Of Priesthood, Discipline, and Nigerian Youth

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - Yet another young man is soon to become a priest. A beckoning masculinity, his looks are bested only by his brilliance. You joined the seminary as a teenager, I say to him—perhaps age has now brought clarity upon the enormity of this vow—do you sometimes fear you may regret? 

Not all all, he emphasizes. 

You mean you don't get...tantalized by...you know, sex, money...and other famous vanities of the human experience? 

Discipline is all you need, my brother. All you need to live just as happy as anyone else, comes the paraphrased response.

There was that lady I once saw in a friend's compound. Modest dressing, yet her beauty just couldn't keep itself in one place, helpless in its capacity for decent invitation. Seeing my lip-sucking smile betray interest in romantic, if not erotic pursuit, my friend cut in quickly: She be Sister o!

Wait, you mean this cuuute lady went to the convent by herself, with her own two legs? 

No, she carried her legs on her head and went.

I was to learn that, every year, there are actually more applications than there are spaces in both celibate vocations in the Catholic Church. They are 'oversubscribed', which means that while the world is wildly obsessed with sex, there are people lacking the relish for a more total existence.

People who practise abstinence with an ordinary countenance. Of course, ethical violations abound in the fold, yet at least a minority exists, one whose remarkable example fails to invite the choreography and performance of global gossip.

Which brings me to a certain point. Namely, that between excess and moderation, between contentment and indulgence, the difference is the individual's potential for discipline. That things are indispensable only to the extent that the mind has made them so. That the human will can rise to the challenge of any choice so made. And finally, that there is something quite respectable in youth that has cultivated a contempt for mundane longings, the very weakness which, unable to overcome, the world has turned to glamorize. Youth discipline within the banality of collective erotic and material participation—now, that's something!