I have been in formation for the priesthood for two years now and I have never heard in a homily the process religious or consecrated people undergo when they find themselves struggling with affection for another person. Many times I have heard of the examples of many who left the seminary or consecrated life to marry, but never of the process of remaining in consecrated life while letting go of a crucial aspect of being human--of developing a loving and romantic relationship with another person. Many issues are around this topic. A crucial question that has come up recently is the possible option for religious to marry for example, but the question is far greater than a stand on celibacy in consecrated life. As a seminarian, I find myself questioning the integrity of the office and of my vocation. It is quite simple for the Church to call it a 'gift' but what it lacks to explain and fully reconcile is the counterpart that the gift comes with. It is to no interest for me to make this a theological discussion because while these two years in formation has lack a human side to the vulnerability of consecrated people when they find themselves struggling with infatuation, it has been very informative in all the theological reasons for the office of the priesthood to be a celibate one, and so there is no need to go over those. Also, there are those who talk about the office in technical or practical purposes. Stating over again that the office spins around the idea of being completely flexible and unattached to be effective in the practice of the ministerial service. Without further argument, this view does not only equate vocation with work, but it reduces celibacy to practicality.
Perhaps one of the best talks I have heard in the topic was by a priest who once said that love was a decision. In a society where we often think of love as a sentiment, feeling or even ecstatic experience--commitment is erased from the equation. While I have come to find much truth in this, the dilemma remains. To the consecrated or religious, love is professed and expressed to a community, binding in intimate love the unity between an individual and a group or community. The problem in the office exists in the counterpart of this expression of love in which it can also be said that because an individual is committed to the community--he or she is not fully committed to any particular individual. This is a reality religious people face everyday. While priests for instance have many friends and countless acquaintances, they are not committed fully to one particular relationship because of the nature of the very office that tells them to be committed to all people. Here, I not only find problems in that a person might go all his life living a delusion sentiment of commitment in his vocation by choosing to love his congregation, parishioners or people he serves, as a group, while at the same time failing to be truly intimate with any particular individual. That is, being passive and transitory in people's lives. In most ministerial works in fact, priests see people at their birth, first communion, matrimony and death, and rarely in the 'in-between's, and so when we say that they are committed to a group, are we saying only during certain highlights of their life? Instead of commitment, the word practical or useful comes to mind.
The questions are many. Can a consecrated person be committed to a group and at the same time in a very personal way to an individual? Can a consecrated person be committed to a community despite the transitory nature of his or her vocation? Does accepting the gift of a consecrated life deprive religious of a certain aspect of their humanity?
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