If a man has forgotten or censored his fundamental 'whys' and the longing of his heart, the fact of speaking to him about God proves to be an abstract, esoteric discourse, or a push toward a devotion with no bearing on life. One cannot begin a discourse about God without first blowing away the ashes that suffocate the burning embers of those fundamental 'whys'. The first step is to create the sense of those questions that are hidden, buried, perhaps suffering, but that exist." 

Brogoglio found in Giussani's writings a God whose grace, ( i. e. whose  unpredictable, always new, action in man), comes first. Grace is always the source, as well as the sustenance,  follow-through, and fulfillment of  man's hunger for the Infinite. Man today doesn't see Christ as the satisfaction of his human aspirations because his religious sense has been blunted. 

 

Bregoglio continues his commentary on The Religious Sense: "...in order to interrogate ourselves when faced with signs, a extremely human capacity is necessary, the first one that we have as men and women: wonder, the capacity to be amazed, as Giussani calls it, ultimately , the heart of a child. Only wonder knows. ... The cultural opiate tends to obliterate, weaken, or kill this capacity for wonder. The beginning of any philosophy is wonder. There is a phrase of John Paul II that says that the drama of contemporary Christianity lies in the fact of putting categories and norms in place of wonder. Wonder comes before all categories. It is what brings me to search, to open myself; it is what makes my response possible, and it is neither a verbal nor a conceptual response. Because if wonder opens me as  a question, the only response is the encounter - and only in the encounter is thirst quenched." 

When Bergoglio presented  Giussani's book The Attraction of Jesus, he confirmed: "Everything in our life, today as in the time of Jesus, begins with an encounter, - an encounter with this man, the carpenter from Nazareth, a man like all others, and at the same time different. The first ones, - John, Andrew, Simon, - discovered that they were looked at in their very depths, read deep down, and a surprise was generated in them, a wonder that made them feel tied to Him, a wonder that made them feel different. ... One cannot understand this dynamic of the encounter that arouses wonder and adhesion without the "trigger" of mercy. Only those who have encountered mercy, who have been caressed by the tenderness of mercy, get on well with the Lord. ...The privileged place of he encounter is the caress of the mercy of Jesus Christ toward my sin."

In Borghesi's article, Bregolio  then cites another book by Giussani, Something that Comes Before, to explain what an unmerited gift the encounter with Christ is: "the 'something that comes before' is the encounter with Christ, even if unclear, not truly aware - as for John and Andrew, it was something astonishing, not definable by them. The thing that come first, grace, is the relationship with Christ: Christ is the grace, it is this Presence, and it is your relationship with it, your dialogue with it, your way of looking at it, thinking about it, focusing on it."

This encounter is the essential form in which Christianity has to manifest itself today! The Cardinal's understanding of this profound insight is what  influenced him to say a  some years later as Pope Francis that "The dogmatic and moral teachings of the Church are not all equivalent. The Church's pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focus in essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts us more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the Church is likely to fall as a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow." Without the encounter, the moral behavior has no foundation.  If it is Christ that attracts us first, and encountering Him comes before all else, there is no danger of falling into moralism, dogmatism, or any form of Christian fundamentalism which reduces Christ to an ideology!

Bregoglio wrote  in 2001 :"This Christianly authentic conception of morality that Giussani presents has nothing to do with the seemingly spiritual quietisms of which the shelves of today's religious markets are full. And neither does it have to do with the Pelagianism that is so popular in its various and sophisticated manifestations. Pelagianism, at bottom, is a new version of the tower of Babel. Seemingly spiritual quietisms are efforts at prayer or immanent spirituality that never go beyond themselves." 

Pelagianism and Quietism are two ways we can reduce Christ and Christianity to a this-worldly equivalent but still deceive ourselves into thinking we are  being religious and spiritual. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis continues and deepens his explanation of how and (more importantly) why we still  try today to reduce Christ to what our Ego can control and manipulate instead of losing ourselves in the wonder of who He is.  The pope says: "This worldliness can be fueled in two deeply interrelated ways. One is the attraction of Gnosticism, a purely subjective faith whose only interest is a certain experience or set of ideas and bits of information which are meant to console and enlighten, but which ultimately keep one imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feelings. The other is the self-absorbed promethean neo-Pelagianism of those who ultimately trust in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past. A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyses and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. In neither case is one really concerned about Jesus Christ or others. These are the manifestations of an anthropocentric immanentism. It is impossible to think that a genuinely evangelizing thrust could emerge from these adulterated forms of Christianity," (94)

 Wow! After reading that a few times and chewing on it over again, I have to conclude that Pope Francis is every bit as deep a thinker as Pope  Benedict! Praise God that in his everyday preaching, Francis knows how to say profound things in an evangelical, missionary style! 

