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

[prayerrider]

As far as clergy committing sodomy, I say–one strike, you’re out.

 

[Thorolfr]

As far as clergy committing sodomy, I say–one strike, you’re out.

But if a priest has a consensual affair with a woman, he should be given two or three strikes?

 

[prayerrider]

A consensual heterosexual lapse, i.e. fornication, is a much less egregious sin than homosexual sodomy. It can be dealt with accordingly.

 

[goout]

goout:

you automatically increase the pool of candidates for priesthood by a huge number.

So you are saying that men may choose priesthood after they have a wife and kids and likely a job to support them?

Not sure how you got that out of what I actually said.

 

[Thorolfr]

A consensual heterosexual lapse, i.e. fornication, is a much less egregious sin than homosexual sodomy. It can be dealt with accordingly.

I wonder why God put such a heavy burden on gay people so that their sexual lapses are much more egregious than a straight person’s sexual lapses?

 

[gracepoole]

Having more women in positions of responsibility in the Church would be a good thing.

This may be unpopular but in many, many places, women already run parishes. What’s absent are men who are willing to engage.

prayerrider:

I just don’t think ordaining married men is the answer.

We won’t know until it is tried.

I’m really uncomfortable trying something like a married priesthood simply to see if it sticks.

 

[Thorolfr]

I’m really uncomfortable trying something like a married priesthood simply to see if it sticks.

There were married priests in the past in the Middle Ages. Was this a disaster for the Church?

 

[gracepoole]

gracepoole:

I’m really uncomfortable trying something like a married priesthood simply to see if it sticks.

There were married priests in the past in the Middle Ages. Was this a disaster for the Church?

The life expectancy during the Middle Ages was approximately 33 years, infanticide was routine, and the Judas Cradle was a legitimate form of punishment. While we may at times exaggerate the differences between our lives and those of people in the past, sometimes it’s actually savvy to note that what worked then might not necessarily work now.

 

[Thorolfr]

Thorolfr:

gracepoole:

I’m really uncomfortable trying something like a married priesthood simply to see if it sticks.

There were married priests in the past in the Middle Ages. Was this a disaster for the Church?

sometimes it’s actually savvy to note that what worked then might not necessarily work now.

But you don’t actually know, of course, that it wouldn’t work now. And it is possible to get some idea since Orthodox priests can be married and Protestant denominations have married clergy. They all seem to get along without any serious problems serving their congregations. Is there something that Catholic priests do in terms of how they serve the people in their congregations that is significantly different and absolutely requires them to be unmarried? Do Catholic clergy serve the people in their congregations much better than what Orthodox priests, for example, serve the people in their congregations because they are unmarried?

 

[jeannetherese]

You also admit a statistically sexually healthier pool of candidates.

How are you defining this?

 

[jeannetherese]

Again I come back to the notion that we need to view the Church’s morality as an ideal to strive for and not a set of rules to follow. The latter leads to scrupulosity and despair. Sacramental confession needs to be part of the process.

Do you have any studies supporting this argument?
It seems that your argument sees the 10 Commandments as suggestions or goals rather than as orders as orders.

 

[Thorolfr]

OraLabora:

Again I come back to the notion that we need to view the Church’s morality as an ideal to strive for and not a set of rules to follow. The latter leads to scrupulosity and despair. Sacramental confession needs to be part of the process.

Do you have any studies supporting this argument?
It seems that your argument sees the 10 Commandments as suggestions or goals rather than as orders as orders.

Why should the 10 Commandments be different? Most people probably tell little lies all the time. The goal is for them to strive not to ever even tell little lies. And if someone suffers, for example, from kleptomania and they really can’t stop themselves from stealing sometimes, striving not to steal with the understanding that they might sometimes fail would be a goal for them to strive for. After all, could God really punish someone for stealing if they have a mental illness that makes them steal?

Here’s some interesting research on lying:

How many people have you spoken with today? Chances are that most of them lied to you — and that they did it more than once. It’s a hard fact to accept, but even your closest friends and coworkers lie to you regularly.

University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman has studied lying for more than a decade, and his research has reached some startling conclusions. Most shocking is that 60% of people lie during a typical 10-minute conversation and that they average two to three lies during that short timeframe.

Most of the people in Feldman’s studies don’t even realize all of the lies they have told until after the conversation when it was played back to them on video.

People lie in everyday conversation to appear more likeable and competent. While men and women lie equally as often, they tend to lie for different reasons. “Women were more likely to lie to make the person they were talking to feel good, while men lied most often to make themselves look better,” Feldman said.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-travis-bradberry/sixty-percent-of-your-col_b_9044758.html

 

[prayerrider]

Huffington Post. Right. Speaking of lies.

 

[Thorolfr]

Huffington Post. Right. Speaking of lies.

You can find the same kind of research in many other sources. There was an article on lying in the National Geographic from June 2017, “Why We Lie: The Science Behind Our Deceptive Ways.” Or here’s something from a British newspaper:

Lying can often be easier and kinder than the truth, and anybody who claims they’ve never lied is probably lying right then. But it’s surprising to see the stark figure that we lie, on average, ten times a week. The small fibs are so innocuous that they apparently trip off our tongue without us even noticing that we’ve deviating from the truth.

