This author hides behind some very simplistic beliefs about human behaviour in order to maintain the resentment he seems to have harboured all his life.

You cannot have a vow which excludes having any sexual feelings. How would anyone know if you kept your vow or had broken it? Vows are public promises and whether a person lives up to them or not is under public scrutiny. Even in the case of a well concealed affair there is always someone other than the celibate who knows that the vows have been broken. Sexual feelings take place in the privacy of your own body. How can you tell if the person next to you on the bus is having ‘sexual feelings’ or not? It would be ridiculous to have a public vow which could not even be seen by anyone else.

Equating sexual abuse with celibacy is just as simplistic. Sexual abuse is not about sex. It is not just a preferred orientation or an outlet where no other normal outlet is available. Celibate people who abused children and then later marry and have ‘normal’ sexual relations can often continue to sexually abuse children as well. It is a very naïve understanding of sexual behaviour to think that all that is happening in a sexual act is the release of sexual tension. People indulge in sex for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with sexual feelings and a great deal to do with emotional needs.

Similarly to say that physical abuse is the result of celibacy is trite. There are millions of acts of physical abuse committed by people who have healthy sex lives and there are many people with no sex lives who are not abusive. There is a whole range of reasons why people are physically abusive but lack of sex would be pretty much at the bottom of the list. Lack of freedom, lack of power, and injustice maybe reasons but lack of sex – hardly.

Only one word to say to this...

"EVENTUALLY??"

As someone who grew up in Ireland, I found Brian Holden's article to have a strong air of both being written from a long distance and being lost in the past.

Hostility (from current or lapsed Catholics) to the power of the Catholic Church is not something that has yet to occur. Instead it has a long and prominent history in Ireland. Examples include resentment of the Church's role in ruining the political career of Parnell in the 19th century (because of his adultery), the anti-clericalism in the works of a number of prominent writers (e.g.James Joyce), and the introduction of reforms, such as divorce, in the face of strong church opposition in recent decades.

Since the 1970s the Catholic Church in Ireland has declined greatly in status and influence, and is now but a shadow of its former self. English hostility to Catholicism was not just reserved for the Irish variey. The loyalty of English Catholics was regarded as suspect over many centuries and they too had been subject to penal laws.

I don't dispute Brian's account of his days attending a Catholic school, which he describes as cruel and puritanical. What needs to be understood is that both in Ireland and Australia, Catholic education (and Protestant education in independent schools for that matter)has changed dramatically over the decades. Religious attitudes are now far more liberal, and, even in Ireland, corporal punishment was abolished decades ago.

thanks david f.

i still disagree, but i think this is quibbling over a minor historical point. what is clear is that there is still no shortage of superstitious loons who think humans are god's special creatures, who deny the "just another" in every way, shape and form.