'It Is Not a Closet. It Is a Cage.’

'It Is Not a Closet. It Is a Cage.’ Gay Catholic Priests Speak Out

The crisis over sexuality in the Catholic Church goes beyond abuse. It goes to the heart of the priesthood, into a closet that is trapping thousands of men

By Elizabeth Dias

MILWAUKEE — Gregory Greiten was 17 years old when the priests organized the game. It was 1982 and he was on a retreat with his classmates from St. Lawrence, a Roman Catholic seminary for teenage boys training to become priests. Leaders asked each boy to rank which he would rather be: burned over 90 percent of his body, paraplegic, or gay.

Each chose to be scorched or paralyzed. Not one uttered the word “gay.” They called the game the Game of Life.

The lesson stuck. Seven years later, he climbed up into his seminary dorm window and dangled one leg over the edge. “I really am gay,” Father Greiten, now a priest near Milwaukee, remembered telling himself for the first time. “It was like a death sentence.”

The closet of the Roman Catholic Church hinges on an impossible contradiction. For years, church leaders have driven gay congregants away in shame and insisted that “homosexual tendencies” are “disordered.” And yet, thousands of the church’s priests are gay.

The stories of gay priests are unspoken, veiled from the outside world, known only to one another, if they are known at all.

Fewer than about 10 priests in the United States have dared to come out publicly. But gay men likely make up at least 30 to 40 percent of the American Catholic clergy, according to dozens of estimates from gay priests themselves and researchers. Some priests say the number is closer to 75 percent. One priest in Wisconsin said he assumed every priest is gay unless he knows for a fact he is not. A priest in Florida put it this way: “A third are gay, a third are straight, and a third don’t know what the hell they are.”

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For the rest of this article, see 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/it-is-not-a-closet-it-is-a-cage-gay-catholic-priests-speak-out.html

(Article brought to my attention by Gene Palumbo.) 

A deacon's thoughts on gay priests

The recently-concluded meeting of Pope Francis with the heads of the world's episcopal conferences to consider the sex abuse crisis coincided with a publishing event: the release of a book by Frederic Martel, a French journalist.  The title of the book (in English) is "In the Closet of the Vatican".  According to reviews, it presents a portrait of widespread concealed homosexuality among bishops and priests in the Vatican, which plays out via secret sexual activity, poisonous gossip, malicious outings, blackmail, mistreatment of sex workers, and overall sexual dishonesty.

Two must-read articles on the abuse crisis

1.  Massimo Faggioli has a very good article up on the Commonweal site, entitled "Trent's Long Shadow / The Abuse Crisis and Seminaries, Dioceses and the Laity".  What I appreciate about it is its "root cause analysis": it attempts to go deeper than some of the rather superficial diagnoses and solutions that are commonly proposed, e.g. that it's a problem of gay priests and that therefore the solution is to drum gay priests out of the rectory and gay candidates out of the seminaries.   Faggioli brings a historical perspective that caused me to think anew about various aspects of the church that I normally take for granted or don't think about, such as "Why do we have parishes?" and "What was the laity's role in the church in past eras?"  I emerged from his article with the conviction that a new ecumenical council is needed.

2.  Rev. James Martin, SJ, on the America site: "The witch hunt for gay priests".  Among the many infuriating aspects of the McCarrick scandal is that it has enabled those members of the conservative commentariat who have long held the erroneous conviction that the waves of sexual abuse crises in the church should be understood as crises of homosexual abuse by gay priests.  Martin reviews some of this toxic commentary (some of which, unfortunately, is emanating from church officials), and then follows his now-customary practice of debunking it, calmly, precisely and faithfully.  Fr. Martin, who I believe has suffered quite a bit for his courageous advocacy for gay Catholics, is a blessing to the church.  I encourage all of us to pray for him and support his advocacy.

America vs The Pillar

 America has posted two great articles on The Pillar story raising many important questions about how the data was obtained, the ethics of its use, and the future of information gathering and journalism.

Since America has asked about the hidden agenda of The Pillar, I naturally asked about the hidden agenda of America as a Jesuit publication. Namely that America seeks to limit and discredit the exposure of gay networks in the Church.

Gay Networks

Jesuits have on their tombstones three dates: the date of their birth, their entrance in the Society of Jesus, and their death. Nothing about the date they took vows, or their ordination. The importance of entrance into novitiate, even if one eventually leaves, has become apparent to myself (and others) in the way some (but not all Jesuits) treat anyone who entered the Jesuits as one of OURS. 

This was very evident to me more than two decades ago when a Jesuit discussed with me his ministry with all the openness that might be expected to a fellow Jesuit. As a part of that he confided that the American Assistancy (i.e the group of  American provinces) was controlled by a gay network and that choice of ministries very much depended upon whether you were part of that network. This was all before the sexual abuse scandal reached national prominence and before Don Cozzens raised the homosexual issue in his book on priests (that scuttled any hopes he might have had as a seminary rector to become a bishop, he subsequently took an academic position).

Breaking: the Holy See gives permission for blessings of those in same sex relationships - UPDATED

The update, along with the original post, are below the break.

The "S" word

Three articles that take seriously the notion that this may be a moment of schism.

Cardinal Cupich: not a liberal

America Magazine has a post on Cardinal Blase Cupich ... Chicago's Cardinal Cupich: Saying gay, lesbian and L.G.B.T. is a step toward respect. Here's the beginning of it ...

