Let all men who use the seminary as an excuse to dump the women they have trifled with be afflicted with horrible pimples!!! And may these pimples arrange themselves on their foreheads in a pattern spelling out very rude words!!!
For I have had yet another email from yet another Nice Catholic Girl who has been badly treated by a guy who got away with it because he "might have a priestly vocation"! He's now in the seminary, surprise, surprise. Will he by out by Christmas, or will he hang in there so he can date a different woman next summer?
I am not sure what part of "seduces and bamboozles women" adds up to "priestly vocation."
Oh, I want to scream.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!
The good news for the general Catholic population is that such men usually drop out of the seminary, either at Christmas or just before they are scheduled to take their diaconate vows; this way we don't end up with more priests with semi-girlfriends they keep at bay with pious words about their "celibacy."
If a guy has managed to get his hands under your blouse and yet tells you that he might have a priestly vocation, he deserves a ringing slap. If he slaps you back, your next move is to the computer to write to your parish priest or the rector of whatever seminary it is he wants to go to.
The only men who belong in the seminary are men who respect women and can be trusted around women. These do not include men who pressure women into sexual activity or lead women into thinking they will marry them and then suddenly pull the rug out from under the women's feet.
If a woman chases a guy or pressures him sexually, and he takes off to the seminary--okay, fair enough. She should ice her psychic bruises and promise God to be a better girl. But if a guy chases a girl or pressures her sexually and then takes off to the seminary so he doesn't have to introduce the girl to his parents or what have you, then he is a real jerk, not a romantic victim of called-by-God-ness.
And he's not even original because I get so many letters about pre-seminarians, seminarians, and in-between-ians that I am working out a General Theory of Seminarians. And I thank God for whichever good men, men who do respect women and can be trusted around women, can be found in the seminaries.
7 comments:
If you need more ammo-anecdotes-for your Theory of Seminarians, I've got some: the aspiring Jesuit who gets you on his couch one week and wants to just be friends the next. To his credit, he did abstain from dating during his year discernment and while in formation. He left after 2.3 years and is now engaged to a lovely woman. Or there's the fellow from college who flip-flopped more than an American politician: i'm discerning, i'm dating this girl, I'm engaged to this girl, and I'm ending it a month before the big day, i'm a seminarian!, i'm leaving to go propose to a friend i made on a long retreat, i'm married!
The lesson from these stories is not that yes, seminarians will leave for the love of a good woman, it's that in all likelihood, that woman is not you. And if it is you, and I was your sister or friend, I'd advise you that this "certainty of call" should be issue #1 at a Pre Cana appointment with a priest.
Funny that I just mentioned such a thing in my recent blog post though I only wrote about two sentences.
Funny that I just mentioned such a thing in my recent blog post though I only wrote about two sentences.
In defense of seminarians, the good ones I go to school with:
The good seminarians who respect women and can be trusted around them actually dislike these guys as much as you do. I'm not privy to the details of my classmates' seminary lives, but there is a general flavor of disgust, frustration, and even scorn leveled at guys who trifle with girls and flip flop in and out of the seminary. We are appalled by encounters with them, but they are often fairly brief. The good guys who have to live in community with them and share novitiate quarters, kitchen patrol, and rolls of toilet paper with the warts also find them... er.. trying. They may even have it a little worse.
Fifi
I like the good ones... They don't have it worse than the trifled-with-girls, though. Except the ones who get hit on by fellow seminarians. Or this one guy I know who, when at an American Seminary That Shall Remain Nameless, was in some "sharing seminar" and one seminarian told them all that to make sure he wasn't sexually attracted to children, he looked up kiddie porn on the net. And my pal, horrified, shouted, "But that's CRAZY!" and the seminary prof said, "Now, now. Everyone should be able to share in a non-judgmental environment" or something like that.
My pal dropped out of that sem (or was forced out for being "rigid") but there will be a happy ending (fingers crossed) shortly.
Occasionally you meet women like that. I knew one. "College! Convent! More college! Different convent! Boyfriend! Convent again! Accepted and definitely going to be a nun! Abruptly engaged! Now married!"
when I told a mutual acquaintance that she'd gotten engaged, he said wryly, "Let's hope she sticks with it!"
Now, so far as I know, she was absolutely sincere in each of her flip-flops. But it was exhausting for people who had to try to keep up with what she was doing.
Sort of relevant to this post, can you write something on dealing with... ex-significant others? Sometimes, like naughty seminarians, they come bouncing in and out of your life...
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