Confession

This story is about a young Catholic priest and a parishioner. I welcome responses from readers and will respond to all. I know that there are priests in both America and Europe who read the stories on the Nifty Archive, and I particularly welcome their responses to this story that highlights the conflict that many priests have with church law. Write to: bobsa2005@yahoo.com

Confession

My name is Father Niccolo Corelli. Yes, I am a Roman Catholic priest, having chosen to dedicate my life to God and to live the celibate life. But I have not been truthful in the confessional. I am a homosexual who understands that, in the eyes of the church, giving in to my homosexual longings is a sin.

I am an American, raised in the Midwest by Italian immigrant parents. I have just passed my twenty-ninth birthday. This is a private confession made only to myself, and perhaps to God. But I suppose I am cowardly and weak in my faith when I steadfastly refuse to reveal any aspect of my sexuality in the confessional to the other priests. I have not atoned for my sexual transgressions in the days before I became a priest, and I have not asked for forgiveness. I am deeply conflicted with my church on this issue.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I had always known, even as a child, that I was drawn to the beauty and attractiveness of men. Unlike so many others, I was never in denial about that. I was born into a very devout Catholic family. My two older brothers are gifted and muscle-bound sports enthusiasts and are avid heterosexuals down to the very marrow of their bones. They each eventually married and began immediately producing children.

I, on the other hand, was smaller, less muscular, and interested in classical music and art. I was the proverbial black sheep of the family. My father had always been clearly disappointed in me and gave me little attention and encouragement in my interests. But I felt my mother loved me more than she did the others, although I may have been wrong about that. She did, however, have a brother and an uncle who had become priests. Like a number of very devout Catholic families, it was always a desire in her family that at least one child go into the priesthood.

My brothers had amassed a secret collection of pornographic pictures, and when I was about twelve or thirteen they showed them to me and taught me how to masturbate. It was exciting to me. But it was the men in the pictures that interested me most, and I developed a lurid catalog of homosexual masturbation fantasies.

When I was a teenager in high school, my sex drive seemed to reach a peak. While my brothers would brag and hoot between themselves and to me about the girls whose panties they'd gotten into, I would lie in bed at night and cry, silently screaming for sexual contact with some of the boys at school with whom I thought I was desperately in love. A sexual contact I was sure I could never have. From time to time, my father and my brothers would talk about marriage as being the next great step in the progression of our lives. It was assumed that we would all, including me, get married. I had attempted to date a few girls, but I hated it. I knew I would never get married. But I also knew that enormous suspicions about me would be raised if I didn't. They were never reticent in proclaiming their disgust with "queers" and "fags."

I had been an altar boy in the church and came to know several priests. I admired them greatly for their kindness and intelligence. And I knew that others admired them, even though they were not married and had no children. I began to think that, if I were a priest, I could live a respectable life, admired by all, without a wife and children. And no one would ever accuse me of being queer. As I entered my junior year in high school, I went to my mother and told her that I thought I would like to become a priest. She was overjoyed. She told me that she knew I would make a fine priest.

During both my junior and senior years, I was approached by several men and other students who wanted to be friends with me. It was during those two years that I engaged in an almost endless stream of homosexual encounters. They were always discrete episodes, and I worked hard at keeping that part of my life secret from my family and everyone else. In my senior year, I fell deeply in love with a young man who had just begun his teaching career at our school. During our many afternoons together at his apartment, he never failed to tell me how cute I was and that he loved me very much.

Suddenly one day, he told me it was over. He had found someone else, older than I. He had been worried about having sex with me since I was a minor. In spite of my desperate assurances to him that I would never reveal our relationship, he told me that that afternoon would be the last we would ever be together.

