AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph
Angela Mollard
I was 16 when I watched The Thorn Birds. Riveted hardly describes it. Rachel Ward’s softly beckoning breasts, Richard Chamberlain’s torturous conundrum between God and girl. To my teenage hormones, the romance was captivating and the sexual tension thrilling.
But after four episodes and a speed read through Colleen McCulloch’s 692 breathless pages, I came to a single blinding conclusion: How dumb is it that priests can’t have sex?
I raised it with my maths teacher. How can you concentrate on trigonometry when there’s a nonsensical rule called celibacy preventing the lovely Rachel from getting it on with gorgeous Richard? (Somewhat concerning was the priest being called Ralph, but I digress).
Mr Thomas, as well as teaching Grade 11 maths, also headed up the school’s Christian Fellowship club. Poor man. Imagine having your benign little lesson in tangents hijacked by 20 teens pouring scorn on a central tenet of your faith. From memory, Mr T had a crack at convincing us of the merit of abstention but, as I say, we were 16 and throbbing to the beat of Culture Club. Not having sex for your whole life seemed utterly illogical.
What a validation it is to fledgling adolescent instinct to therefore learn that the Pope at the time was enjoying, if not a sexual relationship, then certainly an intimate one.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.