Confsns of a Gay Prit: A Memoir of Sex, Love, Abe, and Sndal the Catholic Semary on JSTOR

Contents:

• ARE GAY PRITS THE PROBLEM?
• ‘IT IS NOT A CLOSET. IT IS A CAGE.’ GAY CATHOLIC PRITS SPEAK OUT
• THE GAY PRIT PROBLEM
• THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS ENABLG THE SEX ABE CRISIS BY FORCG GAY PRITS TO STAY THE CLOSET
• WHY WON’T OUR BISHOPS SOLVE THE “GAY” PRIT PROBLEM?
• CONONTG THE GAY PRIT PROBLEM
• KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE ACH A US MEN’S PROFSNAL SPORTS LEAGUE TO PUBLICLY E OUT AS GAY
• DIPLOMATIC TENSN REPORTEDLY RISG BETWEEN UNED STAT AND JAMAI OVER GAY AMERIN DIPLOMAT
• THE GAY CHURCH

ARE GAY PRITS THE PROBLEM?

April 15, 2010 — -- The sex abe sndal the Roman Catholic Church took yet another turn this week when statements by the Vatin's secretary of state, Cardal Tarcis Bertone, send only to Pope Benedict, lked pedophilia to homosexualy. Bertone said: "Many psychologists, many psychiatrists have monstrated that there is no relatnship between celibacy and pedophilia, but many others have monstrated that there is a relatnship between homosexualy and pedophilia. Pedophilia and ephebophilia are sexual disorrs that afflict both heterosexuals and homosexuals, and mostly problem of sexual abe is rooted not orientatn but rather pathology ed by the environmental, behavral, blogil and societal ndns of the aber.

Trma om early childhood (ag 2-5), cludg sexual abe and arrted sexual velopment are the most mon factors ced by those who diagnose sexual, there are gay anecdotal statistics suggt as many as 40 percent of prits may be gay, acrdg to Jam Wolf's book "Gay Prits, " although this is not verifiable bee many rema silent for fear of eccliastil and societal, y, a small mory of gay prits who were sexually arrted and maladjted abed boys. ” 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.

”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. “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. 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.

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

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.

” 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.

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.

THE GAY PRIT PROBLEM

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.

It will be a tough problem to solve, part bee Catholics like Roberts cherish a ntempt for nservativ (“homophob, right-wg zealots”) that overmasters their tun that somethg has gone wrong wh the liberal project when s clost alli the clergy are lked the public imagatn wh male ballet dancers and fashn signers. In the same ve, whereas the Natnal Catholic Reporter via Jason Berry’s articl was among the first publitns to broach the subject of cleril sexual abe, the same paper remas bewilrgly doctraire s refal to qutn the dogma that the preponrance of male victims is entirely unrelated to pritly homosexualy. Silence on this subject on the part of bishops and relig superrs is bafflg to lay Catholics, who naturally wonr whether there is a double standard operatn that censur laypeople but exc clergy, that censur heterosexual but exc homosexual vice.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS ENABLG THE SEX ABE CRISIS BY FORCG GAY PRITS TO STAY THE CLOSET

Even rarer than discsn of the moral lquency of the prit wh AIDS is ndid acknowledgment of the part played by sexual perversn ntractg the disease, the psychologil disorr of the man locked to a pulsive homosexual libido which is marked by an adolcent selfishns and hunger for gratifitn and an adolcent irrponsibily and lack of ntrol.

In the same way, even though most Catholics their heart of hearts reject the stigmatizatn of their healthy reactns as “homophobia”, an uneasy sense of “there but for the grace of God go I” tempers their revulsn and sometim hibs them om givg voice to the moral ncern they rightly tu. As long as semarians are “ted sexualy” by the Michael Petersons and are warned by their superrs that they mt “live fortably wh people of different sexual orientatns, ” we n be sure that the number of gays will steadily crease the clergy and the language of moral tegry will be phed out of the discsn. Therefore no man should be elevated unls he has a track rerd as a head-cracker and has cleaned up problems of sexual wrongdog, by dismissg gay semarians or semary faculty, for example, or by gettg rid of miscreants at a universy chaplacy.

WHY WON’T OUR BISHOPS SOLVE THE “GAY” PRIT PROBLEM?

The reason is that gays are perfectly prepared to let one of their own number mouth Church teachg if by so dog he earns a promotn; but if a man expos their iquy and acts agast , they will retaliate fiercely if there is any ammunn to be had, any wrongdog, that is, their adversary’s past. Here is a high rankg official the Church admtg, fally, that there is a “homosexual subculture wh the hierarchy” which is directly lked to the sex abe is important to emphasize that this is not a matter of a bunch of dividual gay prits who jt so happened to wd up the Church.