I attended college and received a bachelors degree in comparative religions. My homosexual activity continued, but it brought me only disappointment, frustration, and tears. In time, I became determined to renounce my homosexuality altogether and turn my full attention to the worship of God. I entered seminary and studied hard. I was determined to fill my mind with my studies to the point where I was mentally exhausted at the end of each day. I needed to do that so that I would sleep soundly until it was time to start over the next day. There were times, though, mainly after getting in bed, when I couldn't force my sexual feelings away from my mind. I would masturbate quickly in order to calm myself.

There were times during seminary when other seminarians would reveal themselves as homosexuals. I found a certain comfort in the fact that a number of them privately expressed their desire to enter the priesthood for reasons exactly like mine. We were hoping to escape from the intolerant world of reality into the warm womb of the church where we were presumed by that other world to possess no sexuality whatever.

Following my ordination, I was assigned as a parish priest in a large affluent suburb of Chicago. I was given a small two-room apartment leased by the church not far from the sanctuary. I quickly became acquainted with the other priests and many of the parishioners. I liked them, and they all like me. Middle aged mothers and their daughters fawned over me. I was always referred to in the church bulletin, published by the lady volunteers, as the "handsome Father Nick." I was happy. I felt that I had worth. When I visited the sick in hospital, their appreciation was almost overwhelming. I was convinced now that I had successfully renounced my homosexuality and was doing important work. And most of all, I was accepted for what I was---or at least for what I thought I'd become.

I heard confessions a number of times each week. In this church, the priests who heard confessions entered the confessional anonymously. Likewise, we were not aware of the identity of the confessors. Many of the confessions were of minor sins, but some involved adultery and physical harm to others. There were even some homosexuals who bounced in routinely every week to confess their sexual episodes that week.

But after I had been in service there for several months, a young man, who described himself as married with a small child, confessed to me that he had just had a sexual encounter with another man. He identified himself only as Jeff. He cried, and I could tell his tears were sincere. He told me he loved his wife, but at the same, he had never been as sexually aroused as he had with this man. His mind was tortured by it, but he knew he could not help himself and was going to see the man again. He felt helpless to resist.

For the rest of the day, I thought of nothing but Jeff, the young man who shared his pain with me. I lay awake most of the night, unable to erase the sound of his sad and rather sweet voice from my mind. I felt as though I was the only person in the world who understood him, his hurt, his undeniable sexual feelings. I lay there, wishing that I could have reached for him and taken him into my arms and held him tightly. I would have told him I understood, and it was all right. I felt a strange longing for him. After several days, tears filled my eyes one night as I realized I had been fooling myself. It was clear now. I could never renounce my homosexuality. It was there, and it would always be there. Somehow, I felt a strange love for Jeff.

Every day that I was in the confessional for the next two weeks, I listened for Jeff's voice. But finally one day, he was there. He also recognized my voice.

After a few minutes, he said, "Father, I've looked for you twice since I talked with you and I could tell that the two priests who were here to hear my confession were not going to understand. So I thought I would come back until I found you again."

"I'm glad you did," I said. I felt as though someone was beating a bass drum in my chest. I didn't know a man's heart could beat so rapidly.

"Father, I was with that man one more time. I couldn't help it. But I told him I would never see him again, that there was something terrible happening to me inside and that I shouldn't see him again."

I knew I was there only to hear his confession, but I wanted to talk with him. I wanted him to pour his heart out to me. I knew it was wrong, but I had to talk with him. I had to know him.

I asked, "What is this terrible thing that is happening inside of you?"

"Father, I don't look at my wife the same as I did. I think I still love her, but not in the passionate way I've felt about this man. I don't know what's happening to me."

As I listened to him, I was becoming aroused and I wanted to ask him what sort of sex he had had with the man. But I had to get a grip on myself.

I said, "Jeff, I think it might be good if you talked with someone about this. Perhaps get some counseling. I think you need to have someone who understands listen to you and help you."

"But I don't know anyone," he said. I could tell by his voice that the tears were once again beginning to come.

"Jeff, you said you had waited to talk with me again. If you would like, you can come to my office sometime and perhaps I can help you."

