Gay Clergy and the Catholic Church

[astro]

I am not a Catholic but most of my best friends and closest acquaintances are Catholics and I am puzzled about what the Catholic Church is going to do about the towering tsunami that is threatening to crash over the church.

In reading various articles in the Village Voice, Salon and MSNBC it is emerging as a fact on the ground, that the vast majority of the American Catholic clergy at all levels is gay in personal predisposition, if not behavior (a very critical difference I know), and has been for quite some time. Based on the information in these articles it is apparently understood that well over 50 percent of graduating seminarians moving toward the priesthood are gay. This is not a secret in any way and is openly acknowledged by administrators of the seminaries who make the point that the Catholic perspective is that being gay is not in and of itself a sin, but pursuing homosexual behavior is.

The claim is also made by some, that the labor of gays (as priests and up) is what has keep the Catholic Church running smoothly and growing for hundreds of years as gay Catholic males dedicated themselves to the priesthood as one of the best options for someone who had no desire to pursue a heterosexual lifestyle. Some point directly to the gay liberation movement of the 60’s and 70’s as being responsible for the precipitous decline in people entering the priesthood as the main cohort of those entering (gay men) now felt they had the option to be “out and proud” and eschewed the priesthood.

My question for debate or consideration is this. Taking a longer view past the current crisis, assuming the church can come to some resolution with the abuse plaintiffs (who represent the misbehavior a very tiny portion of the priesthood) what the hell are they going to do about the problem of having a workforce whose personal orientation and deepest inclinations toward love and sexuality are flatly vilified by the policies and dogma of the organization they work for?

If the current tacit “Don’t ask, don’t tell and please don’t screw the laity” approach gets more aggressive and gays begin to get weeded out, who is going to replace them as the worker bees of the church? Heterosexual men don’t seem to be stepping forward in numbers to embrace a celibate lifestyle. What is the Catholic Church going to do?

Abuse Crisis Spotlights Gay Priests

Gays and the Seminary

Cardinal virtues, cardinal sins - The hypocrisy of blaming sexual abuse by priests on gays
Gay Catholics Try to Face Down the Church’s Demons

Here it is: The vast majority of Catholic clergy are, and have always been, gay. Priestly same-sex abuse has reached such appalling numbers because it was never properly halted and because many Catholic leaders (as their press statements have made disgracefully evident) have never learned to distinguish between “homosexuality” (partnering consensually with someone of your own sex) and “sexual abuse” (touching or forcing yourself sexually upon an unwilling partner of any age). What’s more, the Magisterium has always understood that gay people keep the religious orders alive, because (just by the law of averages) many bishops and cardinals must themselves be gay.

[Polycarp]

Sheesh.

A Roman-rite Catholic priest is supposed to be celibate – to abstain from any sexual contact with another person.

Some few Catholic priests (you are free to pull a percentage out of your fundament) are child molesters, with young boys their victims. In saying “some few” I have no intent to minimize the problem – even one is far too many!

What Catholic priests practicing celibacy are using their will power and the grace of God to abstain from is whatever they find sexually attractive. Those who are gay, and the percentage does not matter, are abstaining from sex with other men; those who are straight, from sex with women.

One interesting issue connected with this is Cardinal Bevilacqua’s pronouncement that (paraphrased) “while straight men are giving up a good, i.e., marriage including a sex live, for a greater good, i.e., the priesthood, gay men are giving up an evil, i.e., homosexual activity, for a good.” In his mind this bars gay men from the priesthood, or that seems to be his point.

Beyond that I do not wish to go. In my own (Episcopal) church there are of course single priests, some under a vow of celibacy, married priests, some with husbands and some with wives, gay priests who are celibate, gay priests who are happily partnered with other men and women, a cross-section of sexuality. Rome has for its own reasons chosen not to permit anything except celibate male priests, with extremely sporadic exceptions to the rule (and, of course, its rather small Eastern rite affiliates with priests married before ordination and ineligible for the episcopacy if they were).

[SuaSponte]

astro, I’m going to quibble with some of the facts asserted in your OP, but not your point:

It is unproven that the majority of priests in the RCC (or the American RCC, to be particular) are gay. It’s unproven simply because no scientific studies have been made, and the church refuses to allow such studies.
And as for the assertion that the majority of priests “have always been gay,” how the hell can anyone make any sort of assertion about a priesthood over a 2000 year period, in which, for the first 11 centuries, priests could marry, and for most of which no one who wanted to live would openly say they were gay?