CONONTG THE GAY PRIT PROBLEM

It expos a rampant gay culture the Archdce of Newark, where the homosexual predator Cardal McCarrick was archbishop for a number of years:Semarians and prits om ordatn class spanng 30 years, durg the terms of McCarrick and Myers, reported to CNA that they had observed an active homosexual subculture of prit and semarians wh Newark’s Immaculate Conceptn prit ordaed the early years of McCarrick’s term Newark said that “a lot of people lost their nocence the semary.

KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE ACH A US MEN’S PROFSNAL SPORTS LEAGUE TO PUBLICLY E OUT AS GAY

“But there was a subculture, wh s own group of men, that was openly homosexual and petty and vdictive wh everyone else, ” he same prit said that before he entered the semary he was warned he would “see thgs that weren’t right.

“Everyone kept llg me a ‘looker’ and sayg they had to ‘keep me around’ om now on, ” a third Newark prit told current Archbishop of Newark, Cardal Tob, released a letter nyg the existence of a gay culture the archdce. I suppose is possible that the liberal, gay-apologist Cardal of an archdce where prits attend gay cktail parti meant to send a private msage like that to his 65-year-old sister, but a reasonable person may have his mt evaluate the sort of bishops and prits who are cryg out about the problem of homosexualy wh the prithood, and the sort of bishops and prits who are nyg that such a problem exists, and ci which group is more credible. Personally, I have a much easier time tstg Bishop Molo than Cardal Nighty Night and his once we have accepted the fact that homosexualy reprents a ser challenge wh the prithood, begs to make sense that the great majory of abe victims have been mal.

In my vtigatns, and talkg to prits, scholars, lawyers for victims, ordary Catholics and activists on the church's left and right, beme very, very clear that the realy of homosexualy among the clergy was, as Mary Eberstadt put , "the elephant the sacristy. There was the laicized prit who fally left the prithood disgt over the way the large gay ntgent his dce openly vlated their celibacy vows, and ma sure the bishop, who is thought to have been promised, looked the other way when a sexual rptn sndal h the lol semary.

DIPLOMATIC TENSN REPORTEDLY RISG BETWEEN UNED STAT AND JAMAI OVER GAY AMERIN DIPLOMAT

An vtigative reporter known for his liberal sympathi once mentned to me that was eply tratg to him when he spoke wh liberal Catholics, how they refed to discs the gay prit issue, and clared off lims (I told him there was a siar phenomenon on the Catholic right wh regard to the rol played the sndal by celibacy and Church thory). Another prit, some years later, someone who had worked wh sexually troubled as well as gay prits, predicted private nversatn that the next sndal that would n through the cleril ranks would be prits wh AIDS. That beg the se, the pedophilia diagnosis would appear to ver far more of the victims than nservativ re to adm, and that, turn, the crisis be ls a matter of undiscipled homosexual prits, and more of a matter of mentally ill prits.

It is the fact that almost all of them ncern mal — whether they are adolcents, post-pubcent teens or young while no adult who is of sound psychosexual health habually preys on those who are vulnerable, there is no nyg that homosexualy is a key ponent to the clergy sex abe (and now sexual harassment) crisis. Wh such a high percentage of prits wh a homosexual orientatn, this should not be let me be very clear: psychologilly healthy gay men do not rape boys or force themselv on other men over whom they wield some measure of power or thory.

And even those who’ve done worse, ” I problem the Church is of the abe of power, an abe that happens as a rult of homophobia that keeps gay men the closet, bars them om growg up and rults distorted sexualy for many gay prits.

THE GAY CHURCH

But rather than enurage a healthy discsn about how gays n m themselv to celibate chasty a wholome way, the Church’s official polici and teachgs drive such men even eper to the like any other dark place lackg sunlight and air, this prevents normal velopment and fters mold, dankns, distortn and disease. Nothg kept the dark n bee healthy or recently as 2005, jt a few months after the electn of Benedict XVI, the Vatin issued a document that rerced the “stay the closet” policy by sayg men who intified as gay should not be admted to fact, one of the prime thors of that document — Monsignor Tony Anatrella, a prit-psychotherapist om Paris — was recently stripped of his pritly faculti after beg credibly acced of abg semarians and other young men his yet there are gay prits who have found a way to wholome self-acceptance of their sexualy. Arguably, they are among the bt and most passnate pastors we have our more nflicted gay ner — and all gay people, ed the entire Church — would benef greatly if the healthy gay prits uld openly share their stori.