I could hear Jeff snuffling his nose. He said, "But who . . .?

"I'm Father Niccolo. Niccolo Corelli. They call me Father Nick. Could you come tomorrow afternoon about four o'clock?"

"You're Father Nick? Yes, I've seen you at Mass on Sundays. Yes, I can come to see you then. Thank you, Father Nick.

Once again, that night I lay in bed wondering why I was doing this. I knew why. Here was a young man who was grappling with his homosexual tendencies, and I was feeling a strange closeness to him because of it. In my prayers, I asked God why I was not strong, why my vow of renunciation of my homosexuality was not holding fast. My feeling for Jeff was all mixed up in my own homosexuality, which was flooding back over me like water from a broken dam.

When Jeff arrived at my office, I recognized him. I had seen him often in the congregation on Sundays, sitting with his wife and young son. He was blond with fair skin and about my age. It always struck me that he had a rather sweet, vulnerable look on his face.

As Jeff sat down, he smiled and said, "Thank you, Father Nick, for taking your time to talk with me. I've often heard what a kind and understanding person you are. But I'm not sure what there is to talk about. I have this problem, and I guess I have to live with it."

"Of course you have to live with it," I said. "But at the same time you have to be comfortable with your feelings. You've discovered something about yourself. Something you can't deny. You have to find a way to live your life in accord with those feelings."

Jeff shook his head and said, "There's no way I can live with them. How can I look at my wife as I should and sleep with her with these kinds of feelings taking over my mind?"

"Well, Jeff, it's a matter of deciding how you want to live your life."

"That's already been decided, I'm afraid, now that I have a wife and baby. Father Nick, I came in here expecting you to tell me that I simply have to put aside these feelings for other men. You would tell me that these feelings are sinful and I should turn to God and cleanse myself of them. Why aren't you telling me that?"

"Is that what you want to hear, Jeff?"

"God, no! I don't know what I want you to do or to tell me. I'm just a mess."

I wanted so badly to tell Jeff of my own homosexuality and how I attempted to deal with it. But as he put it, I was a mess also. I thought I was dealing with it well when I first became a priest. But now, as I looked into Jeff's dear face, all I wanted to do was to go to him and hold him in my arms and never let him go. How could I give this man advice when I, myself, was beginning to feel that everything was once again falling apart for me?

"I'm not going to tell you to turn to God and cleanse yourself," I said. "I happen to believe that the feelings you have were given to you by God."

Jeff looked at me with a puzzled look on his face, as though he couldn't believe a priest would say such a thing. In a way, I startled myself. But I believed it. I was truly coming to believe that to renounce something that was given to us by God was, in itself, a sin.

I said, "Jeff, I know you think there is no answer to it, and that there is nothing I can tell you. But I will tell you that you are faced with a decision. Not an easy decision. Think about what your life will be if you continue on as you are. Your marriage will be infected by deceit. You'll always be aware that your wife doesn't really know you, that you'll be living a lie as your homosexual feelings keep eating away at you."

Jeff continued to stare at me quizzically. My God, I thought. What am I doing? I'm a priest of the Catholic faith, not only voicing the idea that homosexual feelings are given by God, but suggesting that he consider divorce.

Jeff stood up and said, "I came here, hoping you could help me. I can't believe, as a priest, you are suggesting such things. I am a Catholic and I will always be a Catholic. And I will always live by the canon of the church."

Without a word, Jeff turned and left. My mind was whirling. I couldn't believe I had done what I had just done. That he had walked out distressed me almost more than I could stand. It was now late afternoon. I told the ladies in the church office that I was going home and would not be back until morning.

As soon as I arrived home, I stripped down and took a shower. Before getting dressed, I stood before my full-length mirror, looking at my naked body. Without my collar, I'm not a priest, I thought. I am a sexual human being with sexual needs. My penis began to stiffen. As it hardened up, I thought why does God allow my penis to get hard, why does he allow me to become sexually aroused? Why does he allow me to long for a man in my arms, to kiss him and love him? Why does the church tell me it's wrong?

