[QUOTE=wm–]
I notice that Valteron has declined to offer any kind of support for his initial assertion that priests openly cruising for gay sex is a common phenomenon, which I asked for back on the first page. For all I know he just made it up.
[/QUOTE]
WOW! I had no idea my OP would lead to such a Donnybrook!
But to reply to WM, first of all, if you are not gay, sir (or madam?), you will have to admit your experience is not the same as that of a gay person.
I suppose it all depends on what you mean by “common”.
If you are looking for a study with hard statistics that says that X% of RC Priests surveyed said, “Yes, I had gay (or straight) sex in the past week/month/year/since ordination”, forget it! How the Hell would you do such a survey and how would you trust the results?
But there is such a thing as local, anecdotal data and logical extrapolation. In the absence of hard data, scientists use this method all the time.
If I see a wolf at the edge of a large forest and the next day my best friend sees a wolf at the opposite edge of the same forest 100 km away, the only thing we know for reallly, really certain is that there could be one very very fast-moving wolf in the whole forest of say, 5000 square km. But we can extrapolate that we probably saw two different wolves. So we know there are two wolves in the forest. Well, we really don’t KNOW but we extrapolate and use our heads.
Then we wonder how likely it is that there are exactly 2 wolves, no more, in that size of forest and that my best friend and I by sheer coincidence saw those 2 wolves. No, logically, one has to extrapolate that there is most likely a population of wolves living in that forest. You would need more research to confirm it, but it is not illogical to infer it.
I live in Ottawa, Canada. There is an Ottawa RC Archdiocese.
In my sexually active phase in the 1970s when I was young and pretty, I got picked up and had sex with, over a three-year period, at least 4 young men who admitted they were RC priests. They might have been lying, but they seemed sincere, and it is also possible that there were more than 4. After all, “What do you do for a living?” is not a standard question in the “Was it good for you too?” phase of casual sex.
A friend of mine who also lives in Ottawa recently introduced me to two RC priests that he is having sex with. They made no effort to deny it and I looked these people up on the internet and found they are indeed priests.
At a gay resort in Key West a few years ago, I met (but did not have sex with) five or six men who admitted confidentially they were RC priests on vacation, but asked me not to tell others so as not to ruin their “chances”.
That makes a total of about eight or ten gay priests who have told me they were sexually active or even proved in in bed. How likely is it that I met the only 10 in Christendom?
And when I and other gay friends are gabbing and the subject “Have you ever done it with a priest/minioster/rabbi etc.?” comes up, most of my friends seem to have similar experiences to relate.
Plus we have the Metropolitan Community Church, a gay-positive Christian Church whose clergy are often gays who have left their original church. And the former Catholic priests often confirm the fact that gay sex occurs commonly among Catholic priests and nuns.
Now you can believe me and my friends or not. But my guess is that there would be AT LEAST a dozen or more sexually active gay priests that could be outed in many dioceses.
I am not saying that the majority of gay (or straight) priests break their vows of chastity. I just said sexually active gay priests is a common phenomenon. Guess it depends on your definition of “common”.
). If they did not agree with the Church on this or any other major issue, I’m sure they would leave, as is their right.
be denied to gays and lesbians.)