Under pressure from the Vatican to deny the existence of homosexuality and to expel same-sex-attracted aspirants, Catholic seminaries are now telling the Vatican what it wants to hear: that “difficulties” regarding seminarian “homosexual behavior” (whatever that is) have been “largely overcome.”
Meanwhile, the prevalence of sexual abuse among priests remains poorly surveyed, as the Vatican falsely believes that the expulsion of gay celibate seminarians and the suppression of gay celibate priests will somehow rid them of priests and seminarians who are attracted not to men or women, but to kids.
The report by the Vatican’ Congregation for Catholic Education implies that more should still be done to police seminarians’ thoughts and routine daily behaviors, according to the National Catholic Reporter:
“Laxity of discipline,” unmonitored off-campus trips and use of the Internet were additional concerns, according to the report.
Instead of looking for evidence of sexual abuse, the Vatican advises seminaries to look for “evidence of homosexuality” — whatever that is.
Advocates for clergy and for the victims of sexual abuse criticized the report:
Marianne Duddy-Burke, who heads DignityUSA, a pro-gay Catholic group, said the Catholic Church has “reinforced a climate of secrecy” in the seminaries that existed in the 1940s and 1950s.
“It’ not that gays aren’t going into seminaries,” she said, “it’ that closeted gays are going into seminaries.”
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said “the central problem is, and always has been, chancery offices, not seminaries.”
“Arguing that some Vatican “probe’ of seminaries is needed is just more of their finger-pointing and blame-shifting,” said SNAP President Barbara Blaine.
The church enforces this with its ‘natural law’. Grow up Catholic and straight, you’ll get married. Grow up Catholic and gay, live wrong or join the ranks of those who play the hypocrisy game of self hatred. The silliest thing about all of this is that the majority of the Catholic Clergy is made up of gay men either closeted or out and everyone on the inside knows it. The worry now is that Ma and Pa Catholic who still can’t believe Liberace was gay will figure things out. Out gays in seminary life were never an issue. Ask anyone who was in seminary in the past 20 years: It was the ones who “didn’t know their sexuality” who were and are a potential danger to others. When will this nonsense stop?
I might well have sought admission to Catholic seminary 20 years ago, if not for the sexual dishonesty and denial that I sensed among college peers who were joining.
At the moderate Catholic university that I attended, the sexual and affectional dishonesty and repression in 1985 were suffocating — both spiritually and emotionally. At first I welcomed the school’s nuanced homophobia, but in time I became exasperated at the prettification of self-defeat and the church’s various euphemisms for deceit.
I consider myself lucky to have not attended a more conservative evangelical college — one with patently fraudulent claims to Biblical fidelity. And I find it incredible that, as repressive as things were, some friends sought out even more repression and denial through a lifetime of ordained ministry.
Whether it is fortunate or unfortunate, I do not know, but Catholic seminaries which once had large percentages of gay men now have many fewer. This is, in part, due to the increasing self-awareness and self-respect of gay men, who are applying in smaller numbers. It is also partly due to seminary screening programs, which attempt to weed out homosexuals, and which do so with some efficiency. Finally, it is due in part to the generation of conservative “new faithful” who are filling the seminaries.
I find all this to be terribly sad. It seems to me that there are only three logical possibilities on this issue:
1. God never did call gay men to the priesthood, and the Church made a terrible mistake in ordaining gay men in the past. Of course, the witness of years of wonderful pastoral practice speaks against this possibility.
2. God once did call gay men to the priesthood, but now has changed his mind. I suspect that God is not so fickle.
3. God continues to call gay men to the priesthood and the Church just doesn’t care, because that is too embarrassing or raises too many issues. This, it seems to me, is the heart of things.
I agree with much of what you say, Sebastian.
I know many excellent gay Catholic priests, without whom the Church would be much the poorer, and if the Vatican’s ban on gay clergy could be and were put into practice across the board, the Catholic priesthood would be on its way out. That, of course, is the Vatican’s dilemma.
I must add, however, that there are probably plenty of gay priests who shouldn’t be priests. I’m thinking of those who have joined the priesthood as an attempt to “cop out” of being gay. The trouble is that the Catholic Church’ unenlightened teaching on homosexuality and its unscriptural demand that all clergy be celibate combine to invite this situation.
To teach a gay teenager that his natural sexual orientation is “an intrinsically disordered condition” and that any physical expression of it, no matter what the circumstances, is a grave sin is a kind of moral terrorism. If you give in to it, then you are faced with the prospect of spending the rest of your life with no prospect of a legitimate loving sexual relationship with anyone — a bleak prospect indeed. A life of loneliness seems to stretch ahead of you. But you can give your lonely life a purpose, as you mistakenly think, by becoming a Catholic priest. What nobler calling could there be? And since you’ll be celibate, you won’t have to deal with your sexuality at all. Furthermore, if God is really calling you to the priesthood, then clearly you can’t really have this “intrinsically disordered condition” after all, so you can just bury the “issue” for good. But it’ an illusion. It’ rather like shoving an unpaid bill away in a drawer and hoping that it won’t come again.
Many years ago the ex-priest Joseph McCabe wrote in his book, “Twelve Years in a Monastery”, that the young man who takes a vow of celibacy “has signed a blank cheque, on which nature may one day write a fearful sum.” I don’t think that McCabe had gay clergy in mind when he wrote that, but his words could not be more apposite.