As I continued to look at myself, I thought, I have an attractive, well-proportioned body. I'm Italian, with that swarthy Mediterranean skin that some find attractive. My hair is dark and my eyes are shaded with long black eyelashes. I'm a sexual person, I told myself. I'm a human being who should be loved. But I allow no one to love me. Damn the church.

For weeks, I looked for Jeff in the confessional, but he was never there when I was. I searched the congregation during mass each week, but he was never there. My longing for him grew stronger and stronger in spite of knowing he was married and would never again have anything to do with me. I masturbated every night, sometimes twice, and would often cry myself to sleep. My sexual fantasies began to run wild as I masturbated. It was as though my great plan to join the priesthood and renounce my sexuality had never happened.

One evening, almost two months after my talk with Jeff in my office, I heard a knock on my apartment door. When I opened it, I could hardly believe it. Jeff stood there. His eyes were red and watery.

"May I come in?" he said.

"Of course. Please," I said as I took his arm and led him in. "I was just going to have a glass of wine. Would you like some."

"Yes, thank you."

As I handed him his glass, I said, "I owe you a large apology for talking to you as I did. It was wrong."

"No it wasn't. You were right. You told me I had to make a decision. You know . . . about the deceit I would doing. I made the decision to tell my wife about my feelings."

"Oh dear." It was all I could think to say.

"She took it badly, of course, as I expected. But I had to do it. We're separated now and we're getting a divorce. Imagine that. I'm Catholic, and I'm getting a divorce. I think I know how you feel, Father Nick. You want to be a good Catholic, but there are some things in church law that you don't agree with. And you're not alone. I'm aware of the movement among a good many clergy to get things changed and modernized in the church."

"That's true."

"How can the way I am be a sin when I have no more control over it than I have over the shape of my nose or of my body?"

"You're right, Jeff. I do question strongly a number of things we're asked to believe. But I didn't mean to attack your own personal beliefs. That was wrong of me."

"No, it wasn't, Father Nick. You were right to express yourself as you did. I've thought about you a lot over the past couple of months. I hated the fact that I walked out on you like I did. You spoke to me honestly and truthfully, almost as though you loved me."

"I do love you, Jeff." I almost added "as I do all my parishioners." But I didn't.

Jeff drained his glass. As I refilled it, he said, "I've thought about so many things over that past two months. You may not agree with me, Father, but I've begun to realize that I've embraced a religion---the Catholic Church---that has a hold on its followers through nothing but fear and guilt and punishment. And I really don't buy the idea of original sin."

"I know what you're saying, Jeff. And I've been struggling with that same conflicts of faith."

Jeff's glass was once again empty. And as I once again filled it, he said, "Could I ask you something? My problem has been a sexual one. And you were willing to help me solve it. I know that you, as a priest, have made vows of celibacy. But surely you must have sexual feelings and desires. You're still a human being like all of us. I would really like you to be honest with me about that."

I knew how I wanted to answer that question, but was this the time to be that honest with him? Why not, I thought.

"Yes, indeed, I have sexual feelings and desires. So many people like to believe we priests are totally asexual. But it's not true. Speaking for myself, and very frankly, I do think about sexual things, and I do get aroused. I am as human that way as you or anyone else. I frequently have longings that disturb me."

"Could I ask why, then, you went into the priesthood and took those vows."

I realized I was now suddenly at the crunch. I wanted to be truthful. I wanted Jeff to know somehow about my sexuality.

"To be very honest with you---and it's probably because I've had a little too much wine---I went into the priesthood because I had feelings very much like yours. It was the easy way out, I thought. And I thought it would solve all my problems."

"You had feelings like mine?"

"Exactly like yours. But probably even more intense."

