Patheos

Since I don’t have a PhD in English, or even, for that matter, a BA in anything, there’s no way I could convince anyone to be interested in publishing such a work. But lots of nice Catholic folks kept telling me that I should write a book about homosexuality. Eventually I said, “All right, God. I’ll write a book about gay stuff for you.” Somehow in my head writing a Catholic book about sex was going to lead to the ability to publish whatever I wanted…just like performing in porn leads to Hollywood. Hey, I was naive.

What actually happened is that I wrote my book, and then I had to promote it. That meant blogging, speaking, writing supporting articles, doing TV and radio appearances. Those led to correspondence and contact with human beings. Contact with human beings led me to rethink some of what I’d said when I was thinking about this stuff in my basement with my nose in a book. And it all just spiraled out of control from there. Or rather, it spiraled out of my control. I suspect Someone Else of being at the helm.

So it’s true that I do write, and think, a lot about sex and sexuality but my reasons for doing so have very little to do with lust or obsession. As I’ve written elsewhere, I’m not actually especially interested in sex in practice most of the time. Intellectually I think human sexuality is a fascinating field of study. Pastorally, I think it’s a really important area where the Church needs to come up with better approaches in order to effectively communicate the beauty of chastity to an age that really doesn’t get it. But in the reality of my own bedroom, I don’t particularly struggle with unbridled lust.