Once a prit, always a prit—even after a gay weddg? – Catholic World Report

Contents:

• OPENLY GAY CATHOLIC PRIT DISCS POPE FRANCIS' APPEAL FOR LGBTQ PROTECTNS
• GAY PRITS: BREAKG THE SILENCE
• ‘IT IS NOT A CLOSET. IT IS A CAGE.’ GAY CATHOLIC PRITS SPEAK OUT
• ST. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: THE FIRST OPENLY GAY CATHOLIC SAT?
• GAY FORMER PRIT: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 'IS A SICK STUTN'
• A GAY PRIT RIGNED OVER GRDR USE. HE WAS OUTED BY HIS CELL PHONE DATA
• THE GAY PRIT PROBLEM
• ONCE A PRIT, ALWAYS A PRIT—EVEN AFTER A GAY WEDDG?
• THE GAY CHURCH
• WHY DID SO MANY GAY MEN ENTER THE PRITHOOD THE 20TH CENTURY?

OPENLY GAY CATHOLIC PRIT DISCS POPE FRANCIS' APPEAL FOR LGBTQ PROTECTNS

And so this ll for the civil regnn and protectn of gay civil unns, 's really an affirmatn of the humany of gay and lbian persons - that he's sayg that bee gay and lbian persons are human begs, that society, that the state, that ernments have an obligatn and a duty to protect their basic human Do extendg the right to a civil unn and acknowledgg that LGBTQ people should be allowed to have a partner their life through a civil unn and a fay - do that mean children?

Now, may seem to be a semantic difference, but I thk what the pope is sayg is that he is not opposed to the legal regnn of fay life and the right for gay and lbian persons to raise and have As a gay Catholic yourself, I mean, as a man of fah, as a Catholic, is somehow ls signifint, I would image, a civil unn than beg able to be married the church? I personally - and I know many others, gay and lbian persons and those who are alli and who love - would want the church to be able to one day regnize the lovg mments of LGBTQ persons the sacrament of marriage. And what the pope is dog wh this kd of claratn - he's clearly puttg the Catholic Church on the si of agast the crimalizatn of behavr and favor of protectg the human digny of gay and lbian But help me unrstand this bee 's my unrstandg that the Catholic Church still nsirs homosexualy to be a s, not somethg that should be enuraged a liftyle.

And I thk that this really giv a different lens for that kd of nversatn that go on the Catholic Church that we're basilly sayg that, no, gay and lbian persons n, you know, have a right to a fay.

GAY PRITS: BREAKG THE SILENCE

While Pope Francis famoly rpond "Who am I to judge" when asked about gay prits durg a papal prs nference, he has also said that anyone wh "ep seated" homosexual tennci shouldn't be a prit. "Their place is not mistry or nsecrated life, " he Jam Mart, a Ju prit and thor, and the most high-profile advote for LGBTQ Catholics, said, "I thk that if you had sudnly all the gay prits the Uned Stat e out, I thk the Church would be forced to look at the qutn of homosexualy a very different light.

" "One of the thgs I lament is, if there were a se of, say, bullyg a parish or a school, would be wonrful for the gay prit to get up and say, 'Look, I was bullied as a boy, '" Father Mart said. ""It is a large, silent muny, a vast silent majory, " said Frédéric Martel, a French thor who spent four years rearchg his book, "In the Closet of the Vatin, " about the gay unrworld there. Father Greg Green, fahfully servg his parish Wisns, said secrecy is a surge the church, so the first step for him is beg open and asked, "You signed up to work for an stutn that thks beg gay, actg out on that, is a s.

Bernatte Catholic Parish, Milwkee, Jam Mart on Twter"In the Closet of the Vatin: Power, Homosexualy, Hypocrisy" by Frédéric Martel (Bloomsbury Contuum), Hardver, Tra Paperback, eBook and Aud formats, available via Amazon and Indiebound Story produced by Sari Aviv and Anna Matranga. ” And yet, thoands of the church’s prits are stori of gay prits are unspoken, veiled om the outsi world, known only to one another, if they are known at than about 10 prits the Uned Stat have dared to e out publicly.

‘IT IS NOT A CLOSET. IT IS A CAGE.’ GAY CATHOLIC PRITS SPEAK OUT

McCarrick, the once-powerful rdal who was ocked last week for sexual abe of boys and young men, has flamed accatns that homosexualy is to blame for the church’s rurgent abe crisis. And yet proment bishops have sgled out gay prits as the root of the problem, and right-wg media anizatns attack what they have lled the church’s “homosexual subculture, ” “lavenr mafia, ” or “gay bal.

ST. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: THE FIRST OPENLY GAY CATHOLIC SAT?

He has lled homosexualy “fashnable, ” remend that men wh “this ep-seated tenncy” not be accepted for mistry and admonished gay prits to be “perfectly rponsible, tryg to never create sndal. ”The sexual revolutn happeng outsi semary walls might as well have happened on the moon, and natnal ton the fight for gay rights, like the Stonewall rts, on prit a ral dce said the l remd him of how his elementary school forced left-hand stunts to wre wh their right hand.

”Though open, the closet means that many prits have held the most paful stori among themselv for s: The semarian who died by suici, and the match om a gay bar found afterward his room.

GAY FORMER PRIT: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 'IS A SICK STUTN'

Wh every new abe revelatn, the tangled threads of the church’s sexual culture bee even more impossible to sort after study shows that homosexualy is not a predictor of child moltatn. When the abe crisis broke out aga last summer, the former Vatin ambassador to the Uned Stat, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, acced “homosexual works” of Amerin rdals of secretly workg to protect abers. And this week, a sensatnal book tled “Sodoma” Europe (“In the Closet of the Vatin” the Uned Stat) is beg released that claims to expose a vast gay subculture at the Vatin.

