Nun rebukes lonely priests
Media
Part of Boletin Eclesiastico de Filipinas
- Title
- Nun rebukes lonely priests
- Language
- English
- Year
- 1969
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- 178 NUN REBUKES LONELY PRIESTS Roman Catholic priests who plead the loneliness of their lives as a reason for the church to abolish celibacy were sharply rebuked by a former nun. Miss Monica Baldwin, who gained world attention with her book, “I leap over the wall,” describing her experiences on returning to the world from an enclosed convent, wrote to the editor of “The Times”. “As a failed nun, I have experienced many of the difficulties complained of by those who feel the hardships of a dedicated life. May I suggest that such troubles are almost invariably due to self-seeking? No priest worth his salt should today have time for loneliness.” At another point in her letter, Baldwin asks sharply: "How do these self-pitying persons, who moan on televisions and in wellpaid press articles, spend their free time to complain of loneliness is to reveal the poverty of one’s interior life...for the infallible remedy for loneliness is to exchange self-preoccupation for an intense interior life. I speak from experience.” Baldwin is a cousin of Britain’s one-time prime minister, Stanley Baldwin.