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A Secret World: Sexuality And The Search For Celibacy
A Secret World is a valuable contribution to the field of Family Therapy. Looks at the history and origins of celibacy, discusses its role in the priesthood, and considers the psychological aspects of celibacy.
324 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1990
3 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
A.W. Richard Sipe
11 books6 followersFormer Benedictine monk for 18 years, sociologist and author.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 2, 2017
So, this week I read the book A Secret World, which is a report of a groundbreaking study of the sex lives of Catholic priests, published in 1990. One theme throughout is the way that inadequate sex education led to men making the decision to enter a celibate priesthood with all kinds of misconceptions about sex and sexuality. For instance, one priest reported that, when he was ordained at age 26, he believed that every act of coitus resulted in a pregnancy. Therefore, he figured that by choosing celibacy, he was maybe giving up, at most, five or six sexual encounters over his lifetime, since he imagined that, were he to marry, that's as many kids as he'd want.
Another common thread is the rationalizations and denial that priests resorted to in order to accommodate their sexual behavior within their vocation. Some of these were so extreme that it made me wonder if it's possible that gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar really convinced himself he was providing needed medical treatment to the girls and women he sexually abused.
It's a fascinating read, not only for its view inside the Catholic practice of celibacy, but for the psychology more broadly. There's way too much Freud in the analysis, but otherwise a lot of insight. There was wide variety in the ways that priests explored and expressed their sexuality, and in how these explorations affected them. It felt like to me like, while it focused entirely on the priesthood, there was a lot of insight about human sexuality and psychology more broadly.
Another common thread is the rationalizations and denial that priests resorted to in order to accommodate their sexual behavior within their vocation. Some of these were so extreme that it made me wonder if it's possible that gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar really convinced himself he was providing needed medical treatment to the girls and women he sexually abused.
It's a fascinating read, not only for its view inside the Catholic practice of celibacy, but for the psychology more broadly. There's way too much Freud in the analysis, but otherwise a lot of insight. There was wide variety in the ways that priests explored and expressed their sexuality, and in how these explorations affected them. It felt like to me like, while it focused entirely on the priesthood, there was a lot of insight about human sexuality and psychology more broadly.
May 25, 2023
“To be misunderstood can be the writer’s punishment for having disturbed the reader’s peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.”
-Anatole Broyard
First and foremost anyone who picks up ‘A Secret World’ needs to recognize that it is an ethnographic study. As such A.W. Richard Sipe presented twenty-five years worth of case studies that he conducted with over 1,500 Catholic priests as they pertained to their sexual lives. What he found out was that more than half of these men were non-celibate in spite of having taken vows of celibacy. Sipe details, as an ethnographer, the various ways in which these behaviours manifest themselves in other behaviours and traits beyond this immediate concern. If you do not understand ethnographic research, then Sipe’s writings may appear wide-ranging. But Sipe largely explores clerical sexuality from the point of view of the subject. He presents these men’s social situation along with the various understandings that this groups’ members use to interpret, explain, and justify their behaviour. Ethnography depends heavily on the researcher participating in the setting of the people being studied. As both a former Benedictine monk and a former Roman Catholic priest Sipe was uniquely positioned to do so. And as such he details patterns both in terms of quality and quantity. It is a fascinating read especially because there had never been such an extensive, behind the scenes study before his writing, nor has there been to this day. Certainly his training as a trained clinician is also there. But in the end you are simply left with a lot of material…a ‘thick description.’ This book lays bare the framework for Sipe's later writings.
This book is highly disturbing on a lot of levels. It disturbed the USCCB enough to reject it, refusing to consider its own corporate practice and all that their hypocrisy implies for the inauthentic human sexuality of its members, along with the manner in which that system perpetuates its own self-sealing policies to these ends. It disturbed corporate religious denominations of all stripes across North America and around the world enough to enact self-protective measures so that they could say to those groomed and abused within their own churches that they and their system could not possibly be at fault. But in the end his research disturbed Sipe enough to awaken him to a larger, more holistic understanding of himself. What it should do is to cause sensitive, critical thinkers of good will, both in and outside of formal religious institutions, to look more deeply at the origins of their own sexualities (object-relations psychology) and how they may wind up inflicting themselves on their partners, families, work places, and social groups with whom they interact. At least that is its potential.
