The “pastoral advice” was to be deceptive.
Which brings up two questions: 1) did he specifically ask the spiritual director if he should tell her? If so, why was he asking, if not because he had reason to think it was a deal killer? Why else would he ask if he had to tell?
- assuming that he did not ask that but the spiritual director told him not to tell, why would the spiritual director tell him that - unless the spiritual director had reason to think it was a deal killer?
And what kind of desire for a woman does a man who has SSA have for her? If he is bi-sexual (which has not been stated, but is a possibility), what does that really look like? What is going through his head as they engage in the marital embrace? What kind of warmth and emotion does he have for her when they do?
And if he is not be-sexual - what desire does he have for the marital embrace, other than to prevent a blowup because he does not desire her? and granted some people are naive, what does a woman do when she finds he has no sexual interest in her? Now she is living, effectively, with a eunuch… that must just be fantastically emotionally warm and inspiring…
It is easy to say “I would do this or not do that” when one does not live in an emotional void. And then, finding out why there is an emotional void “Well, actually, I am sexually attracted to men”…
And back we go to why either he asked the spiritual director if he could just keep this silent, or the spiritual director … you get the drill.
the farther we go into this question, the more likely it appears that both he and his spiritual director (or at least one of them) had a pretty good idea that revealing this little peccadillo was fraught with her reaction of “I am so out of here!”. All of which goes directly to the issue of Father David’s canonical citation.