 All quotations are from the article Bergoglio and Giussani, by Massimo Borghesi, which can be read in its entirety on the Communion and Liberation website.

 

Pope Benedict on Homosexuality (continued) Part Two

This posting continues the reflections begun in the posting of 7/26/13.

Sewald  responds to Pope Benedict’s comments on homosexuality with the observation :"It is no secret that there are homosexuals even among priests and monks. Just recently there was a major scandal on account of the homosexual passions of priests in Rome.” Pope Pope, being honest and humble, admits the truth of Sewald’s statement, but surprises me, because he does not say what I expected. I was anticipating something along the lines of the need for active homosexual priests to repent, just as priests who were heterosexual would have to repent of being unfaithful if they had sexual relations with women. Instead, the pope spoke out forcefully against homosexuals in the priesthood. This is what he said: “Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation. Otherwise celibacy itself would lose its meaning as a renunciation”.

 I had been thinking, Well, just as a heterosexual has to renounce marriage with a woman, a homosexual would have to renounce sexual activity with men.  He would have to be celibate in his own way.  But the pope is not considering two kinds of celibacy, one for homosexuals, and another for heterosexuals. He views celibacy in relation to marriage,  and marriage of course between a man and a woman. He continues: “It would be extremely dangerous if celibacy became a sort of pretext for bringing people into the priesthood who don’t want to get married anyway.”  That makes sense to me. Being a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom does mean giving up marriage to a woman, and more than that. It means more than being a bachelor who wears a clerical collar. It means being fruitful and multiplying the sons and daughters of God in the new family his Son has established, the Church.  I interpret the pope as meaning that the refusal of, or indifference to, spiritual fatherhood is the big problem. If a man is not interested in sacrificing being a father through marriage to a woman  for the sake spiritual fatherhood, he should not be a priest.  There are certainly bachelor heterosexual priests who are not interested in spiritual fatherhood, only in the priesthood as a career or a profession. But, ultimately, spiritual fatherhood is the natural responsibility of every male no matter what he labels himself, nor what his state in life. Without spiritual fatherhood, even if he is called to be single,  he is a “barren fig tree” or a “dead branch.”

How does a man usually mature as a man, or grow and develop into his potential as a male?   Usually by getting married to a woman, having a wife and children, by working hard to earn a living, by living for the family he has, giving himself for them, raising the children, and leaving sons and daughters behind him.  If all a man had to do was impregnate a woman and then disappear, fatherhood would be easily accomplished. But a male becomes more of a man by being a husband and father, or to say it more simply,  by fathering. Celibacy is a huge sacrifice since everything in a man is directed to finding fulfillment in and through a woman, the children, and the family he will establish with her. Fathering is his natural reason for being. The responsibility he accepts in marriage is what gets him out of bed in the morning and keeps him going. If a man has no desire for a woman and no desire to marry, and therefore becomes a priest, his renunciation of marriage is no renunciation at all. By becoming a priest he embraces fathering in a different form.

Pope Benedict continues:  “The Congregation of Education issued a decision a few years ago to the effect that homosexual candidates cannot become priests because their sexual orientation estranges them from the proper sense of paternity, from the intrinsic nature of priestly being. The selection of candidates to the priesthood must therefore be very careful. The greatest attention is needed here in order to prevent the intrusion of this kind of ambiguity and to head off a situation where the celibacy of priests would practically end up being identified with the tendency to homosexuality.”