Jeff leaned in his chair toward me. He had such a sweet, kind look on his face. "Are you . . . I mean . . . are you . . ."

"Yes, I'm homosexual. I hope that doesn't shock you. I told you I've had too much wine."

There. I said it. I was almost certain he would get up and leave as he had from my office. I was a priest. How could a priest make such an admission to one of his parishioners?

I was surprised to see that my announcement affected Jeff quite differently from what I expected. He smiled that sweet smile of his, and tears began to come to his eyes. Somehow, at that very moment, I knew, without any doubt in my mind, that I loved this man. I actually hardly knew him, but I loved him more than I ever loved anyone. He had come to me and had been open with me about his homosexual feelings, and he seemed so vulnerable. I couldn't hold back my own tears, and we looked at each other through blurred vision. As though we had read each other's mind, we both stood up and gently put our arms around each other. We sobbed unabashedly on each other's shoulder. He turned his head slightly and kissed me on the neck, and I did the same. I could feel my penis hardening up and pressing against my under shorts.

As we held on to each other, I thought Jeff was right. It was wrong for the church to bind me and incarcerate me in tomb of fear and guilt. I felt no guilt at that moment. I felt only a passion for this man. And I could feel the same coming from him.

Nevertheless, I broke away slightly and looked into his eyes. I said, "Do you think poorly of me, one of your priests, for this?"

Smiling through his tears, he shook his head and held me even tighter. "I love you Father. I've loved you since the first day I heard your gentle voice in the confessional."

All I could say was, "I've loved you, too, since that moment."

Jeff pulled away and said, "It's getting late, and I've got to go. I have an early morning at work tomorrow. Would you let me come and see you again tomorrow night? Please?"

"Of course. I'll be here. But if you think better of it and would prefer not to come, I'll understand."

That night, I went to bed and slept little. I lay there naked, slowly stroking my hard penis. I didn't want to cum yet. I wanted the fantasy of having his naked body on mine to last and last. It was almost two hours that I stroked, constantly bringing myself to the edge of orgasm and backing off. That night, I was no longer a priest, bound to that cruel celibacy rule. I was now once again a young sexual man, and my body was gripped by a sexual frenzy. At last, I could hold off no longer and let my orgasm sweep through me and cover my stomach and chest with stream after stream of thick white cum. I tasted it and imagined it was his.

I was soon asleep, but awoke when the morning sun beamed in upon me. My cum had dried into white flakes that glistened in the son against my dark skin. My penis was once again hard, as it always was when I awoke in the morning. I went into the shower and, after lathering up my entire body, I masturbated again. I had had a good deal of wine to drink, but oddly, I had no hangover and no morning-after regrets.

I spent the day doing my usual priestly duties, but my mind was continually on Jeff. I still felt no guilt and no fear. I believed strongly in my assertions that the church was wrong to assume that priests should have no sexual life, or feelings, for matter. I had finally come to feel a strong sense of justification in my own homosexual feelings. And no, there was no guilt.

That evening, Jeff arrived at my apartment with a small bag in his hands. We immediately flew into each other arms and kissed deeply on the mouth.

As I pointed to the bag, I said, "What do you have there, Jeff?"

It's my razor and my toothbrush. I took a chance. Do you think I might stay overnight with you?"

I could feel the blood rushing to my head and that bass drum in my chest pounding again. "Of course you can," I said, still feeling no guilt, only a sense of pure love for this man I held in my arms.

We drank wine again and talked about the church. Although neither of us would ever consider leaving our church, we were very open with each about what we believed to be the failings of Catholic doctrine. I opened up and told him everything about my past homosexual life before the priesthood, and he told me about the lingering homosexual feelings he had always had, but had tried hard to push them to back of his consciousness. After he married, and had that sexual episode with another man, he had come to believe perhaps that he was bisexual. But now he realized he was only making an effort to justify staying with his wife. He now knew that he had always been a pure homosexual, gripped in a terrible state of denial.

