To be in love means to be called into oneness with somebody. But a relationship which remains rooted in infatuation is more an expression of my own felt needs than an expression of love for the other person as a person. The challenge of all true love, and this includes the challenge of celibate love, is to move beyond the stage of infatuation into a loving intimacy with people which is respectful of both their commitments and of my own. To love someone truly as a celibate demands, not that we repress our love, but that we deepen our capacity for expressing our love in other ways. To respond appropriately to our feelings and to control our desires doesn't mean to deny them.
Purity based on sexual denial is a fraud.
It closes the heart to mercy, renders it incapable of understanding the weak, and powerless to pronounce the words of Jesus to the woman caught in adultery. Such a purity is too glacial to be compassionate. A lot of people seem to think that priests are very lonely. Sometimes we are lonely. At other times, we look forward to being on our own for a while.