The Contest of Moralities: Negotiating Compulsory Celibacy and Sexual Intimacy in the Roman Catholic Priesthood

Abstract

Religions can claim moral fixity while experiencing moral fluidity, a contradiction that produces social tensions. By going behind the facade of a fixed morality, found in the official teaching on compulsory celibacy for Roman Catholic priests, this article explores how respective moralities have been constructed and negotiated by the papacy of John Paul II and priests who have sexually intimate friendships. In examining social processes that are used in the production of moralities, I show how the papacy constructs etymologies to establish its claim that celibacy is an essential tradition, which are concomitantly rhetorical representations of a fixed morality. I then analyse the idiomatic constructions of priests with ‘friends' in which they informally challenge the etymological ploys of the papacy with alternative readings of tradition, representations that, in turn, create new moralities. Features of this contest of moralities are then examined, which suggest that the tension between moral fixity and moral fluidity constantly tests a religion's readiness for change.