But, putting that all aside, the RCC certainly needs its gay priests. The best guesstimate I’ve heard about homosexuality in the priesthood is 35%. The RCC can’t afford to lose that percentage of priests (indeed, even if the number were only 10%, the church still couldn’t afford to lose that many.)

Sua

[Jerevan_Somerville]

Well, first off: thanks for that bit at the end. It is very, very important to remember that the priests who been accused of sex abuse have not identified themselves, or are not known to be, gay. This is a point which the Church itself hasn’t emphasized properly or enough, IMO; even in the first article you linked in, while Cardinal Maida acknowledges that pedophilia and homosexuality are noy the same thing, he has clearly decided that this is a “homosexuality-type problem”. I don’t care what anyone says; rape (article #2 above) is not a matter of sex, no matter who is involved. But these assumptions and equations create a “crisis” about gay priests where, arguably, none really exists: on the one hand, it is convenient for the Church to have scapegoats; on the other, it does raise some significant questions about how the Church will continue to function.

Quite frankly, I think it is already apparent how the Church intends to deal with this.

(1) Whatever the motivation or problem of the accused priests, they do appear to constitute a small minority within the priesthood. So in dealing with this, the Church ought not “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

(2) The Church does not seem overly worried about the potential for heterosexual priests to abuse young girls – certainly not to the extent that a ban on heterosexual priests has been suggested. The implication is that gays are more likely to engage in this behavior than straights. This isn’t true, but the Church doesn’t seem to notice.

(3) I imagine that some priests – homo- and hetero-sexual – do have clandestine but consensual sexual relations with other people. Because these encounters occur outside of marriage, they are all considered sinful. But once again, the Church isn’t suggesting a ban on heterosexual priests, just the homosexual ones. The implication is that gays are more likely to engage in this behavior than straights.

(4) On a general note (that is, pedophiles and heterosexuals aside), Church officials seem to be increasingly uncomfortable with a predominantly gay clergy. But why are so many priests gay (according the estimates provided in the links) in the first place? Why is the priesthood, as one prelate said recently, “a refuge for gay men”? Could it be a result of the Church’s own doctrine on homosexuality? Consider: men who choose to become priests are often men of strong faith who feel called to do so. No matter the actual motivation, the choice is not easily undertaken; in becoming a priest a man gives up the chance to have a spouse/partner and children, and enters into a very different kind of life than most of us would choose for ourselves. Now, when a man has strong faith in the Church and he is gay, what is he to do? The Church teaches that homosexual behavior is sinful, that homosexuals should lead chaste lives and not give into their inclinations. Therefore a man of strong faith probably has a hard time reconciling his faith with his orientation. But… priests are expected to be celibate. On the face of it, then, sexuality of any kind is a non-issue. The Catholic priesthood offers a seemingly perfect way to reconcile the moral dilemma. You become a priest and voila; naively you think that your own sexuality is also a non-issue.

And this is just a man who is already “out” to himself. What about the man of strong faith who is in denial, and looking for some way to avoid confronting his own nature, to hide from questions like, “Why aren’t you married yet?”
I’m not sure what the Church should do. I don’t know what kind of support they offer to supposedly heterosexual priests, to help them maintain their celibacy and consequential issues. Something tells me that, like everything else that touches on sex, the Church is still fairly mediaeval in its approach to celibacy. I think that one thing that would help the Church is for it to be more comfortable and open with talking about sexual issues, especially with priests of all orientations.

I also have to wonder: does the Eastern Orthodox church have these problems? Their priests are allowed to marry and father children. I’m not sure what part of the current crisis would be resolved by allowing Catholic priests to marry (as they once could), but it’s an interesting idea.

[Jerevan_Somerville]

Well, first off: thanks for that bit at the end. It is very, very important to remember that the priests who been accused of sex abuse have not identified themselves, or are not known to be, gay. This is a point which the Church itself hasn’t emphasized properly or enough, IMO; even in the first article you linked, while Cardinal Maida acknowledges that pedophilia and homosexuality are not the same thing, he has decided that this is a “homosexuality-type problem”. Well, I don’t care what anyone says; rape (article #2 above) is not a matter of sex, no matter who is involved. But these assumptions and equations create a “crisis” about gay priests where, arguably, none really exists: on the one hand, it is convenient for the Church to have scapegoats; on the other, it does raise some difficult questions about how the Church will continue to function.

