Pope Benedict XVI declared the year from 19 June 2009 to 19 June 2010 as the "Year of the Priest" and it has just ended with a massive mass at St Peter's in Rome. At its concluding ceremony, before 15,000 priests, the Pope made an oblique defence of celibacy - arguing among other things, that celibacy is "an act of faith and fidelity" towards God and a way to anticipate on earth the pureness of the afterlife.
He then went on to say why being a priest was a sacred office more than a job.
Yet to me, the veneration of celibacy is anti-human.
Celibacy is not confined to Roman Catholicism.
There are Buddhist, Indian and yogic traditions of celibacy.
And there is a mountain of other forms of sexual abstinence, less complete than celibacy, but no less weird.
Most religions have a range of bans of pre-marital sex, unmarried sex, same sex sex, animal sex, sex during menstruation and an endless list of other prohibited peccadilloes.
Some of the rules on the list are laudable (incest and paedophilia) and some (like adultery) are desirable but perhaps not easily summarised in a one line rule.
But celibacy is too OTT and unhealthy and ought to be banished to history.
In the Christian tradition, there are several dodgy biblical sources relied on to justify celibacy.
The dynamic duo, Jesus and St Paul, seem to have been singletons who did not have Bridget Jones' sense of loss at this sad state of affairs (or lack of affairs).
And in Mathew 22:30, Jesus says: "For in the resurrection, people neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven."
In other words, Jesus was saying that the highest form of existence possible is to be a dead (but reconstituted), celestial eunuch. This sounds hideous to me and more than a touch implausible.
It has always puzzled and disturbed me that young followers of faiths embrace the deprivation of celibacy.
To make such a momentous decision at such a young age seems not to be an informed decision.
One can never predict what one wants for the rest of one's life. Celibacy leads to subjugation of pleasure, the abandonment of intimacy and the forgoing of children which all seem appalling to me.
Others of you will have different views. But to promote these ends as a virtue is evil. This is ironic when the rules were invented as an assault upon evil.
For the willing embrace of deprivation is alleged to enhance the ability both to empathise with those who suffer - and to pursue devotional activities not distracted by such base concerns as how to get some nookie.
The alleged dividends seem paltry when put beside the sacrifice.
But I suppose that is the point; the greater the sacrifice the more potent the devotion or - deploying contemporary argot – no pain, no gain.
I rail whenever I can against this ascetic life.
I find such self imposed restrictions very confronting and quite anti-human.
And faith is full of taboos and prohibitions about pleasures other than sex - such as food, money (the vow of poverty), gambling, alcohol and independent thinking (the vow of obedience).
Some of these are justifiable, but the rest are mad and maddening.
For Baby Boomers like me, who want to have it all, these ascetic taboos are anathema. For Gen Y, they are utter mystery.
For Gen X, they are irrelevant.
The Canadian psychiatrist, Professor Wendell Watters, has linked these sexual prohibitions to undermining contentment and sexual health in his book, Deadly Doctrine.
He argues the evidence is that faiths promote sexual ignorance, guilt and suffering.
Then there is the open issue of the link between clerical celibacy and paedophilia.
In the mass celebrating the "Year of the Priest", the Pope bemoaned, "the abuse of the little ones, in which the priesthood, whose task is to manifest God's concern for our good, turns into its very opposite."
Paedophilia is far from universal in the priesthood but it does appear to be over-represented. Is celibacy the cause of this, or the effect?
In other words, it could be that more paedophiles are attracted to being priests than other vocations rather than celibacy manufacturing paedophiles out of men who entered priesthood with more normal sexual appetites.
One can only speculate for there is no evidence either way. But clearly, celibacy has not come out well of the whole paedophile disaster.
I do understand why moderation has moral attraction.
After completing this blog, I will embark on an hour of masochism and deprivation in a gym while feeling guilty about the chocolate I consumed to make myself get to the end of the blog.
Moderation, some self deprivation and guilt are part of human life. But when moderation goes too far, it becomes odd and punitive. Celibacy, still celebrated in the Catholic Church, has gone too far.
Most of the world has left this self flagellation far in the superstitious past. It is time for the Catholics to do so too.
Pope Benedict has failed his faith in repeating the failed homilies of the past.
What do you think?
Has he failed the faith or is celibacy so central that Catholicism is unimaginable without it?
SIC: SMHAUS