I thought I uld be a gay Ju prit. I n’t believe how wrong I was. - The Washgton Post

Contents:

• GAY JU PRIT: “WE DREAM OF A CHURCH THAT WILL ACCEPT .”
• CONFSNS OF A GAY JU: HOW I WAS FORCED TO LEAVE MY CHURCH—AND CALLG
• I THOUGHT I ULD BE A GAY JU PRIT. I N’T BELIEVE HOW WRONG I WAS.
• GAY EX-JU CONCERT BOOTED FROM CHURCH AFTER BACKLASH
• THE GAY CHURCH
• CONFSNS OF A GAY JU
• THOSE GAY JUS
• GAY JU: CATHOLIC CHURCH MT DISVER 'TENR COMPASSN' FOR ALL
• WH A CALL FOR COMPASSN, JU SCHOLASTIC COM OUT AS GAY
• THE JUS AND GAY PRI
• FATHER MART AND THE GAY JU MAFIA
• WAS J GAY?
• A PLACE FOR : ON BEG GAY THE PRITHOOD

GAY JU PRIT: “WE DREAM OF A CHURCH THAT WILL ACCEPT .”

“Our reticence to share our stori wh the church or to speak out when queer people are fired or mistreated likewise ces the church’s narrative around homosexualy mostly to those who misunrstand or monize .

But realistilly will our stutn grow s unrstandg of sexualy if we who have experience as both gay men and clergy won’t stand wh other queer people and other Christian church and share what God has shown , that while we would love to not be aaid or ashamed anymore, to not feel danger or like a burn, we would never choose to not be who we are?

CONFSNS OF A GAY JU: HOW I WAS FORCED TO LEAVE MY CHURCH—AND CALLG

I am a morn gay Christian search of love, one who still wants to bee a 2004 to 2014 I was a Ju, a member of the Society of J good standg, an orr gone global by the electn of Pope Francis I. Here’s my story; is an experiment wh tth tellg, as much as is about jtice for LGBTQ Christians and non-Christians, men, women and children who have been eply affected by the lennia of anti-gay theology and hate speech poed by the Roman Catholic Church. More than anythg else we were a Roman Catholic fay who orred our liv around the life of the Church, as much as we did big Italian meals and Broadway was a cent childhood, but at home I uld never fully be myself, the Church’s teachg on homosexualy burned any genue relatnship between my parents and me and my four siblgs and me.

I THOUGHT I ULD BE A GAY JU PRIT. I N’T BELIEVE HOW WRONG I WAS.

No one ever spoke to me about the subject of sex or sexualy: This drew enough red flags for sirg to be a prit, I prayed for guidance and remembered two Ju prits, Fathers Mateo Ricci and Walter Ciszek, members of the Society of J (the Jus), members of what I would quickly learn was the largt, most progrsive and gay-iendly relig orr the Frs. My iend Katie asked me how I uld dite my life to an stutn that labeled me as trsilly disorred, one who saw gay sexual acts are I saw homosexualy and Catholicism the most holistic way, and I put my needs for self-prervatn last bee I wanted to make a difference the life of LGBTQ youth.

GAY EX-JU CONCERT BOOTED FROM CHURCH AFTER BACKLASH

I thought I uld change thgs om the si, but to do this right I had to enter the Church’s most gay iendly orr, an orr wh polil and social nnectns that rivaled the then I knew would take years and years to undo the damage done to the LGBTQ muny by the Church, damage I hoped to help repair my lifetime as a prit. One immature novice said that for him gay porn was but one means to keep his “gay self” alive and still nnected to a muny so often alienated by the Church; for me, he was erroneoly projectg his own sense of isolatn and alienatn by the Church onto the gay porn those secret meetgs we discsed why was OK for our straight brothers to make c jok about women durg dner while we uld not discs ex-boyiends or what meant to be healthy, chaste gay man.

THE GAY CHURCH

Why was I, a healthy tegrated gay man, choosg life a hostile environment, self-selectg, and eely rpondg to a votn a church that practic “don’t ask, don’t tell” through the impnt guise of hate the s, love the sner?

CONFSNS OF A GAY JU

I was more shocked by the stori I’d hear of younger Jus fatherg babi, and gay Jus fondlg each other vans on the way to men were gay Jus whom the Church and the Society of J embraced, gay men who acrdg to the church’s teachg were still objectively disorred, trsilly viant om the natural world and social the Society of J dog , or the LGBTQ muny, any favors by keepg ? ”Every time I heard a prep stunt e the term “faggot, ” or unseled a gay stunt bullied by his peers, I thought of Jam Baldw’s say, ‘Stranger In The Village, ’ (PDF) where he wr, “The children who shout ‘Neger!

