The Rev. Bob Deshaies never dated while growing up in Waterbury, Conn. He went to a Catholic high school seminary, then a Catholic college, then a major seminary. “You’d be giving up your ministry for a cheap piece of fluff,” his spiritual director told him.
Then he met Deborah Cabral, a youth worker at a parish in Worcester, Mass. He got to know her first as a co-worker, then as a friend, then as a girlfriend. That meeting in 1985, and the relationship that followed, led into marriage, then out of the Catholic priesthood and into the Episcopal Church within two years, preceding Alberto Cutié by two decades.
“When you meet a woman who opens up your heart and soul, it’s mind-shattering,” says Deshaies, now rector at St. Benedict’s Episcopal Church in Plantation. “It got me to rethink everything.”
Cutié’s exit from Catholic ranks, and his wedding at an Episcopal church this past Friday, have highlighted the issue of priests who are involved with women ”” relationships kept in the shadows by the requirement of celibacy.
Read it all.
Sun-Sentinel–Roman Catholic priests must choose between celibacy and love
The Rev. Bob Deshaies never dated while growing up in Waterbury, Conn. He went to a Catholic high school seminary, then a Catholic college, then a major seminary. “You’d be giving up your ministry for a cheap piece of fluff,” his spiritual director told him.
Then he met Deborah Cabral, a youth worker at a parish in Worcester, Mass. He got to know her first as a co-worker, then as a friend, then as a girlfriend. That meeting in 1985, and the relationship that followed, led into marriage, then out of the Catholic priesthood and into the Episcopal Church within two years, preceding Alberto Cutié by two decades.
“When you meet a woman who opens up your heart and soul, it’s mind-shattering,” says Deshaies, now rector at St. Benedict’s Episcopal Church in Plantation. “It got me to rethink everything.”
Cutié’s exit from Catholic ranks, and his wedding at an Episcopal church this past Friday, have highlighted the issue of priests who are involved with women ”” relationships kept in the shadows by the requirement of celibacy.
Read it all.