A Secret World
Gill, James J.
lose our revolution but we do know that change should come and the only man capable of presiding over that change is Fidel. We are ready to deal but the U.S. wants blood to run in the...
...In Sipe's effort to supply statistics that give the appearance of a scientific approach, he distracts the reader from the book's loud and clear message that it is time for the hierarchy to make a truly sci- entific study of the sexual life of American priests, so that seminaries and formation programs can become more effective in preparing tomorrow's priests to succeed in living up to their call to celibacy, z CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 82) ally waged by actual people...
...Cuba today can be under- stood only in this historical context--a con- text that the Timerman book conspicuously fails to provide...
...This subservience offended the pride of patria in all but the most craven of Cubans...
...9document effects of low-intensity conflict...
...These startling figures are plau- sible, in view of Sipe's specialized career as a therapist and teacher who focuses his professional concems largely on the topic of sexuality, and who therefore attracts into his studies people dealing personally with sexual issues...
...Until the Castro revolution of 1959, Cuba functioned as a colony of the United States...
...He says, in other words, that he is not looking at the behavior of a sample of priests that adequately represents the Catholic clergy of the United States, or of any specific region within the country...
...Richard Sipe Brunner/Mazel, Inc., $29.95, 324 pp...
...Sipe makes clear at the beginning that be'has not conducted his study according to the canons of scientific research...
...BENEFITS: .9contributing to a fair and just Central American foreign policy .9room & board .9major medical health insurance .9monthly stipend .9a week's vacation every four months...
...9host short-term delegations...
...are at any one time involved either in a more or less stable relationship with a woman or, alternatively, with sequential women in an identifiable pattern of behav- ior...
...In my innocence, I expressed disbelief but checked and found that indeed the Cuban tariff schedule was maintained and regulated by a midlevel bureaucrat in the Department of State...
...Just how marginal, I can testify from experience...
...Two years later, I served as a very junior member of our delegation to the United Nations...
...He adds, "Approximately 10 percent of clergy...involve themselves in homo- sexual activity...
...As the P6rez history demonstrates, the way of the revolution was prepared by the con- stant intervention of the United States, which undermined the capacity of the Cubans to govern themselves...
...James J. Gill p eople both within and out- side the Catholic church are today all too aware of the limitations and weak- nesses of its priests...
...These spiritual, psychological, and physical needs, as Sipe identifies them, include work, prayer, community, service, physical self-care, security, ordered and balanced life- style, continuous learning, and beauty...
...2) their disclosures dur- ing "meetings, interviews, and consulta- tions...
...But probably the most sur- prised and embarrassed of all are the bish- ops and seminary formation personnel who, after providing years of intense for- mation, approved and ordained the men who eventually misbehaved sexually...
...TO: .9be a permanent presence with refugees...
...lose our revolution but we do know that change should come and the only man capable of presiding over that change is Fidel...
...Similarly, after describing his work as a "search" which is "related to, but distinct from, research," he exaggerates the applicability of his find- ings by asserting: "My research [sic] h~s generated some light on the question of clerical celibacy...
...WHERE: .9 in Guatemala/Southern Mexico (Application deadline: April 15, 1991) .9in Nicaragua (Application deadlines: May 30th Non-Spanish speakers, August 1st Spanish speakers...
...Neither does he describe the painful feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety, and discouragement that must plague the lives of so many of these priests whom he finds acting in ways con- trary to the promise they made to God and the church on the day of their ordination...
...MICHAEL J. BAXTER, C.S.C...
...This book reports the results of his inves- tigations...
...and (3) the information provided by priests' "lovers, sexual partners, victims, or otherwise direct observers of it...
...To help readers understand the celibacy requirement attached to the priesthood, the determined to keep their revolution and to spit in the eye of the neighboring giant regardless of the costs in civil liberties and human rights...
...After discussing these elements, Sipe (sur- prisingly to me) complains that there is "no seminary in the United States, training priests, which has so much as a one-semester course on celibacy or on the nec- essary correlative material of human sexual development...
...These match the topics listed in VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: .9age range form 21 to retired .9faith-based .9nonviolent .9one year commitment .9Spanish speaking or willing to learn...
...Sipe does himself and the reader a disservice by implying that his valuable, though biased, findings can be understood to represent a sexual profile of the entire American Catholic presbyter- ate...
...There are no examples, none, of this sort of candor and eloquence either from Cuban government officials or from those artists and intellectuals who passionately defend .the revolution, sometimes with tears in their eyes at its follies and stupidities...
...The number of Sipe's informants, totaled fifteen hundred, whereas the number of priests in the United States adds up to more than fifty-three thousand...
...variety of sexual practices in which some priests are currently engaged, and what steps a successful accomplishment of life- long chastity requires, A.W...
...Frankly, I have much more confidence in the moral judgments of these soldier- CO's...
...Also potentially helpful to seminarians and priests striving to form their attitudes, commitments, relationships, and behavior patterns in line with celibacy is the book's final chapter which deals first with the proc- ess of becoming celibate and then with the essential elements that must be present if one is to persevere successfully in chastity...
