Foley on Priests' Heterosexual Eros

Baylor prof Mike Foley emailed me this response to my post asking about his reference to priests' heterosexual eros in his letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Rob Vischer is certainly right to want to hear more about my thoughts on the relevance of heterosexuality to the exercise of the priesthood, since the constraints of a letter to the editor did not allow me to elaborate. While I am still not sure I can do justice to this important topic, let me at least offer a few more grains for the mill:

Essentially I am contending that heterosexuality (or for that matter, homosexuality) is far more than a desire for sexual union of a particular kind; it is an orientation that affects one’s appropriation of interpersonal responsibilities. Specifically, male heterosexuality at its best seems to me to involve a custodial yet selfless desire to protect and serve those to whom one is naturally united in a family bond.  In other words, it is not sexual intercourse but virtuous fathering that is the natural perfection or end of a man’s basic heterosexual impulses.  As Aquinas notes, one of the most basic precepts of the natural law is not just the begetting but the providing for and education of offspring.

It seems to me that the Western tradition of a celibate priesthood shrewdly denies a priest a corporeal family so that the zeal he would have exercised on their behalf is devoted exclusively to his ecclesiastical family. This transfer of familial allegiance is more than just a horizontal act of “time management”; it is a vertical transformation of a man’s attention and effort from a family born of the flesh to one born of the spirit. (I hesitate to use the word “sublimation” here, for though what I am talking about does indeed make sublime a man’s basic orientation, the word has unfortunately been kidnapped by Freud and thus carries a number of connotations that I do not believe are generally true.)

I should add that my basic inspiration for my remarks here and in the WSJ letter is Fr. James McLucas’ provocative essay, “The Emasculation of the Priesthood,” presciently written before the sex abuse scandals in this country ever broke. Though Fr. McLucas is primarily critiquing the effects of contemporary liturgy on the manliness of priests, I believe his argument has broader implications that could be developed in any number of different directions.