Over time I grew tired of wag for the secret world of gay Jus: I uld go on and on about gay Jus playg the piano the Wt Village’s Duplex or about the nights I spent at NYC’s Splash Bar or Eagle Club. There were gay Jus who were put cleril prison for embracg unrgrads too long, and others who attend Sexaholics Anonymo, or whose personal llectn of pornography was mistakenly played durg high school lectur.

I saw the vehement ternalized homophobia of some Jus, and knew of certa gay pastors removed om jobs so that ls out and more passable gay Jus replace them at gay-iendly were gay Jus who traveled the world to scuba dive or taste French we.

THOSE GAY JUS

I lament that the gay Jus rema silent while their gay or lbian lay lleagu are fired om jobs and brought closer to 35, I ntue to ponr the qutn: Why is fair for the Church to orda gay men who sneak out at night jt to be wh other men of their muny, while the Church nmns gays who want to marry and to exprs their love? The two men should meet: Maybe my new iend uld help my Ju brother to e out of the every new stage of formatn, I met more and more gay Jus who were happier sippg stch, orrg cigars, opera tickets, and sho, publishg books or holdg secret mass wh LGBTQ sympathizers (that followed unsanctned lurgil brics) than publicly nontg the jtice experienced by members of their muny. I believe the gay Jus won’t e out bee they live fortable liv, wh accs to so many thgs, like the latt technology or villas abroad or tenured posns at universi, not to mentn the unlimed gas rds that make domtic travel really other words, the gay Jus are livg better liv than the timated 320, 000 to 400, 000 homels LGBTQ youth Ameri.

"Still, Brenkert knows he ma the rrect cisn and hop n help spire other gay and closeted people of fah to enter to their own discernment regardg their beliefs whout the terference of a meddlg and outdated hierarchy and orthodoxy. A church that, sce 2005, bans prits wh “ep-seated homosexual tennci” and officially teach that gay men are “objectively disorred” and herently disposed toward “trsic moral evil” is actually posed, ways very few other stutns are, of gay men.

This cultural and moral shift has not only changed the nscns of most Amerin Catholics (67 percent of whom support civil marriage for gay upl) and gay prits (many of whom are close to qutg) but also broken the silence that long shroud the subject. Alarmed by the possibily that divorced and remarried people might be weled as well as gays, tradnalists lnched a fierce rearguard mpaign agast the new papacy, wh a foc on what some lled a “Lavenr Mafia” nng the church, and broke new ground nnectg this directly to the horrifyg revelatns of sex abe that me to light 2002. In creasgly direct ways, they have argued that the root of the sndal was not abe of power, or pedophilia, or clerilism, or the distortive psychologil effects of celibacy and stutnal homophobia, but gayns self.

GAY JU: CATHOLIC CHURCH MT DISVER 'TENR COMPASSN' FOR ALL

” Michael Hichborn, head of the ge-right Lepanto Instute, lled for a “plete and thorough removal of all homosexual clergymen om the church … It is gog to be difficult and will likely rult a very ser prit shortage, but ’s fely worth the effort.

Here, seemed, was a pedophile and an abive gay man, at the very apex of the church, known to be sexually active wh semarians, protected by his peers, and tolerated for s by many the hierarchy, cludg the last three pop. At one pot as we spoke the next day the hospal, he was greeted by a woman who asked for an on-the-spot nfsn and he shooed me asi; later I met an anguished gay man om an ultra-Catholic fay he was unselg; and for a few hours on Sunday morng, he was wh the wife and teenage sons of a dyg man.

The news environment is saturated wh stori about sex abe — and rightly so — yet there are hardly any public exampl of the overwhelmg number of gay prits who would never dream of preyg upon the powerls. For example, as the late historian John Boswell monstrated his groundbreakg, ntroversial book Christiany, Social Tolerance, and Homosexualy, a fourth-century Christian wrer, John Chrysostom, attacked the lears of the church for beg too acceptg of same-sex love and even sex: “Those very people who have been nourished by godly doctre, who stct others what they ought and ought not to do … the do not nsort wh prostut as fearlsly as they do wh young men … None is ashamed, no one blh … the chaste seem to be the odd on, and the disapprovg the on error.

WH A CALL FOR COMPASSN, JU SCHOLASTIC COM OUT AS GAY

” There was nsirable Christian ncern about sex general — followg the teachg of sats Pl and Augte — but no nsens that homosexualy, if kept to tense mutual love and celibate iendship, was specifilly problematic. Homosexuals, the new theology, were part of nature — many had noticed homosexual behavr the animal kgdom, particularly among har and hyenas — but they were also somehow ntrary to nature. Carl Jung intified the archetypal gifts of the homosexual: “a great pacy for iendship, which often creat ti of astonishg tenrns between men”; a talent for teachg, athetics, and tradn (“to be nservative the bt sense and cherish the valu of the past”); “a wealth of relig feelgs, which help to brg the ecclia spirualis to realy; and a spirual receptivy which mak him rponsive to revelatn.

