Gay Priests and the Vatican

[A piece worth pondering from the September 24th issue of The Tablet.  Excerpts follow.  To read the whole piece, click here.]

Don’t dare to speak its name

Paul Michaels

The long-awaited Vatican document on homosexuality and the priesthood is expected to be released soon. The signs are that, while it may please a few in the Church, it could cause acute distress to many gay priests who are faithful to their vows of celibacy

IS THERE ANY purge coming in the Catholic Church? There are clues detected by the secular media that this may be the case. Last week the Associated Press flagged a story in the right-leaning National Catholic Register, a weekly American newspaper published by the Legionaries of Christ, the ultra-conservative religious order. In a front-page report, dated 7 September, Archbishop Edwin O’Brien told the Register: “I think anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity, or has strong homosexual inclinations, would be best not to apply to a seminary and not to be accepted into a seminary.”

Archbishop O’Brien told the paper that even a man who had been celibate for 10 years or more should be barred from entering seminaries. As an aside, he noted: “The Holy See should be coming out with a document about this.” Later he told the Associated Press that he expected such a Vatican directive would appear before the end of the year.

His blunt comments reveal what many priests have long feared: blame for that clerical crisis is being placed squarely on the shoulders of celibate gay men in the priesthood rather than on the bishops who moved paedophile priests away from the scene of their assaults to new locations where they struck again, abusing more children. . . ..

Certainly the vast majority of the reported sexual abuse cases in the United States were those of men preying on boys and adolescent males. But the Vatican and many bishops have repeatedly blamed all gay priests indiscriminately, and, as Archbishop O’Brien’s comments indicate, are about to declare that even a psychologically healthy gay man who can live a celibate life will be barred from seminaries.

This is the worst kind of prejudice, and should be seen as an embarrassment for the Church, rather than the basis for its selection of candidates for the sacrament of orders.

If a Vatican directive barring homosexuals from the priesthood appears, it will be a disaster for the Catholic Church. First, it would mean setting aside the example of countless hardworking and faithful gay men who have served as priests, and who have lived their promises of celibacy with integrity. Many American Catholics accept their gay pastors, trusting that they lead celibate lives and valuing their ministry in their parishes. Others go further in praising the contribution of gay priests. In an article in the conservative journal First Things, Father Richard John Neuhaus wrote, “It would seem more than likely that, in centuries past, some priests who have been canonised as saints would meet today’s criteria as having a homosexual orientation.”

Second, such a ban would unjustly place blame for the abuse crisis on all gay priests, even the celibate ones, not just those few psychologically sick men who preyed on young boys. It wrongly conflates homosexuality with paedophilia, which is not only bad science, it is an affront to gays and lesbians, as well as an indication of just how little the Vatican seems to understand about human sexuality.

Third, during a crisis of plummeting vocations, any ban would drastically diminish the pool of applicants to seminaries and religious orders. And a number of gay men already in the process of training for the priesthood – in novitiates and seminaries around the country – have confided to me that if they were no longer officially permitted to advance to ordination, they would have to leave. It’s hard not to feel special sorrow for these men, who, after many years of discernment and prayer, will be faced with a terrible choice: either lie and be ordained, or leave and deny your vocation.

The reduction in the pool of applicants would not result simply from fewer gay vocations. Some heterosexual men have told me that they would be less likely to enter a religious order or seminary that evinces such an attitude to some of their fellow human beings.

Finally, a document like the one Archbishop O’Brien predicts would in effect say to gay priests: you should never have been ordained. It would further demoralise a cohort of priests already burdened by the vilification they received in the wake of the abuse crisis. . . .

Purging the seminaries would contradict [an] injunction in the Catechism. “[Homosexuals] must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided” (2358). It is difficult to see how expelling a celibate man from a seminary simply because he is gay could be construed as “respect”. And a clearer example of “unjust discrimination” is hard to imagine. . . .

Most gay priests, like myself, have been prevented from speaking about our own experiences, and sharing with our parishioners our rewarding lives as celibate men. Most have been formally silenced by bishops or religious superiors on the topic, so the Church can deny our existence. (That is the reason for my pseudonym: I would much prefer to write under my own name.) And many who have not been formally silenced fear reprisals from their bishops and some parishioners. As a result, the only public model of the “gay priest” is the notorious paedophile. So what appears to be the Vatican’s stance is unsurprising. What moral theologians used to call “invincible ignorance” only breeds prejudice, fear and hatred.

I estimate that between 20 and 30 per cent of Catholic priests in the United States are gay, with the percentages being slightly higher in religious orders. But since the American bishops have never (and will never) commission a study, this is an entirely subjective guess.

What I can say for sure is that the vast majority of these men who I know and work with are not only compassionate, hardworking and faithful priests; they are also celibate. And a Vatican declaration that we should cease to exist would not be the last cross pressed down on us by the Church that we serve.

Fr Paul Michaels, a pseudonym, is a priest in active ministry in the United States.
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