THE HOLY SEE — There are questions people have that they pretend not to have because they don’t want to sound juvenile, vulgar, or like the kind of person who spends too much time thinking about priests and Sydney Sweeney. But they have them. I had one myself, and instead of sitting here holding my balls, wondering, I did what any serious journalist would do. I called a priest.
Not to ask about God, death, or the state of my immortal soul. I wanted to know something practical. What does a priest do when he’s watching a movie and, out of nowhere, two people start having sex on a kitchen counter? What happens when a pair of titties suddenly appear on screen? Does he look away? Does he close his eyes and say a prayer and just listen until the scene sounds over? Does he fast-forward like a man disarming a bomb? Or does he just sit there and watch it, and if so, how exactly does a priest watch Sydney Sweeney topless without his entire spiritual operating system needing a reboot?
So I asked.
ME: Father, forgive me, but I have to know. You’re watching a movie. Everything’s normal. Dialogue, plot, a little suspense, maybe a car chase. Then suddenly, boom, people fucking. What do you do?
PRIEST: We prefer the term “sex scene”, and it depends on the movie.
ME: That’s not nearly specific enough. That’s the answer you give when you’re running for office.
PRIEST: All right. Well, I don’t leap off the couch like I’ve been tasered, if that’s what you’re looking for. I’m a priest, not a smoke detector. If something explicit comes on, I make a judgment. Is it part of the story, or is it there just to stir the pot?
ME: “Stir the pot” is a very priestly way to describe Billy Bob Thornton eating Halle Berry’s ass in Monster’s Ball, for instance.
PRIEST: I’m a priest. I tend to phrase things with a little caution.
ME: So you don’t automatically look away.
PRIEST: Not automatically. The body is not evil. The question is what I’m doing with my attention, and whether what I’m watching is helping me understand something true or merely tempting me to indulge something I shouldn’t.
ME: That sounds maddeningly mature. I was hoping you’d tell me you throw a throw blanket over the television and begin speaking in Latin.
PRIEST: No blanket. Though if a scene is obviously gratuitous, I might look away, mute it, skip ahead, or decide I don’t need to keep watching. Christians are allowed to operate a remote control.
ME: Let’s stop pretending we’re talking about tasteful European cinema. Let’s say Margot Robbie’s tits in The Wolf of Wall Street, or more your generation, Sharon Stone’s crotch shot in Basic Instinct.
PRIEST: You got to that example awfully fast.
ME: I came prepared.
PRIEST: Then the answer is simple. A priest is still a man. He notices beauty. He notices temptation. The vocation is not about becoming a refrigerator. It’s about not being ruled by every impulse that wanders through.
ME: So you can notice it without turning into one of those old Tex Avery wolves whose eyes blow out of their skull.
PRIEST: That would be the goal, yes.
ME: What kinds of movies do priests watch anyway? Are we talking adult dramas, war movies, old classics, the occasional thriller? Or do you all just stay in a safe little cocoon of G-rated fare and animated penguins?
PRIEST: Priests watch all sorts of movies. We are not limited to Happy Feet and films where nobody takes their clothes off but many things explode.
ME: Have you ever seen Deep Throat?
PRIEST: No.
ME: No elaboration. Just no.
PRIEST: Just no.
ME: Sweet Angel and The Purple Dong of Destiny?
PRIEST: [Looks away in disgust.]
ME: Fair enough. What about going to the theater to watch children’s movies because all the kids are there?
PRIEST: I see what you’re doing there.
ME: I had to ask.
PRIEST: And I had to decline that detour.
ME: All right, let’s keep it aboveboard. So a priest can watch regular adult movies, even difficult ones, and it’s not automatically some kind of moral crisis.
PRIEST: Correct. Adult movies as in mainstream, not pornographic. The question is whether the material is there in service of the story, whether it is exploitative, and whether I can watch it without letting it pull me somewhere unhealthy. One priest may decide a certain film is fine. Another may know it is not wise for him. Prudence matters.
ME: So there’s no official Vatican emergency protocol for nudity. No handbook. No “in case of full frontal, avert eyes and await further instructions.”
PRIEST: No, not that I’ve been issued, no.
ME: Feels like a missed opportunity.
PRIEST: The Church has had a few.
ME: Let me ask the rude version. If a priest sees an attractive woman onscreen and has the exact same first flicker of reaction any healthy adult man has had since the beginning of civilization, what then?
PRIEST: Then he remembers that an impulse is not a command. Attraction is not sin. Temptation is not consent. The spiritual life is not the absence of reaction. It is learning not to hand over the keys every time something stirs you.
ME: That’s annoyingly sane.
PRIEST: Often the truth is.
ME: So you’re not sitting there like some haunted monk, eyes squeezed shut, whispering Hail Marys until the moaning stops.
PRIEST: Not unless the movie is truly terrible.
ME: Which, to be fair, does describe a lot of movies.
PRIEST: Exactly.
ME: What would you say to people who assume priests are either in a permanent state of sexual panic or else live in a hermetically sealed world where nobody on screen has ever taken off a blouse?
PRIEST: I would say they misunderstand chastity. Chastity is not terror. It is not hatred of the body. It is not pretending attraction does not exist. It is learning to see things in the proper order and remain free. A priest is not holy because he never notices temptation. He is holy, if he is holy at all, because he doesn’t kneel before it.
ME: Want to go to the titty bar with me tonight and hand out SCREW T-shirts?
PRIEST: No, thank you.
So, there you have it. Do priests look away when titties bounce on to the screen? Not necessarily. It depends. And that’s a better answer than I was expecting. I was hoping for some secret priest trick, some ancient rectory technique involving lowered eyelids, strategic coughing, and emergency prayer deployment. Instead I got the adult answer, which is probably why nobody likes hearing it. Priests are still men. They are not drywall. They notice things. They manage themselves. They decide what is worth watching and what is not. They exercise judgment, restraint, and the occasional remote control. Which, when you think about it, is more than can be said for half the country with a Netflix password.
And finally, like all men, they too are prone to bad decisions — like granting an interview with the publisher of SCREW.
—P
