Gay priests giving gay priests a bad name
Friday, July 23, 2010
By Bryan Cones
Comments (85)
The UK Mail is reporting today that the Italian magazine Panorama, owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, is publishing an expose of three gay priests--two Italians and a Frenchman--who are leading double lives in Rome, priests by day and party boys by night, complete with gay nightclubs and casual sex. More great publicity for the priesthood. The Vicar of Rome is so incensed that he has called for gay priests to come out of the closet and leave the priesthood. (See Catholic News Service story.) Oh, brother.
This will add further fuel to the claims those, as the Catholic League's Bill Donohue argued on the Washington Post's On Faith blog, that the church doesn't have a pedophilia problem, it has a homosexuality problem. Setting aside the fact that Donohue is completely missing the point--the sex abuse crisis is finally a governance problem exposed by a terrible crime against children--he does have a point, kind of.
The real problem here is not that there are three priests running wild in gay Rome; there are plenty of priests--straight and gay--who misbehave sexually with other adults. The problem is that only these gay priests are the news, not all the other gay priests who labor faithfully, honoring their commitments along with their straight brothers as best they can. We don't hear their stories because they can't tell them for fear of expulsion. And that isn't right.
On this matter, the church's real problem is the closet. I must agree with the Vicar of Rome that it would be helpful if gay priests would come out--so we could thank them for their faithful service, especially as they have been unjustly tarred with "causing" sex abuse. Unfortunately, our church leadership at this time is not creating the kind of open and safe space that would allow for such honesty.
An Episcopal priest of my acquaintance told me that after the ordination of the openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop in New Hampshire, the whole Episcopal Church had to "come out" in a way--and not just in terms of sexual orientation. She has been pleasantly surprised that a lot of other "closeted behavior"--funny business with money, addictive behaviors, and so forth--got cleaned up, too. There's something to that: Having to lie or shade the truth or otherwise not be honest produces a lot of unhealthy behavior.
Funny what being honest will do. What did Jesus say about things like this? "The truth will make you free." Yeah, that was it.
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Says it all
By Fr. J (not verified) on Thursday, July 29, 2010Cardinal Medina Estévez, in his capacity as a Vatican prefect, had reiterated the Church’s discipline against ordaining men with homosexual inclinations.
“Ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood of homosexual men or men with homosexual tendencies is absolutely inadvisable and imprudent and, from the pastoral point of view, very risky,” he wrote. “A homosexual person, or one with a homosexual tendency is not, therefore, fit to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders.”
The tide of gayness
By The Cardinal (not verified) on Wednesday, July 28, 2010Turning the tide of gayness should be our first priority. As I mention here:
http://thecardinal.posterous.com/gazing-upon-the-gays
Please feel free to share.
Breaking News: The Vatican is Super-Gay
By Anonymous (not verified) on Wednesday, July 28, 2010That's the title of this new Atlantic article.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/07/breaking-ne...
The article correctly points out the hypocrisy and warped priorities of automatically defrocking gay priests who are caught having consensual sex with adults while keeping ones who raped kids on the books.
It also points out the ludicrous dichotomy of an institution that has such a high percentage of gays being so militantly against everything gay.
It's truly a case of the Emperor's Clothes. The tailors are off and running.
just the facts
By Fr. J (not verified) on Wednesday, July 28, 2010Sullivan has personal reasons to make his claims. The facts don't concern people like him. It is easier to speculate and make false claims to forward an agenda.
Homosexuals often inflate?
By Seanie (not verified) on Tuesday, July 27, 2010I was troubled by that earlier comment heading. The horror it evoked...it's best to say nothing.
http://thecardinal.posterous.com/
Gay vs. Straight pedophilia
By Greg A. (not verified) on Tuesday, July 27, 2010A study commissioned by US Catholic Bishops Conference indicates that 20% of priest sex abuse victims are female. How do those against homosexual priests handle that? And, the issue is still pedophilia, not sexual orientation, i.e., pedophiles come in all flavors and what distinguishes them from others in their "subset" is that they prey on children, not what their sexual orientation is. The biggest crime in all of this is that the Church covered up for them.
