The Catholic Church is an almost unique stutn — shunng homosexualy but havg so many gay men s ranks, wr Andrew Sullivan. The Vatin’s failure to reckon wh their sexualy has created a crisis for Catholicism.
Contents:
- THE GAY CHURCH
- 21 GAY POP, CARDALS, AND ASSORTED CATHOLIC LEARS
- 21 GAY POPES, CARDINALS AND ASSORTED CATHOLIC LEADERS.
- GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI
THE GAY CHURCH
* spellman gay *
In the Uned Stat, however, where there are 37, 000 prits, no pennt study has found fewer than 15 percent to be gay, and some have found as many as 60 percent. 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. The llapse of the closet public and private life the past three s has ma the disproportnate homosexualy of the Catholic prithood much ls easy to hi, ignore, or ny.
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.
21 GAY POP, CARDALS, AND ASSORTED CATHOLIC LEARS
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. 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. “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’?
21 GAY POPES, CARDINALS AND ASSORTED CATHOLIC LEADERS.
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. 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. 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.
The pope at the time, Leo IX, nohels refed to ban gay clergy and argued that the problem was those who had sex “as a long-standg practice or wh many men. 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 MOSW MOSW CY GUI
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. Newman famoly nverted om Anglinism to Catholicism and was part of the reformist and athetic Oxford Movement, which was strongly fluenced by homosexual men. 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.