A Yes to God?
In his 1979 essay, "Celibacy: Exquisite Torture or a Yes to God?"
Ravindra-Svarupa dasa (Dr. William Deadwyler) writes about his speaking
before Catholic seminarians at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in
Philadelphia:
"...I knew some of their problems. I knew that the Church was losing priests
at an alarming rate, and that there was agitation among the clergy for a
married priesthood. Indeed, I had seen some of this turbulence at an
appallingly close range: while I was doing graduate work in religion at
Temple University. I had watched as one Catholic
religious after another abandoned their vows to take up secular life.
Some got married; others simply hit the streets...
"...After years of lecturing, I could get just about any audience to chant,
but this chanting was exceptional; this chanting was robust, spirited, with
none of the sectarian reluctance I had feared. It was alive. These were
clearly not ordinary men...
"...with much bitterness and resentment, they began criticizing the rule of
celibacy. The Krishna consciouness movement, of course, has married priests.
(I'm one.) But I told them that even married couples restrict sexual
intercourse to once a month; and then only if they are trying to have a
child. ('Rhythm' we regard as another form of cheating.) One of them said
that it sounded *worse* than celibacy; they clearly didn't want marriage on
those terms, either.
"I was appalled by the amount of sexual frustration these men were giving
voice to. It was wrong. So I started to question them about their life in
the seminary, and it soon became quite clear why they were having such
immense difficulty. To begin with, they had large stretches of idle time on
their hands. Moreover, they freely read novels and magazines, habitually
watched television. All these activities certainly agitated their senses.
And there was nothing spiritual about their eating habits. It was strictly
for the tongue, and they were accustomed to drinking beer and smoking. This
was their plight: they had lots of idle time, their senses were kept
continuously under the bombardment of materialistic stimulation, and
then--they were told to be celibate!
No one could be celibate under those circumstances. They were being cruelly, exquisitely tortured. Then I remembered the monsignor with his perverse syllogism: 'Everything God has made is good. God has made alcohol...' (He made arsenic, too, but you don't ingest that!) I became angry. It was criminal to do this. These seminarians were not ordinary men: they wanted, and wanted very badly, to dedicate their lives fully to God. But nobody was showing them how. They were living in a way to agitate all their senses, and then commanded to be celibate! Of course they were always falling down, always laboring under a huge load of guilt. No wonder they were so cynical, so bitter and resentful. I wondered why nobody was teaching them. They didn't even know the ABCs of spiritual life. They were being criminally betrayed.
Of course, Ravindra Svarupa dasa comments on Bhagavad-gita 12.10 in the
November 1991 Back to Godhead: "...there's absolutely nothing wrong with the
movement's having all kinds of people who aren't following the strict
regulative principles. Where we have a problem is with people who have at
one time or another taken formal vows to follow the
principles of the second group and then found themsleves unable to keep
them.
Go on to: A Liberal Interpretation of Scripture
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