Quite frankly, I think it is already apparent how the Church intends to deal with this.

(1) Whatever the motivation or problem of the accused priests, they do appear to constitute a small minority within the priesthood. But in dealing with the problem of pedophilia, the Church wants to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

(2) The Church does not seem overly worried about the potential for heterosexual priests to abuse young girls – certainly not to the extent that a ban on heterosexual priests has been suggested. The implication is that gays are more likely to engage in this behavior than straights. This isn’t true, but the Church doesn’t seem to notice.

(3) I imagine that some priests – homo- and hetero-sexual – do have clandestine but consensual sexual relations with other people. Because these encounters occur outside of marriage, they are all considered sinful. But once again, the Church isn’t suggesting a ban on heterosexual priests, just the homosexual ones. The implication is that gays are more likely to engage in this behavior than straights.

(4) On a general note (that is, pedophiles and heterosexuals aside), Church officials seem to be increasingly uncomfortable with a predominantly gay clergy. But why are so many priests gay (according the estimates provided in the links) in the first place? Why has the priesthood become, as one prelate said recently, “a refuge for gay men”? Could it be a result of the Church’s own doctrine on homosexuality? Consider: men who choose to become priests are often men of strong faith who feel called to do so. No matter the actual motivation, the choice is not easily undertaken; in becoming a priest a man gives up the chance to have a spouse/partner and children, and enters into a very different kind of life than most of us would choose for ourselves. Now, when a man has strong faith in the Church and he is gay, what is he to do? The Church teaches that homosexual behavior is sinful, that homosexuals should lead chaste lives and not give in to their inclinations. Therefore a man of strong faith probably has a hard time reconciling his faith with his orientation. But… priests are expected to be celibate. On the face of it, then, sexuality of any kind is a non-issue. The Catholic priesthood offers a seemingly perfect way to reconcile the moral dilemma. You become a priest and voila; naively you think that your own sexuality is also a non-issue.

And this is just a man who is already “out” to himself. What about the man of strong faith who is in denial, and looking for some way to avoid confronting his own nature, to hide from questions like, “Why aren’t you married yet?”
I’m not sure what the Church should do. I don’t know what kind of support they offer to supposedly heterosexual priests, to help them maintain their celibacy and deal with consequential issues. Something tells me that, like everything else that touches on sex, the Church is still fairly mediaeval in its approach to celibacy. I think that one thing that would help the Church is for it to be more comfortable and open with talking about sexual issues, especially with priests of all orientations.

I also have to wonder: does the Eastern Orthodox church have these problems? Their priests are allowed to marry and father children. I’m not sure what part of the current crisis would be resolved by allowing Catholic priests to marry (as they once could), but it’s an interesting idea.

[Jerevan_Somerville]

Oops… sorry for the unintentional double-post.

[rjung]

My two cents.

The Church should immediately stop its condemnation of homosexuality and accept it as a part of nature. As it stands now, homosexual priests are sacrificial lambs, to be kept around when it’s convenient for the Church, but readily sacrificed/denounced when the fit hits the shan. Considering that most of these homosexual priests are sincere in their devotion and duties to the Church, the lack of reciprocity by the Church leadership is dishonorable and shameful.

Homosexual priests should be treated on an equal footing with heterosexual ones. Homosexual Catholics should not have to fear their sexual orientation, which currently ends up either (a) driving them away from the Church, or (b) driving them into a priesthood only because of hopes that the priesthood will help them stifle their natural sexual urges.

[tomndebb]

Minor quibble:

Some point directly to the gay liberation movement of the 60’s and 70’s as being responsible for the precipitous decline in people entering the priesthood as the main cohort of those entering (gay men) now felt they had the option to be “out and proud” and eschewed the priesthood.

Seminary applications began dropping in the mid 1960s and were noticably down long before the Stonewall riots of 1969. In fact, several seminaries had already been consolidated (and others had closed their high schools) before 1969 (and certainly before the Stonewall aftermath could have percolated through society in the early to mid 1970s).

Everything from Vatican II to the Vietnam War and Watergate (and the accompanying general challenge to authority and disdain for positions of authority) have been posited for the decline in vocations, but I suspect that Gay Liberation would not have been the deciding factor.