Celibacy

Celibacy is the priestly vow Jason Crowder takes not from a settled indifference to romance, but from fear. It gives his life a structure while exposing the conflict at its center: he is strongly attracted to women, yet experiences that attraction as a loss of control. His encounters with Liz Hartman and Sister Rebecca show the vow being tested in practice, where restraint must contend with desire, pastoral responsibility, and the fear that intimacy might overwhelm him.

Origin and Meaning

Crowder frames the choice of priesthood against the different reasons men enter it: some feel called by God, while others seek to atone for an old sin. His own reason is more defensive. At twenty-nine, he admits that he took the vow because he was scared of the world. Celibacy is therefore not introduced as proof that he has escaped ordinary longing. It is a response to the very feelings he fears having to face.

That fear is especially directed toward women. Crowder makes clear that he is attracted to them; what unsettles him is their perceived unpredictability and the intensity of his own response. He describes women as capable of making him feel dizzy and powerless, and sees the vow as a natural way to avoid that vulnerability. The logic is protective but unstable: rather than removing desire, the commitment places it behind a rule that Crowder can use to contain it.

He soon recognizes that priesthood has made the problem more difficult, not less. The vow does not shield him from attraction, and the role puts him in situations where emotional intimacy and physical temptation can coincide. His account thus distinguishes celibacy from a lack of desire. For Crowder, it is an obligation maintained amid desire, founded in part on fear rather than on confidence that temptation has disappeared.

Liz Hartman and the Test of Restraint

Liz Hartman makes that tension immediate. Crowder is drawn to her, and his account dwells on her appearance and the effect she has on him. Yet she is married, and the first crisis at the Hartman house gives his attraction an urgent moral context: Casey Hartman has violently attacked members of his family, and Liz is trying to protect them. Crowder understands that she may need a protector and a place of safety. He also recognizes his own wish to turn that closeness into a kiss.

When Liz falls into his arms, he lets her go, angry at himself for the restraint and still more troubled that he had momentarily forgotten Casey was the reason he came. He considers the possibility that Liz needs comfort and that he happens to be there to provide it, but sees that taking advantage of her distress would confuse pastoral care with his own gratification. He postpones his desire rather than acting on it. The moment shows both the force and the limit of his vow: it does not silence what he wants, but it helps him identify a responsibility that must come first.

The pressure deepens when Liz trembles as Father Sutherland makes clear the danger of waiting to act over Casey’s condition. Crowder goes to comfort her and does not pull away this time. He thinks of compensating for what he sees as Ron Hartman’s failure to reassure his wife, but the thought of pleasure sits uneasily beside the emergency. His closeness to Liz is therefore not presented as a simple triumph of temptation or a clean expression of selfless care. The same gesture can answer her immediate distress and feed a desire he knows he must not exploit.

Other Attachments and the Rule of the Vow

Crowder’s attraction to Sister Rebecca makes the institutional boundary explicit. Father Patterson asks whether he would date her. Crowder responds that such a relationship would violate the rules and be improper; he also calls Rebecca breathtaking. The response holds attraction and refusal together rather than pretending one cancels the other. Patterson then suggests that Crowder is more attached to Liz. Crowder is startled that the priest has discerned this, but eventually accepts that Patterson is not using the knowledge against him.

When the conversation returns to Rebecca, Crowder says that their vows are what concern him most. Patterson praises this as sensible before identifying Liz as the woman Crowder really wants. Crowder does not deny the attachment. His exchange with Patterson makes the vow a shared subject of reflection, not merely a private excuse: another priest can perceive the desire Crowder tries to govern, while Crowder still treats the commitment as binding. The scene also shows that acknowledging attraction is possible without immediately converting it into action.

Crowder’s feelings for Liz remain unresolved in the evidence. At one point he imagines that his life as a celibate anchorite might finally be coming to an end; when the distance between him and Liz widens, that imagined change becomes a source of desolation. The thought signals how much he has invested in the possibility of intimacy, but it does not establish that he leaves the priesthood or breaks his vow. His desire reaches toward a different life, while the available account leaves the decision unsettled.

Fear, Discipline, and Narrative Significance

The demon confronting Casey speaks to Crowder as if it knows the private history behind his fear. It taunts him that he will never master his fears and suggests that his mother’s nakedness in the home shaped his perception of the female body as something to worship and fear. This is the demon’s accusation, not an independent confirmation of Crowder’s childhood. Its force in the scene comes from turning his apparent self-control against him: the vow that looks like discipline may also be a refuge from a fear he has not mastered.

That distinction clarifies the role celibacy plays in Crowder’s characterization. It is at once a religious commitment, a personal defense, and a continuing test of judgment. His desire for Liz does not disappear when Casey needs help; instead, the crisis requires Crowder to recognize the difference between comfort and exploitation. His attraction to Rebecca similarly persists alongside his recognition of the rule. In both relationships, the vow is meaningful because it requires choices, not because it has made desire impossible.

Celibacy also links Crowder’s private struggle to the novel’s broader concern with fear and power. He experiences attraction as a threat to his control, while the demon uses knowledge of that vulnerability to unsettle him. Against that pressure, Crowder’s most significant acts are not declarations that he has conquered desire, but moments when he places another person’s safety or the obligations of his vocation ahead of what he wants. The vow remains an unresolved discipline: it protects him from some choices, yet cannot by itself resolve the fear that first led him to make it.