Openly Gay Catholic Prit Discs Pope Francis' Appeal For LGBTQ Protectns : NPR

Contents:

• CATHOLIC PRIT OUT AS GAY, GETS A STANDG OVATN
• OPENLY GAY CATHOLIC PRIT DISCS POPE FRANCIS' APPEAL FOR LGBTQ PROTECTNS
• THE GAY PRIT PROBLEM
• ‘IT IS NOT A CLOSET. IT IS A CAGE.’ GAY CATHOLIC PRITS SPEAK OUT
• COLORADO CATHOLIC GROUP SPENT LNS TO INTIFY PRITS G GAY DATG APPS
• GAY PRITS: BREAKG THE SILENCE
• GAY FORMER PRIT: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 'IS A SICK STUTN'
• 80 PERCENT OF PRITS THE VATIN ARE GAY: NEW BOOK
• FOUR FIVE VATIN PRITS ARE GAY, BOOK CLAIMS
• A GAY PRIT RIGNED OVER GRDR USE. HE WAS OUTED BY HIS CELL PHONE DATA
• A BLACK GAY PRIT NEW YORK CY IS CHALLENGG THE CATHOLIC CHURCH OM WH

CATHOLIC PRIT OUT AS GAY, GETS A STANDG OVATN

All prits take a vow of announcg his inty as a gay man, Green chastised the Catholic Church for s stance on choosg to enforce silence, the stutnal church pretends that gay prits and relig do not really exist. Bee of this, there are no thentic role mols of healthy, well-balanced, gay, celibate prits to be an example for those, young and old, who are stgglg to e to terms wh their sexual only perpetuat the toxic shamg and systemic secrecy.

8, 2016, the Vatin's Congregatn for Clergy reerated a cisn om 2005 that men wh "ep-seated homosexual tennci" shouldn't bee bee semarians, the first step on the path to prithood. Steve Wolf, pastor of Immaculate Conceptn Catholic Church Clarksville, Tenn., led a retreat last month for gay Catholic clergy and ngregatnal lears Race, Wis., g out beyond his own dce a September blog post to promote the nference. ► November 2015:Deocked gay Vatin prit says he has no regrets► October 2015:Vatin summ opens door for divorced, punts on wele to gays"We support Father Green his own, personal journey and tellg his story of g to unrstand and live wh his sexual orientatn.

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

He echoed words om Pope Francis last year when he urged the church and other Christian muni to apologize to the lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr muni along wh "other groups has offend throughout history. ► October 2013:Catholics say church 'obssed' wh moral issu, poll shows► July 2013:Pope says he won't judge gay pritsFor years, Green had been told homosexualy was somethg to be punished, he said. I will embrace the person that God created me to my pritly life and mistry, I, too, will help you, whether you are gay or straight, bisexual or transgenred, to be your thentic self — to be fully alive livg your image and likens of God.

I have lived far too many years chaed up and imprisoned the closet behd walls of shame, trma and abe bee of the homophobia and discrimatn so prevalent my church and the world. 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.

THE GAY PRIT PROBLEM

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. Jt days after Pope Francis warned of a "homosexual lobby" wh the Vatin, the Italian webse reveals that there is a webse that acts as both fom and datg se for gay and "homosensive prits.

In celebratn of LGBT pri, the Brish Mm has done somethg awome celebratn of LGBT pri: they've anized a book and d tour highlightg the hidn and sometim not-so-hidn gay histori their llectn. 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.

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

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 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.

COLORADO CATHOLIC GROUP SPENT LNS TO INTIFY PRITS G GAY DATG APPS

” 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.

GAY PRITS: BREAKG THE SILENCE

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.

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

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.

80 PERCENT OF PRITS THE VATIN ARE GAY: NEW BOOK

” 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.

FOUR FIVE VATIN PRITS ARE GAY, BOOK CLAIMS

Much of the hierarchy’s reluctance to addrs the issue stems precisely om the beatg knows would take at the hands of liberals should treat gayns as a negative factor. It is a slight exaggeratn, if is an exaggeratn at all, to ntend that the only disqualifyg factor for gay/lbian or AIDS mistry is moral disapproval of the gay liftyle. 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.

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.

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

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. It is this sense that the prcipal reason why the actn necsary to solve the gay problem won’t be taken is that the epispacy the Uned Stat is rpt, and the same is te of the majory of relig orrs. 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.

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.

Saturday, July 15, 2023In the ty town of Plas, Va., the nservative Christian neighbors of the gay-owned Front Porch Market and Grill have been workg to shut down the rtrant. ” 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.

A BLACK GAY PRIT NEW YORK CY IS CHALLENGG THE CATHOLIC CHURCH OM WH

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. ”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.