But why do we lie so often – and at what point does lying become pathological?

Dr Paul Seager, a senior psychology lecturer who specialises in deceptive psychology, says it’s healthy to tell lies.

“To keep society running smoothly, we need to tell white lies. If your partner comes home with their latest piece of artwork and says, ‘What do you think of this?’, it shows they want support. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to say it’s nice.”

The science of why we lie

We tell 10 lies every week – but what’s the reasoning behind so many untruths?

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[Thorolfr]

Or there’s this:

ADMIT IT: YOU’VE LIED. You told a friend that his shirt looked stylish when you actually thought it was tacky and garish. Or maybe you said to your boss that her presentations were fascinating when in fact they were insipidly mindless. Or perhaps you told your landlord that the rent check was in the mail.

Don’t feel bad. You’re in good, dishonest company. A growing body of research shows that people lie constantly, that deception is pervasive in everyday life. One study found that people tell two to three lies every 10 minutes, and even conservative estimates indicate that we lie at least once a day. Such incessant prevarication might be a necessary social evil, and researchers have recently discovered that some fibbing might actually be good for you. “We use lies to grease the wheels of social discourse,” says University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman. “It’s socially useful to tell lies.”

Researchers have been studying deception for decades, trying to figure out why we tell lies. It turns out that we spin facts and make up fictions for all sorts of reasons. We might want to gain a raise or a reward, for example, or to protect friends or a lover. Our capacity for deceit appears nearly endless, from embroidering stories to wearing fake eyelashes to asking “How are you?” when we don’t actually care. We even lie to ourselves about how much food we eat and how often we visit the gym.

https://health.usnews.com/health-ne...people-tell-lies-and-why-white-lies-can-be-ok

 

[OraLabora]

It seems that your argument sees the 10 Commandments as suggestions or goals rather than as orders as orders.

I don’t see, for instance, masturbation, written in the 10 commandments. That’s a Church add-on, or to be more charitable, interpretation.

And given the lies and cover-ups in the current scandals… senior churchmen woul do well to revisit the one about lying or the one about bearing false witness.

We have a long way to go when even the teachers of the “rules” cannot follow them themselves.

 

[MikeInVA]

We have a long way to go when even the teachers of the “rules” cannot follow them themselves.

But that doesn’t mean the rules should be changed, we just have to try harder. Jesus calls us to greatness, not mediocrity.

 

[OraLabora]

Do you have any studies supporting this argument?
It seems that your argument sees the 10 Commandments as suggestions or goals rather than as orders as orders.

I should perhaps expand on this now that I’m fully awake.

The notion that the Church’s teaching is an ideal to strive for and not a set of rules to follow has firm foundation in Benedictine spirituality where we acknowledge that we are not born saints, and where the monastery is a “school for the service of the Lord” (RB, Prologue). Of the three things a monk vows (or an oblate promises), stability, obedience and inner conversion, the first two are in the service of the latter, for the goal is for the monk or oblate to grow in Christ-like behaviour.

Monks will acknowledge that it takes a lifetime to become a saint. No saint was ever recognized as such before he or she died. Beyond the 10 commandments there are the Church’s precepts for observing them. Learning to conform to them is a lifetime project.

The Church herself recognizes this outside of monastic life as well. Search on the Law of Gradualness.

1. The pastoral “law of gradualness”, not to be confused with the “gradualness of the law” which would tend to diminish the demands it places on us, consists of requiring a decisive break with sin together with a progressive path towards total union with the will of God and with his loving demands. ( Vademecum for Confessors Concerning Some Aspects of the Morality of Conjugal Life, Pontifical Council for the Family, The Vatican, 1997)

So while the law remains strict, it is clear that it is also an ideal to which all are called but to which all fall short (we are all sinners) and it requires a long time, often a lifetime, to overcome our shortcomings against the law.

We saw in Judaism how viewing the Law as strict rules to follow led to the brokenness of Israel that required a redeemer… Christ… to take on our sins. If we were all able to strictly follow the 10 commandments and moral laws that derived from it from birth, we wouldn’t need Christ, we wouldn’t need His Church and we wouldn’t need forgiveness. It would in fact have meant that Adam and Eve would never have bitten into the forbidden fruit.

But that doesn’t mean the rules should be changed, we just have to try harder. Jesus calls us to greatness, not mediocrity.

When it is law, indeed. When it is discipline, such as priestly celibacy, then it is fair to revisit the rule.

 

[Annie]

A similar process for could be implemented for priests who hear the call later in life. The job of parish administrator could be delegated to a layperson so that a priest’s life could be compatible with family life; a

We have already seen what happens when religious are replaced by people who need salaries. If we replace a celibate priest with a married priest and helpful layperson, we will have a huge increase in costs, just as we did when Catholic schools were no longer staffed by nuns and are now financially out of reach of many Catholic families.

 

[goout]

Comparing to what we now have.
A married priest is statistically more likely to have a well ordered sexual life.

It’s not that celibacy is a problem, per se. But the combination of factors currently gives us what we have.
We have a problem here, and it’s predominately male on male.