I don't remember if either of us made the suggestion to go to bed, but we were soon removing our clothes. I had made sure that my priestly garments were hung out of sight so that there would be no reminders of my priesthood. We lay next to each other, feeling each other's body with our hands. His body was lightly tanned with a soft dusting of light brown hair on his legs and forearms. And in contrast to his blond hair, his chest hair was dark. As we lay on our sides, pressed together, our hard penises were clamped hard against each other.

He told me that he liked my swarthy Italian skin and began to run his tongue over my chest and stomach. As I lay over on my back, he continued down, and held each of my legs gently in his hands and ran his tongue over the soft hair that covered them. It tickled, but felt so wonderful. I, too, had the strangest desire to take his whole body into my mouth. We then both set about giving each other a total body tongue bath. The feel of his skin and body hair on my lips and tongue drove me into a state of frenzy.

Still, I felt no guilt about what I was doing. He and I had made it very clear to each other how we felt in regard to the Church's teachings. We were at one on that, and we both allowed ourselves to be human beings fully in the throes of all the pleasure that we believed God intended us to have.

I felt no inhibitions. I wanted to taste every inch of his sensuous body. I lifted his legs and ran my tongue down over his balls and the large sack that held them. Then I swept my tongue down over his perineum between his balls and his asshole. He had bulged his asshole out, inviting my tongue to enter. I entered the hole and could taste the walls of his rectum. He reached down and held my head, pulling it closer and closer into the crack between his ass cheeks. I wanted to be inside of him and pushed my tongue in as far as it would go.

I slipped my lips over his gorged penis and ran my tongue over its firm head and across the bulging veins that encircled his shaft. I brought my lips down into his mass of black pubic hair, causing the tip of his penis to almost touch the back of my throat. I had the strange desire for his penis to go down into my stomach. I wanted it so badly inside of me. He began bucking his hips slowly and moaning quietly. I could taste his salty pre-cum. I sucked his penis violently up and down. I could feel it enlarging and hardening in my mouth. And then it began to throb, with its head beating against the roof of my mouth with each surge of hot, thick cum.

My mouth became flooded with his cum. When it had subsided, I let it slowly seep down my throat so that I could taste every molecule of it. I held his penis in my mouth and felt it begin to wilt. I loved the feeling of that piece of soft roll of skin in my mouth.

I released it and ran my tongue up through his pubic hair, over his stomach and through his chest hair. I kissed and licked his neck and cheeks and eyes and ears. Then I found his lips and we kissed deeply and passionately while his arms were tightly wrapped around my back.

Jeff rolled me over on my back and quickly took my throbbing penis in his mouth. He became frenzied and thrust his mouth so strongly onto it that I could feel the head of it actually hitting the back of his throat. As he pounded his face up and down very hard, he reached down under and put one, then two and then three of his fingers into my asshole. Oh, how I wanted him to fuck me. If only he could fuck me with his penis and suck me at the same time, I could ask for nothing more. But to feel a part of me, my penis, inside of him sent me into a whirl of passion I'd rarely ever felt.

I wanted to hold back, make it last, but I could feel that tingle start to take over the middle of my abdomen, that feeling that warned of the orgasm that was about to take over my body. Suddenly, I felt my penis throbbing so violently that I thought it might explode. Jeff moaned and gobbled up my sperm as it shot into his mouth.

We were soon lying next to each other, kissing each other's faces and running our hands over each other's slightly sweating bodies. The salty sweat on his cheeks tasted good.

I believe we slept for awhile wrapped in each other's arms. I awoke suddenly to find Jeff lying down by my feet with his head between my legs and licking the soft hair on my inner thighs. He got into a crouched position and slowly lifted my legs onto his shoulders. Then spreading my ass cheeks and pressing his face into my crotch, he began to flood my asshole with his saliva. He looked up at me and smiled. I reached down and took hold of my legs behind the knees and brought my thighs up against my chest, bringing my asshole into his full view.