But some abe of male teens and young adults, as well as abe of other prits, is clearly related to homosexualy gone horribly astray — and around a quarter of the reported s volve 15- to 17-year-old victims. He was also the theologian who monstrated a manic sire to police the slightt viatn om orthodoxy, who scribed gay people as “objectively disorred” and cled toward an “trsic moral evil, ” and who, after he banned gay prits, lled them “one of the miseri of the church.

THE JUS AND GAY PRI

Some of the gay prits I spoke wh acknowledged laps but sisted that, nsultatn wh their spirual directors and superrs, they chose celibacy when the choice beme impossible to ignore or avoid. ” The problem, he said, was if gays were to form some kd of factn or lobby wh the church — but this, he explaed, applied to any lobby: “a lobby of misers, a lobby of policians, a lobby of Masons.

(Whether celibacy is healthy for the church is s own qutn, one oddly distct om the current crisis; a relaxatn of the l wouldn’t self rolve the church’s posn on homosexualy, and an embrace of homosexualy is patible wh a celibate prithood. Damien Torr-Botello, a man studyg for the Roman Catholic prithood, discs his homosexualy and lls on the church to be more welg of LGBT people an say published onle Torr-Botello entered the Ju relig orr 2011, some of his loved on "feared I would be forced to the closet after seventeen years of acceptg myself as gay, " he wr on The Ju Post.

FATHER MART AND THE GAY JU MAFIA

""I pray as a Church we disver tenr passn for each other to love the God that dwells all, " he reportedly had the approval of his superrs for the post, acrdg to ThkProgrs, and his public discsn of beg gay is "not necsarily a direct vlatn of Catholic teachg.

But meanwhile, a group of proment Catholics took out a full-page ad yterday's San Francis Chronicle urgg the pope to replace that cy's archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone, who has been particularly outspoken agast homosexualy and marriage other thgs, Cordileone has stuted a moraly clse the handbook for parochial-school teachers, sayg they mt not publicly embrace posns that go agast church teachgs on birth ntrol, abortn, or homosexualy. Bee we know that so many prits and members of relig muni are gay and lbian, and sce so many of them choose to rema private about their sexual orientatns, is news when one of them cis to e out publicly.

WAS J GAY?

Mart exam some of the reasons, both personal and spirual, that may prevent a Ju superr om grantg permissn for a member to e out as gay, but at the same time, he not that this example is a wele change:. Let’s remember thankfully, too, the gay Jus who me out the 1970s, and also Benjam Brenkert, who recently left the Society of J bee he uld no longer rema closeted or accept the firgs of LGBT church employe. Morators:DougErd, ryld, BuzzardThe Jus: the go-to relig orr for homosexual men wantg to bee pritsThe Jus: the go-to relig orr for homosexual men wantg to bee pritsFeb 26, 2015#12015-02-26T11:53Who knew that the Society of J, aka the Jus, was the go-to relig orr for gay men wantg to bee prits?

His dictment of some gay prits that sire to keep their liftyle quiet while beneftg om the perks of the Ju orr sheds light on the nfn occurrg wh the semari; a nfn which should be clarified and settled. At every new stage of formatn, I met more and more gay Jus who were happier sippg stch, orrg cigars, opera tickets, and sho, publishg books or holdg secret mass wh LGBTQ sympathizers (that followed unsanctned lurgil brics) than publicly nontg the jtice experienced by members of their muny.

I believe the gay Jus won’t e out bee they live fortable liv, wh accs to so many thgs, like the latt technology or villas abroad or tenured posns at universi, not to mentn the unlimed gas rds that make domtic travel really easy.

A PLACE FOR : ON BEG GAY THE PRITHOOD

The article, which was reportedly approved by Torr-Botello’s superrs, scrib his ial stggl wh discerng a ll to mistry, notg that his iends and fay exprsed ncerns he uld face obstacl as a person of lor and would be forced to the closet after seventeen years of acceptg myself as gay. He ced exampl of Catholic school teachers fired for beg openly gay as well as other groups who have felt exclud by the church, such as people of lor, women, divorced Catholics, and children wh disabili. Asked why lbian and gay Catholics should rema the church, pecially after Pope Francis’ disappotg exhortatn Amoris Laetia, the prit replied:I know many Catholic gays and lbians who refe to be ostracized and who rema the church spe what they have had to and are havg to suffer..