Cardinal Blase Cupich waded into a debate about how the Catholic Church should interact with gays and lesbians, telling a crowd in Chicago that at minimum they should be called by the phrases they use for themselves ...

I do think the church does wield the word" homosexual" like a weapon and that Cupich is right about how important words are. But what's bothering me is Cupich himself and the way he is seen as a liberal in the church. Ever since "reforming" Pope Francis noticed him, Cupich has been touted thus ... Pope Francis names Spokane bishop to Chicago, dashing conservative hopes ... but if Cupich is no liberal.

When Cupich was bishop of Spokane, Washington, and a vote on marriage equality came to his state, he wrote against it in Some Reflections on Referendum 74, warning that if the referendum passed, it could lead to incest marriages and polygamy ...

[...] If there is anything we have come to appreciate and value more fully in this modern age, it is that men and women are not the same. That is true not only biologically, but on so many other levels. Men and women are not interchangeable. They each bring something of their difference to complement each other. In a marriage union, a mutual sharing of each other’s difference creates life, but it also nourishes that life in a family where sons and daughters learn about gender from the way it is lived by their mothers and fathers. The decision to unhinge marriage from its original grounding in our biological life should not be taken lightly for there are some things enacted law is not capable of changing. Thoughtful consideration should be given to the significant consequences such unhinging will mean for children, families, society and the common good .....

If marriage is only about relationships, why limit unions to two people? Why does the new law include the traditional prohibition of close kinship unions for both opposite and same sex couples? The threat of genetic disorders in children is not an issue for same sex couples. Is it not reasonable to assume that a closely related same sex couple will in time successfully challenge this prohibition as an unreasonable imposition? .... In the coming weeks I will provide through the Inland Register, and our websites (dioceseofspokane.org and thewscc.org) materials based on what we believe God has revealed to us about creation, the meaning and value of marriage and family, and the way we are called to live as Christ’s disciples.

I didn't post this just to pick on Cupich, but use him as an example of our false complacency ... to all those moderates who like to think of Francis as a reformer and of themselves as liberals, he isn't and you are not.

The few actual liberals in this church have been silenced like Fr. Tony Flannery or excommunicated/laicized/tossed out like Fr. Roy Bourgeois. Our church is run by someone with grandfatherly charisma, but let's be honest about where we really stand under his conservative banner: gay people can't have their relationships recognized within the church, women will "never" be priests (or deacons), there will be no official change in communion for divorced/remarried people, contraception is still wrong, and sex abuse by priests and the cover-up of that still has not and will not be effectively addressed.

I suppose it is fitting, then, that Cupich, our "liberal" champion, is in the news because of words, not deeds.

More on McCarrick: "It can never happen again" - More Updates

Update 7/31/2018 9:24 pm: A few more updates are down at the bottom of the post; please scroll down to see them.

Update 7/30/2018 4:49 pm: Michael J O'Loughlin, writing in America, provides a round-up of American episcopal reaction so far to the allegations against McCarrick and his resignation.  At this point it's a fairly thin round-up, consisting of written statements from three bishops, some comments made in a radio interview by McCarrick's successor in the Washington DC archdiocese, Cardinal Wuehrl, and a couple of statements from others who are not bishops.  We may hope that the list grows in the coming days.  Among the items O'Loughlin highlights is a letter from Bishop Edward Scharfenberger of the Albany (NY) Diocese to his priests.  The letter hits some good notes and is worth a read for those who are interested in the reaction of church leaders.

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Sunday afternoon I returned from a weekend away, removed the shrink wrap from the Sunday edition of my local suburban newspaper, and read the words quoted in the title of this post.  Those words, from Commonweal contributing editor John Gehring, were quoted in that day's front page news article.  Headline: "Cardinal resigns amid sex abuse claims."

What It Means to Have an American on the Throne of St Peter

From The Economist

By choosing Robert Prevost the cardinals seek unity in a fractured church

Donald trump was not in the end chosen to be pope, as he had jokingly suggested. But on May 8th the cardinals of the Roman Catholic church did elect an American, breaking a taboo against the identification of a geopolitical superpower with a spiritual one.

It is unlikely that the American president will be overjoyed by the choice of Cardinal Robert Prevost. The new pontiff sent out a first message of his intent by choosing as his papal name Leo XIV: a homage to the last pope to adopt that name, who reigned from 1878 to 1903. Leo XIII was a progressive by the standards of his times. Known for his efforts to find an accommodation with the modern world, he was the father of the Catholic church’s social doctrine and the author of a seminal encyclical, Rerum Novarum (Of New Things).

Harrison Butker's commencement address at Benedictine College

A placekicker for the Kansas City Chiefs has exposed to the world what conservative Catholics think, say and believe.

Region XI (California-Nevada) Synodal Synthesis

While few of the ten-page summaries of the Synodal findings at the diocesan, regional or national level have emerged, we do have one that seems to be an affirmation of the synodal process.

Rocco says : Speaking of US bishops' mysterious Synodal findings, much as the bench's national product remains to emerge 3 weeks after its receipt in Rome, we do have the report from the most significant of US Catholicism's 15 regions –home of 1/5 of America’s Catholics:

 Region XI Synodal Synthesis final. pdf

Validation / vindication for Sr. Jeannine

Sister Jeannine Gramick of New Ways Ministry recently received a hand-written letter from Pope Francis.  Let us hope it is the last letter she receives from the Holy See.