Gay vs Straight
By Jerry (not verified) on Tuesday, July 27, 2010[comment edited] No one has said that heterosexual abuse or pedeophilia does not exist. So your statistic means nothing. Let's say that gays make up 25% of the priest population rather than the 5% of the general population. The fact that the vast majority of abuse happened with adolescent boys bolters the conclusion of the homosexual nature of the problem as concluded on page 80 of the John Jay Study prepared for the US Bishops.
Problems with evidence
By larryboy (not verified) on Tuesday, July 27, 2010Thanks for the link to the John Jay study. In reading it (especially p. 80), I am struck by the confusion between correlation and causality that is made. For example, the study asserts that since 81% of sexual abuse was done to boys, the crisis was "characterized by homosexual behavior". If one simply calls any sexual contact with a person of the same gender (regardless of age) "homosexual behavior" than this is correct. However, this assumes that people who are sexually attracted to adults are also sexually attracted to children and adolescents. This has not been shown to be the case in the general population; studies I have read about online (in sites recommended in US Catholic forums) have been mostly of offenders, which is not a representative sample. The John Jay study also leaves out a comparison of the perecentage of priests versus the percentage of the general population who sexually abuse minors, and also fails to mention the likelyhood that young boys (in the form of altar servers) were more readily available to abusing priests during the years where sexual abuse was at its peak. In short, I believe that the study did not provide enough reason to back its claims. If it turns out that the truth is more complex that presented in the study, then the study is guilty of baring false witness, and damages its credibility.
Hooray for Larryboy!
By Jerry D (not verified) on Wednesday, July 28, 2010My complements on your reply based upon reasoning.
Your comment: "However, this assumes that people who are sexually attracted to adults are also sexually attracted to children and adolescents. This has not been shown to be the case in the general population"
The John Jay section on ephebophilia notes it is normal for adults to be attracted to adolescents (same sex if gay – opposite sex if straight). An older St. Joseph was not considered a pervert for courting the Virgin Mary, and our base attractions have not changed. In response to this natural attraction, we encourage modesty and don’t place ourselves in situations where there is any question of impropriety especially given our present value of delaying marriage.
Heterosexual men that have the sickness of being attracted to children do molest boys. However, that was a minor (although deeply disturbing) portion of the church scandal.
In regards to the available targets were alter boys argument, study the trends of abuse of boys and girls over the decades in the John Jay report. You will note that the percentage of same sex abuse increased or remained stable in the 70’s and 80’s as the percentage of female servers increased exponentially.
Still doesn't add up (pt 2)
By larryboy (not verified) on Wednesday, July 28, 2010- There is no way of knowing what percentage of priests are of homosexual orientation; current estimates on the internet range from 10 - 90%, though a rough estimate of 25-30% seems more likely. At any rate, it is impossible to tell what the actual percentage of gay priests were in the decades of the 20th century, let alone trying to determine if there is some type of correlation between the number of gay priests and abuse cases. The John Jay study says that there was a development of a "gay subculture" in the 1970's and 80's, but that does not necessarily correspond to any type of increase in the percentage of gay priests. What if the percentage has remained constant or actually fallen in the past 50-60 years?
- One more point: engaging in homosexual behavior (i.e. sexual contact with a person of the same gender) does not automatically indicate a person is of a homosexual orientation. One may look to the prison population for examples of how normal sexual orientation is cast aside in favor of power, control, and lack of availability of opposite-sex partners in same-gender sexual relationships. I apologize if this is an insensitive comparison, but my overall point remains the same: correlation and causality are (as any good scientist can tell you) not the same, and we must be careful to not make blanket assumptions when attempting to characterize the priests that abuse minors.
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