Of course the “greatest attention is needed”, but I am afraid that no amount of care and attention that can completely eliminate the problem.  When it comes to psycho-sexual identity, there are as many possible scenarios as there are individuals, because every person’s psycho-sexual development has its own pace. Same sex attraction may be discovered during adolescence, before or after entry into the seminary, as well as before or after ordination to the priesthood. There are no absolutely perfect protocols, nor any foolproof procedures. The basic issue, I believe, is to face that same sex attraction is a disorder and to deal with it in a healthy way, instead of presuming, as our culture does, that homosexuality is normal and natural, and that the gay life style is as valid an option as marriage or the single life.

Here in the Northeast and East Coast, it may be already too late to head off the situation the pope speaks of,  “where celibacy would….end up being identified with homosexuality”. Maybe it is different in some parts of the South, and in the West, and Midwest, where I am told the Church is much stronger. I doubt the situation is different on the West Coast, however. It may even be worse out there, for all I know. Perhaps demographers and sociologists can explain how our culture and values vary according to geographical location here in the United states. Maybe the situation is to fluid for any national snapshot to be taken.

Some concluding thoughts on "same sex attraction" occur to me in light of Pope Benedict’s resignation and the election of Pope Francis, which I hope to use as the basis of the next posting on this topic. I do not see the term “same sex attraction” in the writing, nor in their conversations of either pope. As far as I can tell they both use the word “homosexual” and “gay" interchangeably.  Here in the United States a distinction between the two is made. A man who struggles with same sex attraction is said to be “homosexual” whereas only those who “come out” and embrace the gay life style with its culture, are classified as “gay”.  I think this is an important distinction to make. Doing so would contradict the popular assumption that “gays are born that way” and also help explain how  a good number of men who suffer from same sex attraction successfully deal with the disorder, and  go on to successfully  become fathers in the sacrament of marriage, or spiritual fathers the priesthood. Some, I daresay have even been canonized saints.

Pope Benedict on Homosexuality: Part One

       The book Light of the World consists of a series of broad ranging conversations between  Pope Benedict XVI  and Peter Seewald. It's about various controversial issues affecting Church and World. In Chapter 14, titled "Overdue Reforms ?", Seewald  quotes two statements from the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding homosexuality, and then asks Pope Benedict if these two views in the Catechism are not contradictory. 

      Here is Seewald's first quotation:...the number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible...They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives.  The Catechism calls us to treat homosexuals with the respect and acceptance that is their due, simply because they (and we) are human beings. Then comes the second statement: Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as great depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.  Here the Catechism clearly says that homosexuality is not a "natural" or "normal" way for human beings to act, and in fact is a disorder, so much of a disorder ("intrinsically") that there is no way to justify homosexual acts or make them right. So Seewald asks: "Doesn't the second statement somewhat contradict the respect for homosexuals expressed in the first one"?

         Seewald seems to be asking how can you accept and respect a person (first quotation) if you think what he/she is doing is wrong, sinful, seriously disordered, and  in fact, a great depravity (second quotation). Worth asking, no? When I find a person's actions to be deeply repugnant,  my feeling of repugnance usually extends itself automatically to the person as well.  Seewald's question, however, is not  phrased in a way that is emotionally charged. He keeps the question theoretical: "Is not one perspective incompatible with the other? Here's Pope Benedict's answer to that question: "No." Well, that is both clear and blunt; no hedging or qualifying, just a straight out negative. He goes on to explain: "It is one thing to say that they are human beings with their problems and their joys, that as human beings they deserve respect, even though they have this inclination, and must not be discriminated against because of it. Respect for man is absolutely fundamental and decisive."

             I love that explanation. We human beings are concrete, specific individuals, not theoretical constructs, and the pope recognizes that fact.  He tells us that every human being deserves to be accepted and respected simply because he/she is, i.e. exists! The pope offers more than a theoretical answer, because both acceptance and respect involve our real feelings and actual emotions towards concrete people. He is pointing out that our value as  humans doesn't begin with our activity or productivity, but springs simply from being. We have no right to reject or despise any member of the human race since our very existence is good. That makes sense to me. A newborn baby doesn't just need love,  it has a right to love, and a right to demand it. What's the basis of that right? The newborn's very existence. If my, or our, worth depended on actual accomplishments, very few of us would be worth anything at all. An embryo, a fetus, an unborn baby, even a new-born,  would be worth nothing. Acceptance of  and respect for one another on the very basis of our common existence, is the decisive starting point for all of our interactions with one another. 

