As Catholic Sex Abe Crisis Deepens, Conservative Circl Blame Gay Prits : NPR

Contents:

• ‘IT IS NOT A CLOSET. IT IS A CAGE.’ GAY CATHOLIC PRITS SPEAK OUT
• THE GAY CHURCH
• OPENLY GAY CATHOLIC PRIT DISCS POPE FRANCIS' APPEAL FOR LGBTQ PROTECTNS
• WHY DID SO MANY GAY MEN ENTER THE PRITHOOD THE 20TH CENTURY?
• 80 PERCENT OF PRITS THE VATIN ARE GAY: NEW BOOK
• WHAT ABOUT ‘GAY’ PRITS?
• ONE GAY PRIT’S STORY
• GAY FORMER PRIT: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 'IS A SICK STUTN'
• GAY PRITS: BREAKG THE SILENCE
• CATHOLIC DCE SAYS GAY AND TRANS PEOPLE N'T BE BAPTIZED OR RECEIVE COMMUNN
• AS CATHOLIC SEX ABE CRISIS DEEPENS, CONSERVATIVE CIRCL BLAME GAY PRITS

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

” 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. 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.

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. Many gay prits spoke of beg pulled between nial and nfn, fally g out to themselv their 30s or Green was 24 when he realized he was gay and nsired jumpg om his dorm wdow.

THE GAY CHURCH

”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. 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.

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

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.

“There is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even wh the hierarchy, which needs to be purified at the root, ” the Amerin rdal Raymond Burke clared Augt. ” 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.

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

New onle media anizatns — led by Brebart-style webs such as LifeSe News and Church Milant — now routely pounce on any cints volvg gay prits and have an fluential dience the Vatin. 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.

80 PERCENT OF PRITS THE VATIN ARE GAY: NEW BOOK

“But how do you e to a posive unrstandg of your sexualy when the church won’t say you even have a sexual orientatn, jt ‘same-sex attractn’ or ‘ep-seated homosexual tennci’?

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.

” 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. The historil rerd, however, reveals that for all Augte’s fluence, the practice of tense homoerotic iendship among the clergy was mon over the followg centuri, pecially monasteri.

WHAT ABOUT ‘GAY’ PRITS?

The masterpiece on the subject of “spirual iendship” was, fact, wrten by a gay man, Sat Aelred, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Rievlx England the mid-1160s.

ONE GAY PRIT’S STORY

By the 12th century, prits and monks were wrg love poems to one another what Boswell scrib as an “outburst of Christian gay lerature still whout parallel the Wtern world.

Damian was a leadg reformer of the church his day, far beyond the gay-prit issue, and a synod 1059 rpond to all of his many proposals — except the one agast gay clergy.

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

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. The greatt Catholic poet of the 19th century, the Ju prit Gerard Manley Hopks, was gay; one of the ept theologian-prits of the last century, Henri Nouwen, was as well.

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. In many ways, the old, elaborate High Mass, wh s cense and procsns, lor-d vtments, lurgil plexy, mil precisn, choirs, ans, and sheer drama, is obvly, part, a creatn of the gay prithood.

GAY PRITS: BREAKG THE SILENCE

Then there is the mon experience of a gay boy or teen, brought up the church, who turns to God stgglg wh the qutn of his difference and displacement om the normal. To nflate sexual abe wh the gay prithood, as many now reflexively do, is a grotque libel on the vast majory who have never ntemplated such crim and are ed appalled by them.

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.

CATHOLIC DCE SAYS GAY AND TRANS PEOPLE N'T BE BAPTIZED OR RECEIVE COMMUNN

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. A book due out Febary, In the Closet of the Vatin, by the French journalist Frédéric Martel, is said to nta extraordary evince of gay hypocrisy the Vatin for several s.

AS CATHOLIC SEX ABE CRISIS DEEPENS, CONSERVATIVE CIRCL BLAME GAY PRITS

But Viganò’s ttimony on the key qutn — that an actively abive homosexual rdal was knowgly tolerated by John Pl II and Benedict XVI and nsulted by Francis — had the rg of tth. A send optn would be a fudge, a ren of 2005, when the church said all gay prits should be fired and no gay men be admted to the semary … and then did nothg much about .

(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. They have unvered how siar mistranslatns, misntextualizatns, and misterpretatns have altered the meangs of the ancient scriptur to legimate morn social prejudic agast homosexualy. When early Christian mentators such as John Chrysostom, one of the most prolific biblil wrers of the fourth century, cricized homosexual acts, was typilly part of an ascetic nmnatn of all sexual experienc.

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.