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The news that in France not only have prostitutes occupied churches as part of their campaign for a better treatment under the law, but that priests have taken their part against the police, could be interpreted as one of the more bizarre aspects of life in the common market. Yet this incident can provide food for thought about the style of life of the clergy themselves. When society is stable, vocations to the priesthood can be fostered by drawing attention to the status of the priest in society and the points of likeness between him and the schoolmaster, doctor, and other professional classes. It is only in these days of uncertainty and change that we can begin to entertain the thought that there might be a parallel with the oldest profession of all.
Religion like sex cuts right across society and class. It stands for basic forces in mankind that neither cold logic nor social pressures can adequately control or express. No wonder then that anyone whose way of life calls attention to the inadequacies of society in these matters will be regarded with suspicion and hostility. One has to proceed with prudence and caution. Quite apart from whether it infringes the citizen’s right to be unmolested, door to door evangelism can be counter productive. Soliciting is a crime. The customer has to make the first move. Part of the skill of the game is to elicit that initial request and to do this all manner of artistry is needed. The wares one is hawking have to be desirable, one has to create curiosity and interest, to dress up, to know human nature so as to play on natural instincts, to practise a few mincing liturgical steps, to give an ecumenical glad-eye.
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- Copyright © 1975 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
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1 Such a comparison is not entirely new. In the fourteenth century Libro de Buen A mor the lament on the death of the gobetween Trotaconventos is in fact a parody of a letter of St Jerome mourning the death of a priest. In fact, how far can one interpret the whole of this work with its account of the amorous adventures of the Arch priest of Hita as an allegory of the multifarious relationships of priest and penitent. In our own day in Pasolini's film Teorema, the stranger who seduces in turn each member of the family has been seen by some to be a Christ figure.
2 This citation from St Augustine is still to be seen today carved on the lintel of a renaissance brothel in down‐town Rome.
3 Andrew Sarris in his introduction to the English translation of the script of Bunuel's film Belle de Jour (Lorrimer, 1971) remarks ‘Most writers, even the most radical, treat prostitution as a symptom of a social malaise and not as a concrete manifestation of a universal impulse. Bunuel reminds us once again in Belle de Jour that he is one of the few men of the left not afflicted by puritanism and bourgeois notions of chastity and fidelity’.
4 In the Tragi‐Comedy of Calisto and Melibea, the bordello presided over by Celestina is not unlike the clergy house presided over by the parish priest. At the end of Act 15 one of the inmates, Elicia, makes a speech which might easily pass for the argument of a priest who has decided not to quit. ‘I'm well known there, sister, and its my parisri. Thai house will always be called by poor Celistina's name, and all the girls who have followers and suitors, the friends and relations of those she looked after, always go there. They use the house for their assignations, and I shall make a little profit. Also the few friends I've still got wouldn't know where else to look for me. As you know it's difficult to break a habit, and to change your ways is a sort of death. So I ‘d rather stay there if only because the rent is paid for this year; and I don't ‘want to waste the money’. (Rojas, . The Spanish Bawd, p. 2)0, Pelican, 1964.Google Scholar)
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