        The pope continues his train of thought: "At the same time though, sexuality has an intrinsic meaning and direction, which is not homosexual." This is the affirmative thrust his"No" leads to. Sexuality has a positive meaning and direction which we do not arbitrarily assign but has been built into the structure of sexuality. That is his second point, which he builds on the foundation block of his first statement. The reason why he can disagree with, and disapprove of, homosexual activity even though he has a very real acceptance of, and respect for, homosexuals as human beings is congruent with the meaning and direction he sees in sexuality. In fact, it is out of respect and acceptance for homosexuals that the pope affirms an obvious truth and says that homosexuality is a disorder. Since homosexuality is itself disordered,  both  the acceptance of, and respect for, anyone who calls himself homosexual require that this truth be made clear. Indeed, why would you lie to someone you accept and respect, no matter what the disorder? Presumably, the more serious the disorder, the greater the need to face the truth instead of colluding with an illusion or a deception. 

        Since the fall into original sin,  our human nature itself is in a state of disorder. The disorder in us begins when we do. The Creator made us male and female, as the Scriptures say. (True, God made us without any disorder originally, but a look in the mirror, and a look around us at the world we live in, both  provide objective proof that Adam and Eve have passed on to us the skewed human nature they acquired by sinning. This is not surprising, for how could they pass on anything else?)   Men are disordered, women are disordered, and so are our male-female relationships.  As individuals and as couples, we will never be  a complete whole, because both our individual wholeness, and the wholeness that comes from our  male/female relationships, does not start off in right relation to God. We carry that disorder into all we do, and all we develop into,  as we journey through life. 

 

    Our basic disorder cannot be overcome by our own efforts. Because of the Fall, we have no way to stand outside ourselves and evaluate ourselves objectively. The righting of our relation to God occurs by his grace and mercy working in us. But God does not work in us without us, i.e. without our asking him to, and asking freely and profoundly. This asking is not merely a matter of choosing Option A instead of equally valid Option B, but desperate begging. Our asking is "de profundis", a need born of the misery we find ourselves in. Only the Creator who mercifully sustains us even as he lets us experience our interior disorder can put us in right relation to himself. 

   

     Why not simply view homosexuality as one more disorder among the countless others, and let it go at that? Because sexuality is foundational. Sexuality affects the very ground of our being. Our sexuality with its male-female components, constitutes the core of who we are. Certainly  many disorders abound in us, and they are all interrelated,  but since our core being is disordered, so are our perceptions of our selves, and our perceptions of our relationships. Our disordered core-being is male/female, masculine and feminine, two halves of the whole each of us is,  even though one half predominates.   I am not equally half man and half woman, but a male with both masculine and feminine qualities, or a female with both masculine and feminine qualities. How the two halves become more or less integrated, or  or become more out of balance,  in any person male or female, is and remains mystery. 

      To call this process mysterious is not an attempt to escape its complexity, but to respect it. Science should study the phenomenon of attraction and sexual identity, and discover all it can about it: same sex attraction, other sex attraction, or attraction to both sexes. No matter how thoroughly science explores all the other related causes of homosexuality, I do not believe it will never be able to find one that is primary. Science will, I believe, learn more and more about the specific causes it studies. But the danger, I believe, in learning more and more about specific causes is that we also move further and further away from ever getting around to see how all the causes interrelate. The presence or absence of a certain gene, the help or harm from mother or father during early in childhood, or is the result of the psychic wound because of abuse,  the predisposition we have in us because of our genetic structure, the influence of our formation and schooling, society and culture,  etc., can all be studied ad nauseam.  An either-or explanation will never be sufficient, and no amount of studies will ever be complete or definitive. Even if all finite factors could be exhaustively studied and comprehensively understood,  science has no instruments to measure free will and grace. Both are impenetrable to the scientific eye. This does not prevent science from striving to learn all it can about the causes it can measure, but  should serve to increase science's appreciation of the mystery we are.

.