He quickly mounted me and plunged his hard penis into my hole. Once again, I wanted him to push it all the way up to my throat if it were possible. He started very slowly and then began to pound his penis into me with all of his strength. His hips beat against my ass with such force, my body moved up a little toward the headboard with each thrust. We looked into each other's face as he fucked me. I saw so much love in his eyes. And I hoped he could see the love in my eyes. Sweat began to run off his cheeks onto my stomach.

It took only minutes before I felt the throbbing of his penis in my rectum. And then came that wonderful warm feeling of his cum as it flooded my insides. He soon collapsed onto me and I wrapped my arms around him. His back was glistening wet from sweat.

I kept him there for a long time until he caught his breath. Then he rolled off onto his back and lifted his legs as high as he could. I peered into his asshole and slowly lowered my face into his crack. Once again, he had relaxed his asshole so much that I was able to push in practically all of my tongue. It tasted so good. I quickly mounted this beautiful man. I wanted to fuck him slowly and look down at his handsome torso and face as I did it. I wanted to drag it out as long as I could.

Jeff looked at me with such a heart-rending expression on his face as he said softly, "I love you, I love you."

I couldn't hold it. My orgasm hit me without warning, like a hammer. As I gave into one of the most powerful orgasms I'd ever had, I could feel each blast of my cum as it surged up my shaft into the body of this beautiful man.

As I began to collapse on him, Jeff said, "Don't pull out yet. Let it get soft inside of me. I stayed propped up on my arms and looked down at him as he ran his fingers over my stomach and lightly over the hair on my arms. I couldn't last, and finally fell upon him.

As we pressed our sweaty faces together and kissed, Jeff said, "In case you didn't notice, I'm crazy for the hair on your body. I love to run my lips and tongue through and over it. The taste and feel of your beautiful soft skin drives me nuts."

I said, "In case you haven't noticed, I love the hair on your body, too. It's nice to know we share the same fetish."

We both lay on our sides, facing each other. I said, "Jeff, thank you for this. I love you very much."

Jeff brushed my sweaty hair out of my eyes and ran his hand over my cheek. Then running his fingers lightly over my eyelashes, he said, "I've been worried, Nick."

"Why are you worried?"

"Well, you being a priest and all, I was afraid you wouldn't be all right with this."

I pushed his hair back also and said, "I'm not a priest tonight."

"Of course you are. You will always be a priest."

"Well, yes. But I'm also a human being who loves you very much. As we've discussed, I will always be a Catholic, but I will never allow the church to kill the person I am inside. They would have to cut my heart out."

We were both exhausted and, as we pressed our bodies together, we were soon asleep. I awoke in the morning, again to find Jeff lying beside me propped up on his elbow looking down at me.

He said, "Now, in the light of day, are you still all right with this? No morning after regrets?"

I laughed and propped myself up on my elbow and kissed him. "Of course there are no regrets. Jeff, this wasn't a quick spur of the moment romp in the bed with a stranger. I made up mind what I wanted. I finally admitted to myself who and what I am. I disagree with the church on a number of things. And if I can, I'll join the movement with other American priests who feel as I do and work for changes."

Jeff took me in his arms and kissed me and told me he loved me. We got up and showered together in my cramped little shower. It was the third orgasm for each of us.

Jeff moved in with me, and we have been together as uninhibited lovers for just over a year now. We understood what we were doing. We are bound together by a love that is frowned on by our church. But we know it's right. And we know it has God's blessing. I believe that. Some would say that I am no longer a priest, that I have abrogated my faith and betrayed God and the Catholic Church. But I am a child of God, like all living creatures, and I must live the life that God gave me. Never again will either of us allow ourselves, or the natural love we feel, to be restrained by guilt and the fear of punishment.

Amen.

All responses from readers are welcome and will be responded to. Bob Bobsa2005@yahoo.com