Chastity and Celibacy: A Rhetorical History of a Rhetoric of Sex and the Priest in the Catholic Church

Abstract

The seemingly never-ending instances of reported sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests is commonly thought to be a matter of deviancy and crime. This is true; but there is more to the story. The RC Church has, for two thousand years, known of the sexual behaviors and deviancies of its priests, yet has accomplished little in controlling the situation. The rise of the lawsuit against the Church has led, finally, to the need to examine more deeply the reasons for this ongoing criminal behavior. This paper uses a method of rhetorical history to uncover and understand how and why this might have happened. The rhetoric of secrecy that has been the stronghold of the confessional is part of the problem, but seeking the historicity of the language of sex reveals how deeply ingrained the problem is and how deeply honest one must be with the rhetoric of chastity in a highly sexualized society.

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Iowa Journal of Communication

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Morales, Teresa (2023) "Chastity and Celibacy: A Rhetorical History of a Rhetoric of Sex and the Priest in the Catholic Church," Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 55: No. 1, Article 7.
Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol55/iss1/7

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