        Our Creator is a Father who loves us even when he does not approve of us.   So acceptance of others by us never means denial of any disorder, nor does it presume any who accept us think we are free from disorder!  Nor does acceptance mean approval of the activity that a disorder  provokes. Disorders are counter-productive, and end up being harmful to the self as well as to others. Acceptance and respect should be the starting point from which the person with any disorder is to be related to and dealt with, by family, friends and neighbors, doctors and lawyers, social workers and therapists, prison guards and or parole officers, etc. But the strange thing in our society and elsewhere is that homosexuality is no longer recognized as a disorder. Why is that? Why is gayness is mainstreamed, normalized, and legalized as an alternative life-style? I suppose one reason is that,  over time, we can be brainwashed and socially conditioned to see the abnormal as normal. Bombardment through the media, training in the schools, political lobbying, legislation, and cultural pressure has succeeded in making commonplace what was startlingly odd in society not so long ago.

       But Pope Benedict has not lost track of the true nature of sexuality He, Benedict, continues: "We could say, if we wanted to put it like this, that evolution has brought forth sexuality for the purpose of reproducing the species." By appealing to Evolution, which science sees as free from the taint of Religion,  he is able to point out what science has loss sight of, or refuses to respect: namely that sexuality is geared by its nature to reproduction. Any honest scientist who deals with plants,animals, humans, or genes and cell structure would have to agree with that observation.  Even an atheist who was a scientist has to admit this. Only then does he introduces Religion: "The same thing is true from a theological point of view as well. The meaning and direction of sexuality is to bring about the union of man and woman and in this way, to give humanity posterity, children, a future. This is the determination internal to the determination of sexuality. Everything else is against sexuality's intrinsic meaning and direction. This is a point we need to hold firm, even if it is not pleasing to our age."  Posterity, children, and future generations: it is so obvious that these are intrinsic to the meaning and direction  of sexuality, that it should not even have to be stated. How would our ancestors of long ago ever have gotten beyond  mere rutting, if that was all nature had designed them to do?  

Celibacy Equals Homosexuality?

We have to "head off a situation", Pope Benedict said, where "the celibacy of priests would practically end up being identified with the tendency to homosexuality". That's how my (two paragraph) quotation of his statement ends. That conclusion, however, is not a  a resting place for me or for us, but a point of departure. He sets out for us the problem he is struggling with, and with which our minds and hearts are to grapple.  But what precisely is the problem he is pointing to? Why would celibacy end up being equated with homosexuality?  How could that happen? Who would be doing the equating, and why are they  arriving at that conclusion? 

A possible answer to the question: They are the public, or at least that part of the public who come into contact with priests, and form impressions of what they see. That means they are mainly (but not exclusively) Catholics, and mainly churchgoing Catholics at that. What would make regular, churchgoing Catholics (the few of them left) start to identify the "celibacy of priests" with "the tendency to homosexuality"? The logical answer is: seeing priests whom they think are homosexual, whether they are or not.  

That clause, whether they are or not, is somewhat important. I can be heterosexual, yet appear to others as homosexual.  Or, I can be homosexual and still appear to others as heterosexual. It is not just a matter of what I am, but of what people perceive me to be. Generally, perceptions are accurate.

But perception is not infallibly in touch with the truth of things in every instance. At times my perceptions tell me more about myself than they do about what is really out there.  We assume our perceptions are correct unless we have good reason to question or doubt them. I suppose people would only start equating celibacy with the tendency to homosexuality when they start seeing a number of priests who strike them as homosexual. Not just seeing one or two, now and then, but seeing a lot of them, a multiplicity. If that happens, they would begin to think it is a normal state of affairs among the Catholic clergy. 

It's not helpful to waste a lot of time trying to discovering who is and who isn't homosexual, nor to puzzle over my mis-perceptions, and discover their causes. Why not? Much depends on each human being's personal history, of which sexual preferences are a part: my family, culture, education, experiences, past and present choices, plus the imponderable element of God's grace and my response to it. If I am  am mystery to me (and I am), how can I presume to have an accurate perception of you, since you are definitely a mystery too? Anyway, even if perceptions are generally accurate, and mis-perceptions were correctly addressed by each one of us, the result would be...what?  The one Pope Benedict arrived at: To think that these men were priests because they were not attracted to the female of the species but to the male. 

Since this is a concern of the pope, it is fair to assume he thinks that such a general perception is not just a dangerous possibility, but a probability. Any guesses on the likely  countries he thinks that such a conclusion about the clergy is taking place?   What would you say are the top three countries? Would the United States win, place or show?