This book is simply an inconvenient truth. Thirty-three years after its publication, and with its great statistical accuracy having been proven time and again, institutional Christianity is sadly no closer to truly coming to terms with genuine human sexuality than it ever has been, except in a few isolated, incidental lives and in the writings of very few brutally honest people in its two-thousand year history.
Taken on contemplatively and even prayerfully this is an intense, great read.
-Anatole Broyard
First and foremost anyone who picks up ‘A Secret World’ needs to recognize that it is an ethnographic study. As such A.W. Richard Sipe presented twenty-five years worth of case studies that he conducted with over 1,500 Catholic priests as they pertained to their sexual lives. What he found out was that more than half of these men were non-celibate in spite of having taken vows of celibacy. Sipe details, as an ethnographer, the various ways in which these behaviours manifest themselves in other behaviours and traits beyond this immediate concern. If you do not understand ethnographic research, then Sipe’s writings may appear wide-ranging. But Sipe largely explores clerical sexuality from the point of view of the subject. He presents these men’s social situation along with the various understandings that this groups’ members use to interpret, explain, and justify their behaviour. Ethnography depends heavily on the researcher participating in the setting of the people being studied. As both a former Benedictine monk and a former Roman Catholic priest Sipe was uniquely positioned to do so. And as such he details patterns both in terms of quality and quantity. It is a fascinating read especially because there had never been such an extensive, behind the scenes study before his writing, nor has there been to this day. Certainly his training as a trained clinician is also there. But in the end you are simply left with a lot of material…a ‘thick description.’ This book lays bare the framework for Sipe's later writings.
This book is highly disturbing on a lot of levels. It disturbed the USCCB enough to reject it, refusing to consider its own corporate practice and all that their hypocrisy implies for the inauthentic human sexuality of its members, along with the manner in which that system perpetuates its own self-sealing policies to these ends. It disturbed corporate religious denominations of all stripes across North America and around the world enough to enact self-protective measures so that they could say to those groomed and abused within their own churches that they and their system could not possibly be at fault. But in the end his research disturbed Sipe enough to awaken him to a larger, more holistic understanding of himself. What it should do is to cause sensitive, critical thinkers of good will, both in and outside of formal religious institutions, to look more deeply at the origins of their own sexualities (object-relations psychology) and how they may wind up inflicting themselves on their partners, families, work places, and social groups with whom they interact. At least that is its potential.
This book is simply an inconvenient truth. Thirty-three years after its publication, and with its great statistical accuracy having been proven time and again, institutional Christianity is sadly no closer to truly coming to terms with genuine human sexuality than it ever has been, except in a few isolated, incidental lives and in the writings of very few brutally honest people in its two-thousand year history.
Taken on contemplatively and even prayerfully this is an intense, great read.
June 14, 2020
A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy (Hardcover)
by A.W. Richard Sipe
have to get through Worldcat
will order when the library opens someday again
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard...
The following is from the library computer about the movie Spotlight. Dr Sipe is the
Spotlight newspaper team's scientific advisor.
"The riveting true story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation that would rock the city and cause a crisis in one of the world's oldest and most trusted institutions. When the newspaper's tenacious 'Spotlight' team of reporters delve into allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church, their year-long investigation uncovers a decades-long cover-up at the highest levels of Boston's religious, legal, and government establishment."
by A.W. Richard Sipe
have to get through Worldcat
will order when the library opens someday again
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard...
The following is from the library computer about the movie Spotlight. Dr Sipe is the
Spotlight newspaper team's scientific advisor.
"The riveting true story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation that would rock the city and cause a crisis in one of the world's oldest and most trusted institutions. When the newspaper's tenacious 'Spotlight' team of reporters delve into allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church, their year-long investigation uncovers a decades-long cover-up at the highest levels of Boston's religious, legal, and government establishment."
November 2, 2009
Based on 1500 interview. Solid, but also tendentious ?
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews