Priests and Possessions: Prelude
Back when I was in seminary school still studying to become a priest I struggled with the sin of masturbation. To lessen my sin, I masturbated to sacred iconography. Christ's beauty and the passion of the saints competed in my mind against images of me sodomizing my teachers over the chapel's altar. Of course I first tried the recommended methods: ice in my lap, reading the scriptures, self flagellation, etc. But these only aroused me further. Soon after my enrollment these became foreplay to my indulgence.
Surely
, I thought,
this must be better than giving into desire and sucking off my schoolmates. For me to sin alone must be better than sinning with company. For me to meditate upon the divine must root out the lust from within my spirit.
We called this 'choosing the lesser of two sins'. But in attempting this compromise with my own iniquitous nature I opened the door for greater evil than I could have imagined.
Some people say that all sins are equal-- that theft, adultery, murder, and lies all carry the same weight. From a standpoint of repentance that's somewhat true. If you survive your sins and are forgiven then regardless of what you did wrong you need to spend the rest of your life making amends. You need to continually choose a better path every day. If you give sin an inch it will carry you miles off course. You must make amends for lying with the seriousness you'd have after repenting for murder. For believing that a lie cannot be deadly is both foolish and arrogant.
At the same time it's obvious to any high score sinner that sins have a hierarchy. This is the story of how I succumbed to temptation and how my habitual weakness unleashed an evil of biblical proportions.
Like most young men I entered seminary school with a raging libido. Like most of my peers I carried that libido within an iron box of shame. Its weight wore at me daily. Hard, heavy, and constant. Like many men who are called to the priesthood I was tested by sexual demons: dreams of unholy pleasure, waking sensations that tempt the mind. Every priest has a story about Hell's seductive song. I'm ashamed to admit I danced to the melody. Every morning I ignored my erection. But every night I satisfied my desires, thinking upon the holy martyrs. The more I spilled my seed, the greater my desire.
I should have known then that Hell's emissaries walk freely among sacred halls. In retrospect it is obvious. The prideful bishop fervent in his condescension bore all the signs, as did the bigots among the hateful among the teaching staff, and the many silent masturbators partaking in pornography under the covers.But I did not know. Of course I heard conspiracies about the devil orgies in the Vatican. I read histories of corrupted convents and monasteries. But I did not think such proclivities could reach me at St Sebastian's School of the Divine. Twice before my graduation they undeniably did.
The first time, I woke from my sleep not on the verge of nocturnal emission (as I so often would wake) but on the verge of tears and acutely aware of a classmate's imminent damnation. Peter Whitehead's soul was in trouble. My entire body tingled like a foot falling asleep. Though it was my first time getting so close to a demonic possession, it was not my first prophetic dream. I had dreamed of St Sebastian's before learning about it. I had dreamed of taking the sacrament in the Vatican before my church had even announced the field trip. Many more dreams had come to pass but none had felt so visceral as this: Peter glazed from wrapped sole to dripping crown in viscous semen, suspended upside down from a black, greasy barked tree. My ears rang with Peter's screams. I couldn't shake the sight of a flower blooming inside his penis. An eye at the floral center saw me looking at it. In the eye contact was a chilled melancholia. The absence of the divine. That horrific, lonely, ravenous feeling is what woke me.
