Those Gay Priests
The catholic church and its not widely loved leader has been making headlines lately, a combination of an outburst of child-abuse complaints about priests, cover-ups by the church and the Pope, and plenty of cardinals telling us that the Pope is a nice guy, he didn't know anything even though he signed the papers, and the real problem is all the homo priests anyway.
Fortunately, or almost fortunately, most of the old canards equating homosexuality with paedophilia are widely known to be old canards and the cardinals are generally seen as the hate-spouting, hypocritical, reactionary oafs that they are.
There is a real problem here, one that rarely gets noticed in all the kerfuffle: the self-hating homophobia of the catholic church itself. We know that many of the clergy are gay; thinking otherwise should lead one to reflect on the decidedly male-only profession that eschews marriage but is firmly in the "do as I say, not as I do" camp.
The internalized homophobia really has to stop. I suspect that it will someday, either through acceptance or the demise of the church.
However, if the Catholic Church is to go on with life as normal, it couldn't possibly ban gay priests. It needs its gay priests.
The Rev. Donald B. Cozzens, author of The Changing Face of the Priesthood, wrote that with more than half the priests and seminarians being gay, the priesthood is becoming a gay profession. Many who know the interior of the Catholic Church would argue that the priesthood has for centuries been a gay profession, and not to ordain gay priests or to defrock them would drastically alter the spiritual life and daily livelihood of the church.
"If they were to eliminate all those who were homosexually oriented, the number would be so staggering that it would be like an atomic bomb; it would do damage to the church's operation," says A.W. Richard Sipe, a former priest and psychotherapist who has been studying the sexuality of priests for decades. Sipe also points out that to do away with gay priests "would mean the resignation of at least a third of the bishops of the world. And it's very much against the tradition of the church; many saints have gay orientation and many popes had gay orientations."
The reality here is that as quietly as the Church has tried to keep it, the Catholic Church is a gay institution.
[…]
Eugene Kennedy, a specialist on sexuality and the priesthood and a former priest, wrote in his book, The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality, that the Catholic Church " . . .had always had gay priest, and they have often been models of what priests should be. To say that these men should be kept from the priesthood is in itself a challenge to the grace of God and an insult to them and the people they serve."
[Irene Monroe, "The Catholic Church Needs Its Gay Priests", Huffington Post, 15 April 2010.]
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To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.
I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Thursday, 15 April 2010 at 14.29
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Though not a Roman catholic, I am a gay clergyman, and anything but a pedophile. (I like men, not boys).
It took me many years to come to terms with / accept / come out. But now I am.
Over the years I have met many (mainly former) clergy, of many denominations, who are gay men. Most are or were married, most have left.
My point is that there is something deeply spiritual about our gay-ness. As Countryman and Ritely have called it "Gifted by Otherness."
Whether we profess a particular faith, or none, the erotic/sexual/sacred/spiritual axis (or axes?) is there. And some of us are still in the Church, proclaiming some really good news that many will not hear.
on Wednesday, 5 May 2010 at 10.32
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Same here, on several counts, Joe. My Isaac is a gay clergyman and definitely prefers grown-up men. Because he's a former (catholic / Benedictine monk) and works now at an Episcopal church & a Methodist church both, we move in circles enclosing quite a few gay clergy. (Well, he's an organist, too, so we're surrounded!)
on Saturday, 8 May 2010 at 23.28
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Hey Joe, interesting that you should mention Bill Countryman and M. R. Ritley. I did a course at the Pacific School of Religion's summer school in Berkeley with them in — ooops, just looked it up — 1996! How time flies. It was a course on gay spirituality, and a great experience. BTW, I'm another of Jeff and Isaac's clergy connection.