"Living Celibacy..."

Father Gerdenio Sonny Manuel few years ago published a book “Living Celibacy: Healthy Pathways for Priests.”  This is what he said about this book:

“I wrote the book because the life of a priest and our celibacy is not widely understood by the public, and what is understood, unfortunately, is the mistaken assumption that emerged after the clergy crisis, that priests are either dysfunctional and that if they aren’t, the life would make them so,” says Fr. Manuel. “People haven’t been talking about this aspect of our life and they haven’t talked about it in a way that is accessible and understandable. If we keep being told that our way of life is odd, we will begin internalizing that.” - See more at: http://www.jesuit.org/blog/index.php/tag/father-gerdenio-sonny-manuel/#sthash.EguXKEDh.dpuf

Sometimes I wonder, how much do we us priests understand about celibacy?  How many of us are excited about it? How many of us know how to live it in a healthy way. When I was in the seminary, I did not get any good teaching on celibacy.  I remember, we were asking our professors to teach us something about it.  What they did? They told us stories from their visits of their own families and told us how difficult it was to deal with small children and a house full of people and noise. But, they did not say how to enjoy celibacy.

So, I had to learn on my own.  People need to take their lives in their own hands.