...It was an error on Sipe's part, in my opin- ion, to point out the limited nature of his study (fifteen hundred priests) and then later in the book make generalized state- ments such as: "At any one time, 2 percent of vowed celibate clergy can be said to have achieved celibacy...
...REV...
...NW, Room 109 Washington, DC 20037 textbooks on psychopathology, including pattems of heterosexuality, homosexuality, masturbation, molestation of children, pornography, transvestism, exhibitionism, alcoholism, and several medical disorders that result in abnormal sexual behavior...
...If this neglect is a fact, the author has unquestionably pointed out a defect that calls for immediate repair...
...In recounting the history of the "ties of singular intimacy," Perez tells us that what goes on in Cuba is very much a function of what goes on with the United States...
...During my first month on the job, an American businessman telephoned to ask about the duty on a particular product in the Cuban tariff schedule...
...These unworthy stratagems have not only failed to bring down Castro, they have cast Fidel in the role of David to our Goliath and have made Cubans more defiant, more PRIESTS & SEX A SECRET WORLD Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy A.W...
...As Louis P6rez makes clear in his excellent history of U.S.-Cuban relations, "Cuba was reduced to marginal participation in the conduct of the affairs of their own state...
...110: Commonweal...
...In 1956, I was a newly minted foreign service officer serving in the trade agreements section of the Department of State...
...WRITE TO: Brenda Humphrey, Witness For Peace 2201 P St...
...It is dif- ficult to avoid the conclusion that Timerman's silencing of the revolution's leaders in his book equates to the censorship he so rightly condemns...
...9accompany victims of war...
...9support human rights...
...In effect, what Sipe demonstrates is that if you describe all the various ways that a person can act out sexually, you can somewhere find priests whose occasional or habitual behavior falls into one or more of these categories...
...The author selects disguised examples from his study of priests to show that presumably celibate men are engaging in virtually every possible type of sexual activity...
...It also contains a flaw so obvious and so self- destructive that the book has already drawn severe criticism...
...His summary diagram shows that, in his study, half of the fifteen hundred priests were found to be practicing some type of sexual behavior that is con- trary to their promise to live in a celibate manner...
...Of special worth is the initial section of the book which illuminates the origins of celibacy as a requirement for priesthood, discusses the various meanings of celibacy, and emphasizes the difficult task priests face when they take on this obligation in the context of an unappreciative culture and a church which "does itself a grave disservice as well as personal injustice by requiring the practice of celibacy without 8 February 1991:109 actually supporting it...
...During my first week there, President Batista's ambassador sought me out and, in the most fawning manner, told me that he and the entire Cuban delegation existed to serve the interest of United States foreign policy and that he and his entire staff were at my disposition...
...If the United States would end the embargo and permit normal commerce, travel, and communication, then Fidel Castro might well produce a tropical version of pere-stroika, if, however, President George Bush continues to make speeches about "a rev- olution betrayed" and calls for wider and more effective sanctions, he will only suc- ceed in reinvigorating the tired theme of patria o muerte...
...Sipe makes the statement that "'about 20 percent of priests vowed to celibacy...
...It contains a wealth of informa- tion that will be valuable to persons involved in the formation of priests, both before ordination and afterward...
...wants blood to run in the streets and Castro's head on a pike...
...He makes no attempt, however, to show how the indi- viduals became prone--whether by nature or num~e-- to engage in their various non- celibate ways of functioning...
...He admits that his study covers only men whose sexual behavior came to his knowledge from three limited sources: (1) their psychotherapy sessions with him...
...The author is a counselor and educator who, for more than twenty-five years, has been studying the sexual lives of his clients and pupils...
...Richard Sipe has contributed A Secret WorM: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy...
...government...
...Widely published examples of pedophilia, sexual relationships, and concealed mar- riages have spotlighted the vulnerable sex- uality of the clergy...
...I politely advised the caller to communicate with the Cuban embassy and he, equally politely, told me that the embassy had told him that Cuban tariffs were set by the U.S...
...In the calm, detached manner befitting a historian, P6rez notes that in thirty years since the revolution, United States foreign policy toward Cuba has included eight plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, the strangula- tion of Cuban commerce by the blocking of international credits and threats of retal- iation against other countries unless they cut off trade with Cuba, and sabotage of the economy by bribing foreign manufac- turers to ship Cuba defective machinery and spare parts...
...With the country up for sale, organized crime took over Havana and turned it into a city of rampant vice with drugs sold openly in the gambling houses and with fourteen-year- old prostitutes of both sexes roaming the streets...
...The central sections of A Secret Worm present an exhaustive array of sexual behaviors that deviate from the ideal of celibacy...
...Graciously undistracted by the big picture, having set aside the Pentagon's numbers games, they have decided that, in the words of Robert Chandler, Second Armored Division (Forward), "I will in no way, shape, or form, participate and contribute in the senseless slaughter of another man or woman...
...Most lay persons, and perhaps the majority of priests, have been shocked at the extent of these violations of celibacy...
Vol. 118 • February 1991 • No. 3