“Instead of seeg creased acuntabily on the parts of the bishops, uld bee once aga a nmnatn of lbian, gay, transsexual people wh the church, ” John Coe, 63, a permanent an Kentucky, who me out last year, said about the summ.

A GAY PRIT RIGNED OVER GRDR USE. HE WAS OUTED BY HIS CELL PHONE DATA

Of urse, the two men uld be gay and have had a strong affectnate and timate relatnship whout beg sexually active, jt as many gay men the prithood and relig life today mata their promis and vows of celibacy. While some people thk that homophobia agast gay men om a revulsn about male sex acts, I thk that for many people the more horrifyg and sndalo phenomenon is men beg emotnally sensive, tenr, and affectnate wh one another. Of urse, such gentle and timate rpons by men is only a problem if one suffers om tense homophobia or believ the enforcement of strict genr expectatns that men should not be emotnal and rg toward one another.

THE GAY PRIT PROBLEM

Yet, I thk a good se n be ma for Newman beg the “first openly gay” Catholic sat for the simple reason that we know so much more about him and his relatnship than we do about the other exampl.

ONCE A PRIT, ALWAYS A PRIT—EVEN AFTER A GAY WEDDG?

He and his partner plan to soon enter to a civil Wolf never had any problems leadg Nashville area church until he was quoted a 2019 New York Tim article about gay nsirable blowback, Wolf rigned and retired a few months after that story published.

The Pillar, a Catholic newsletter on Substack, approached the USCCB wh data they claimed proved that Burrill had vised gay bars and actively ed Grdr for gay hookups, which vlat both the vow of celibacy mandated for Catholic prits and the church’s stance on print Archbishop José Gomez said that Burrill chose to rign to avoid beg “a distractn, ” acrdg to the Washgton a statement to the Post, a spokperson for Grdr lled The Pillar’s story “homophobic” and ially nied was possible for the pany’s data to have been ed this way. ”The Pillar’s origal story argued that Burrill’s work on child protectn issu was nflict wh his e of the gay datg app, playg to the persistent, damagg, and false stereotype lkg gay men to pedophilia.

By the same token, when we are urged to pretend that there is room for doubt as to how most prits ntract AIDS, we n be sure that our gaze is beg tentnally diverted om the ugly and disputable facts: a disproportnately high percentage of prits is gay; a disproportnately high percentage of gay prits routely engag sodomy; this sodomy is equently ignored, often tolerated, and sometim abetted by bishops and superrs. The percentage is vigoroly disputed, of urse, but one ditn of the spe of the problem is that those who argue for the lowt timate sist that the number of gays the clergy is no higher than that of the gay populatn society at large—as if this were not on s own showg evince of a profound crisis. Gay prits themselv—who, though admtedly partisan, admtedly also have unique accs to the facts—monly assure that they are legn wh the prithood general and well-reprented even among bishops.

THE GAY CHURCH

The prit-artist plored the fact, not that his fellow Jus engaged homosexual relatns, but that they did not take “safe-sex” preutns even after the facts about HIV transmissn beme known.

” In the same ve, such prits routely gloat about the fact that gay bars big ci have special “clergy nights, ” that gay rorts have set-asis for prits, and that certa plac the dcan apparat is ntrolled entirely by gays. What is signifint is that the are not claims ma by their opponents, not accatns fired off by right-wg Catholics a f of paranoia; rather they are gays’ words about gays themselv. Their boasts clu havg blackmailed the Connecticut Catholic Conference to reversg s opposn to a gay rights law by threateng to “out” gay bishops—a reversal that is difficult to unrstand whout rort to the blackmail explanatn.

The nsiratns serve to unrsre the pot that the problem of gay prits entails not simply the sndal of sexual mismeanor but also the fact that gay Catholics, by virtue of the fact that they reject her thory, serve to unrme the teachg Church.

WHY DID SO MANY GAY MEN ENTER THE PRITHOOD THE 20TH CENTURY?

To this end, is stctive to ponr the followg msage to his fellow gay clergy by South Ai’s Bishop Regald Cawcutt, penned rponse to a mor that Cardal Joseph Ratzger’s Congregatn for the Doctre of the Fah was about to issue a letter prohibg the acceptance of gay semarians. Iology allows the problem to persist Bishop Cawcutt’s astonishg survivabily puts one md of Print Clton’s, and to some extent the persistence of the gay prit problem and Print Clton’s immuny to sndal have a mon e: gay clergy their sphere and Clton his own have been dispensable agents the advancement of the liberal agenda. Like their secular unterparts, Catholic liberals, even where they do not posively appld the sexual recreatns of gay prits, are willg to overlook the rultant embarrassment orr that a more important end may be served— orr, that is, that gays may rema as active members the Church to assist them their project of replacg ecclial thory wh personal experience as the norm termative of thentic fah.

Of their panns dissent who stayed behd the prithood, a disproportnately high number are gay, and even liberal wrers have mented on the “lavenrizatn of the left” that characteriz the cleril wg of their movement. A review of a recent book on the prithood by the Natnal Catholic Reporter’s Tom Roberts typifi the posn—uneasily held, nervoly exprsed—of the non-gay progrsive: “Consirg Orientatn” is the chapter of The Changg Face of the Prithood that als wh the creasgly disproportnate number of homosexuals the Roman Catholic prithood and the one that leads the thor, Fr. ” It is a vilishly difficult qutn to ask, first bee almost no one the hierarchil ranks wants anythg to do wh , and bee one n only approach through a mefield planted wi wh homophob, right-wg zealots who see homosexual clergy as a particularly nox maniftatn of a liberal agenda, and the church’s teachg that the homosexual orientatn is “objectively disorred.