Introduction: Rethinking the Medieval Clergy and Masculinity

Abstract

In May 2009, the Roman Catholic Church was once again hit with scandal when the Reverend Alberto Cutié, priest of Saint Francis de Sales in Miami, Florida (USA), admitted to having an affair with an unnamed women for more than 2 years. Father Cutié, described by his parishioners as a charismatic and handsome 40-year-old man, told a local newspaper in 1999 that celibacy was ‘a struggle, but it’s a good struggle.’¹ Ten years later, photographs published in local media outlets showed Cutié kissing and embracing a woman on a Miami beach. After a public apology and his subsequent removal from his parish church, Cutié was quoted as saying, ‘I didn’t stop being a man just because I put on a cassock. There are trousers under this cassock.’²