Hey, it isn't only my opinion. I've had a few Jewish boyfriends tell me the same. So why do we have this reputation?
The answer lies in two words: forbidden fruit.
Did you take a gander at that man? Did you notice he's wearing a Roman collar? Yikes, if ever the rule of celibacy (aka "continence") begged to be broken!
Today on "CBS This Morning," three young seminarians in Rome were interviewed. See the adorable one in the middle? He admitted celibacy was his biggest impediment to joining the priesthood. (Gee, ya think? He could easily get his fancy tickled by both genders!)
Straight Catholic girls and gay Catholic boys are endlessly titillated by images of desirable but untouchable men -- in churches and schools, in religious textbooks, on prayer cards.
First and foremost in the seduction department is, of course, Jesus, who is beautiful in every one of his artistic incarnations (even those in which he's hanging on the cross!)
Then there's St. Sebastian, probably the hottest of all the holy hotties (if you can overlook the arrows), and a host of other martyrs and saints.
Young Catholics have to fend off fantasies of cute young priests, too, and even their own classmates. All are off-limits to their libidos. No wonder we're easy. By the time we're teenagers, we're ready to explode!
The older I got, the more I wondered, What is with this Church? It hates and fears "the flesh," but its most revered figures are portrayed as gorgeous people in various states of undress, not to mention suffering. Believers are expected to view them as pious and pure, and to have only spiritually refined reactions to their images. Throw the rule of celibacy -- forced sexual abstinence -- into the mix, and one could swear there's a highly charged vein of kink running through the Rock.
I've been reminded of all these things during media coverage of the papal election. How wonderful it would be if the Catholic Church pulled its head out of its antiquated, doctrinaire ass and stopped treating the human body as nothing more than a facilitator of procreation. What a miracle it would be if those portly or withered cardinals really looked at Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel -- all the vigorous, well-muscled, near-nude figures -- and had a collective epiphany: Damn, what have we been thinking for all these repressed, sexless centuries? Why have we been encouraging shame and secrecy? What's wrong with priests getting married? What's wrong with engaging in sex for pleasure, and non(cisgendered)heterosexuals engaging in sex for pleasure too? Men created celibacy, but God created orgasms! And while we're at it, let's encourage rather than forbid birth control, 'cause if Earth is the Crown of Creation, we should really try to ensure that overpopulation won't soil that crown beyond reclamation. Holy shit, have we been hypocrites or what?
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