Destabilizing Society

The Vatican posted its edict against homosexual seminarians today. I haven't been able to find an online copy of the actual document, but I'll keep looking.

In the Reuters news release, we get some interesting comments about homosexuality as the Catholic Church sees it:

"[H]omosexuality risk[s] "destabilizing people and society", ha[s] no social or moral value and c[an] never match the importance of the relationship between a man and a woman...
homosexuality is "against conjugal life, the life of the family, and priestly life"...
"In no case is this form of sexuality a sexual alternative, or even less, a reality that is equivalent to that which is shared by a man and a woman engaged in matrimonial life"...
It said homosexuality was "a sexual tendency and not an identity" and repeated the Church's stand against allowing gays to marry or to adopt children. It also called homosexuality "an incomplete and immature part of human sexuality"

I just have one question--if matrimony--heterosexual matrimony--is so all-important, if it is the 'complete and mature' form of sexuality, why do we have celibate priests?

If the "reality...shared by a man and a woman engaged in matrimonial life" is so fucking great--in fact the supreme sexual reality (as odd as that sounds)--why don't priests marry? O, I know, they're married to the Church... but the Church is an awfully frigid sexual partner, I'm afraid.

If heterosexual matrimony is the norm to which all faithful are intended to conform, why do we have dozens and dozens of Catholic saints whose greatest accomplishment was their virginity (e.g. Sts. Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Catherine, and Anastasia the Younger, Maria Goretti)? Why was Jesus single? How about our "ever-virgin Mary"--her matrimonial reality was not a sexual reality (must suck for Joseph). If marriage is so terrific, why did Jesus call many of his disciples away from it? Why does the Church suffer divorce to be an option? Why does Paul say, "[H]e who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does even better" (I Corinthians 7:38)?

You know what? Celibacy as a sexual norm is societally destabilizing. Celibacy is a sexual tendency, not an identity. It is firmly against the "conjugal life [and] the life of the family."

Whether you're fucking a guy or not, being not married has the same basic knock against it--you're not producing kids, and if that's the pinnacle of Catholic sexuality, then celibacy is effectively no different in its deviation from that norm than homosexuality. The emphasis on married life as equal or better than celibacy as a sexual norm or ideal is relatively new, most likely created, I think, to justify the hatred for homosexuality.

Talk about hypocrisy.