From: joachim omolo ouko
News Dispatch with Father Omolo Beste
MONDAY, MAY 5, 2014
Jerry (not his real name) writes: “Father thank you for the article on prayer for vocations. I am a second year student majoring in engineering. Since I was in primary up to now I have desired to become a priest. My problem is that my libido is so high and I just know I cannot keep celibate lifestyle.
My question is, do you know of a way one can reduce sex urge? I find that some days the desire peaks, causing terrible psychological and physical stress on me, to the extent that sometimes I am forced to masturbate.
I wonder Father why this happens to me, despite the fact that my desire to become a priest is still high. If there is a way you can help me to overcome this then I will apply to join the seminary”.
Jerry I wish I could help you but I am not. May be you can try to discuss it with a sex therapists. I feel that you should come to terms with your body, and accept it for the remarkable creation that it is.
When Ireland’s Cardinal Keith O’Brien issued a press conference in February last year why he resigned, he cited high libido. He said he could not pretend any more, his libido could not allow him to continue administering to the vineyard of the Lord.
He went as far asking Pope Francis to allow his priests to choose whether or not to marry because he knows them better. He was suggesting that he was not the only the one with the problem of high libido but also many of his priests.
Cardinal Keith O’Brien said it was clear many priests struggled to cope with their libido in vain. The cardinal would be part of the conclave that chooses the next Pope. He was the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh.
Just last week German priest Stefan Hartmann sent a personal petition to Pope Francis asking him to waive his vow of celibacy, which he posted on his Facebook page, saying his libido could not allow him any more to cop up with celibacy.
Hartmann secretly fathered a daughter in 1989, eight years after he took his vow of celibacy. He revealed her existence on a televised talk show in January of this year, causing his superiors to ask him to step down from his position. However, he seeks a path which will allow him to remain a priest while raising his daughter in a family.
In the letter, Hartmann asked to be released from the traditional oath in acknowledgement of his weaknesses and failures, with all due humility and after long consideration of his conscience and personal situation.
Francis reportedly addressed the issue last week during a conversation with a bishop from Brazil, Austrian-born Erwin Krautler. Krautler’s diocese faces a shortage of priests, with just 27 meeting the needs of 700,000 Catholics.
According to Krautler, “The pope explained that he could not take everything in hand personally from Rome. We local bishops, who are best acquainted with the needs of our faithful, should be ‘corajudos,’ that is ‘courageous’ in Spanish, and make concrete suggestions.”
These examples are just to demonstrate how celibacy is a challenge, yet there are many priests and religious men and women who have remained faithful to their vows. In fact many of them are faithful indeed.
This brings us yet to another question as to why some people have high libido. Sigmund Freud defined libido as “the energy, regarded as a quantitative magnitude … of those instincts which have to do with all that may be comprised under the word ‘love.’
It is the instinct energy or force, contained in what Freud called the id, the strictly unconscious structure of the psyche. According to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, the libido is identified as psychic energy. “It is the energy that manifests itself in the life process and is perceived subjectively as striving and desire” (Ellenberger, 697).
Unlike men, a woman’s desire for sex is correlated to her menstrual cycle, with many women experiencing a heightened sexual desire in the several days immediately before ovulation. This is the period where some religious women have difficulties to cop up with their celibate life.
This cycle has been associated with changes in a woman’s testosterone levels during the menstrual cycle. According to Gabrielle Lichterman, testosterone levels have a direct impact on a woman’s interest in sex. According to her, testosterone levels rise gradually from about the 24th day of a woman’s menstrual cycle until ovulation on about the 14th day of the next cycle, and during this period the woman’s desire for sex increases consistently.
The 13th day is generally the day with the highest testosterone levels. In the week following ovulation, the testosterone level is the lowest and as a result women will experience less interest in sex. The energy level may also be linked to neurotransmitters and how well your brain chemistry is balanced.
A new journal article suggests that evolutionary forces also push women to be more sexual, although in unexpected ways. Women in their 30s and early 40s are significantly more sexual than younger women.
Women ages 27 through 45 report not only having more sexual fantasies (and more intense sexual fantasies) than women ages 18 through 26 but also having more sex, period. And they are more willing than younger women to have casual sex, even one-night stands.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail obolobeste@gmail.com
Omolo_ouko@outlook.com
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