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About this book
Based on interviews with Roman Catholic seminarians, priests and former priests, as well as with managers of seminaries, teaching staff, psychologists and psychiatrists, this book considers the lives of the clergy, beginning with the period before entering the seminary. With attention to both heterosexual and homosexual relationships – and so addressing the tension that exists between Catholic teaching and the reality of clerical lives – this wide-ranging description of seminary life encompasses many issues which are not strictly sexual or emotional, such as time organisation, the importance of study, hierarchical relations and friendship. Showing that the lives of seminarians – and later, priests – are absorbed in balancing the expectations of their role with their need for an emotional life and with maintaining an independent, free inner self, with the result that celibacy can come to be viewed as a pretence to be upheld scrupulously in the public sphere only, Sexuality and the Catholic Priesthood: The 'Chaste' Caste will appeal to scholars of sociology and religious studies with interests in gender and sexuality, the Catholic Church and priestly vocations.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1. The Autobiographical Roots of a Research Project: The Mystery of Clerical Sexuality
- 2. In Search of the Truth: The Story of a Challenging Enquiry
- 3. Catholic Priesthood and Pastoral Power: An Unbreakable Union
- 4. Chastity and Sacrality in Catholicism: The Celibacy of the Catholic Clergy
- 5. Manufacturing ‘God’s Men’: The Task of the Catholic Seminars
- 6. Seminars as Total Institutions
- 7. Personal Identity and Clerical Vocation: Who Goes Into a Seminary Today?
- 8. Obsession and Guilt: Seminarians’ Troubled Sex Lives
- 9. Homophobia and Homophilia in the Seminaries: Two Faces of a Single Coin
- 10. Homosexuality in the Seminaries – Pain, Denial and Cynicism
- 11. Rare Birds in the Seminaries: The Challenging Lives of Heterosexual Students
- 12. The Elephant in the Room: Secrets, Denial and Lies in the Training of the Catholic Clergy
- 13. A Free for All: The Sex Lives of Heterosexual Priests
- 14. Emotional Needs and Unbridled Sex: The Homosexual Clergy
- 15. Clerical Lies and Public Welfare
- References
- Index