Hi all,
In my personal reading I came across with this anecdote:
It was the beginning of my third year in Rome. So I was now a “senior”, getting by in all the languages. Because of my past history I had been entrusted with the post of Nursing Brother for the university- a delicate job that demanded tact and gentle touch.
There was always someone under treatment: my room double as a surgery, and every day I saw colleagues lining up for injections. Abbots passing through Rome, priests, students: they all came to present their posteriors to the unpitying needle.
So it was that one day I saw a Swiss student come in. I had already noticed his reticence, reclusiveness almost. He handed me a prescription without a word:
“Penicillin. 3,000,000 units a day, intra-muscular.”
Clear enough. I looked up at him, and he burst into sobs. Distraught, racket with choking fits, the poor lad told me his story.
He had been very young when he entered his snow-girt abbey.
Never had anyone talked to him about sex there. (I know, I know…) Since his arrival in Rome he had lived as a martyr:
“It becomes all hard, you understand, and I don’t know how to deal with this thing that burns me between the legs… I’ve talked about it to my confessor here, and all he said to me is: ‘Sublimate, Brother, sublimate!’ But what can I do with ‘it’?”
The inevitable had happened. Alas for him, he had come across an infected girl. He had not got much pleasure from her, but had contracted syphilis, which for him was a stamp of shame, the end of his world.
I dried his tears. No, he was not damned; no, his days were not over. He had encountered life, that was all, and had become a man. Of course, I would keep it a complete secret; nobody would know anything. I was holding his life in my hands.
For ten days I administered massive doses of antibiotics to him, for which he showed low tolerance. To his moral anguish was added real physical pain, of which I must be the only witness. Our injection appointments were also therapy sessions: I soothed him, helped him to see his future, assured him that God condemned him no more than I did.
He recovered and resumed his academic work. The following year he returned to his abbey in Switzerland. At Christmas I received a box of chocolates, without a message. Afterwards I learnt that the had become Father Master, a well-merited appointment. I, alone, knew that he was sure to be a better novice master than others. His painful adventure evoked respect, not blame.
(“Prisoner of God” pages 166, 167 by Michel Benoît)
Michel Benoît, in 1962, entered in the Benedictine Order as a monk. After more than 20 years in the monastic order he left the order and eventually quit from the Catholic Church.
I wanted to share this because it could had happened in any of the JW Bethel home. The same struggles, do not matter what religion one belong to.
I remember in 1998 or so, when in the spanish branch the international construction was calling at its end. Some "healthy and spiritual" lads were invited to become a permanent members of the Bethel "family".
One of them, broke down when appointed. He confess that had been visiting a prostitute on his visits to Madrid. After that, he had to leave Bethel within 24 hours.
After years, this lad got married and became father. In his case I think his experience from the past in sexual matters would help him to understand the issues of the youth.