Famous Homosexual Catholics

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Mithrandir

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Sorry, I don’t really know where this post should go - I hope it’s in the right place!

I’m currently preparing a presentation with a couple of friends entitled “Catholicism 101” for our school theology society. It’ll be on a lot of the controversial parts of Catholic ethical teaching, explaining what the Church actually teaches rather than the rather warped view society often has of Catholicism.

So, anyway, there’s a section on homosexuality and I’d quite like to be able to name a few well-known Catholics who were homosexual - but lived celibately, please - so as to explain the Church in no way considers homosexuals as ‘second-class Catholics’.

Thanks very much for the replies in advance 👍
 
Mithrandir said:
Sorry, I don’t really know where this post should go - I hope it’s in the right place!

I’m currently preparing a presentation with a couple of friends entitled “Catholicism 101” for our school theology society. It’ll be on a lot of the controversial parts of Catholic ethical teaching, explaining what the Church actually teaches rather than the rather warped view society often has of Catholicism.

So, anyway, there’s a section on homosexuality and I’d quite like to be able to name a few well-known Catholics who were homosexual - but lived celibately, please - so as to explain the Church in no way considers homosexuals as ‘second-class Catholics’.

Thanks very much for the replies in advance 👍
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It sounds like an interesting project but the obvious pitfall is how would we really know if they were celebrate we would only have their word for it which be suspect. I think it would be more interesting if you were to identify good works by well known catholics who are homosexual and remained catholic.
 
Mithrandir said:
Sorry, I don’t really know where this post should go - I hope it’s in the right place!

I’m currently preparing a presentation with a couple of friends entitled “Catholicism 101” for our school theology society. It’ll be on a lot of the controversial parts of Catholic ethical teaching, explaining what the Church actually teaches rather than the rather warped view society often has of Catholicism.

So, anyway, there’s a section on homosexuality and I’d quite like to be able to name a few well-known Catholics who were homosexual - but lived celibately, please - so as to explain the Church in no way considers homosexuals as ‘second-class Catholics’.

Thanks very much for the replies in advance 👍
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The first one that comes to mind is possibly Fr Henri Nouen. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Nouwen

The struggle here, is you have two issues. Homosexuality and same sex attraction. Someone is not really homosexual if they don’t act on those traits, or at least it seems, that being “gay” typically means embracing that path.

So I don’t know how you reconcile that all in your report, but it makes it difficult to say. This guy or that guy is gay, if they never had a same sex relationship and lived a celibate life.

One ministry you might want to contact is www.Couragerc.net. They deal exclusively with helping gay Catholics embrace the vocation of single living and chastity. They may have many examples for you.
 
Oscar Wilde is an interesting example. Most of his life he wasn’t a very good practicing christian, but he did recognize it as something wrong towards the end of his life and did try to bear his cross in spite of his attraction to men. I think Catholic author Joseph Pearce has quite a bit to say about Wilde and his religiosity.

It’s interesting too because people want to make him a gay icon, but from what i’ve heard from certain authors he saw it as a kind of curse or sickness.
 
Hmmm Gerard Manley Hopkins comes to mind, and obviously, Oscar Wilde.
 
Not quite sure if this is a good example, but I know of Archbishop Rembert Weakland. I believe he wrote a book about it.
 
Look over Eve Tushnet’s blog under Resources on God/Homosexuality and Gay Catholic Whatnot. It’s been awhile since I perused either one but she had some good links when she was on BlogSpot…takes quick look…looks similar. Take a look; I feel weird posting any names.
 
Coincidentally, there was just an article in our local paper that mentioned that Saint Hildegard of Bingen is thought to possibly have had a female lover.
 
on_the_hill said:
Coincidentally, there was just an article in our local paper that mentioned that Saint Hildegard of Bingen is thought to possibly have had a female lover.
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I’d take that with a grain of salt. The MSM isn’t the most unbiased news source out there, and I’ve heard that some people in the militant homosexualist movement like to attempt to rewrite history, saying that many important people in world history were secretly gay.
 
ssancho said:
I’d take that with a grain of salt. The MSM isn’t the most unbiased news source out there, and I’ve heard that some people in the militant homosexualist movement like to attempt to rewrite history, saying that many important people in world history were secretly gay.
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Yeah, but this was in our local paper, which is generally conservative. 🤷
 
Because of the sensitive nature of that subject we will never know the answer to that question
 
I thought of a couple other famous Catholics that some people think might have been gay. I don’t place much stock in the speculation because when some people look for gay they see it even when it’s not there and it always ignores the possibility of same-sex friendships. When they wrote letters they wrote to the other with unabashed affection and interest. II think it’s true that most using effusive language like that would be writing to a romantic partner but I’ve also read similar things between siblings. They are writers, after all.
 
frobert said:
It sounds like an interesting project but the obvious pitfall is how would we really know if they were celebrate we would only have their word for it which be suspect. I think it would be more interesting if you were to identify good works by well known catholics who are homosexual and remained catholic.
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Well the way I see it, charity demands we think the best of our neighbor, so if they say that they lived celibately then we should take their word for it. Even if they did not live celibately for a portion of their life, there’s no reason to suspect that they did not repent and no reason to think it happened at all.
Besides that, the point of the project is that homosexual Catholics are just as Catholic as anyone else. Everyone makes mistakes and commits sins, and homosexual Catholics are no more likely to do so than anyone else. No matter what may have happened behind closed doors, they set a good example in their words and their appearance, so the idea remains solid 🙂
 
janeway529 said:
Not quite sure if this is a good example, but I know of Archbishop Rembert Weakland. I believe he wrote a book about it.
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Mr. Weakland was certainly not celibate and not much of a Catholic either. He spent huge amounts of Church money on his boyfriend. He actually threatened libel suits against those reporting child sexual abuse.
 
Rembert Weakland was, by his own admission, neither chaste nor celibate. I bought his book, A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church, but only made it halfway through. Descriptions of how the Church began to self-destruct after Vatican II depressed me.

He made A Lot of bad decisions as a shepherd to his flock, not the least of which was destroying the interior of the Milwaukee cathedral - on his way out - as Archbishop.

Ironically, Rembert Weakland’s childhood parish is home to the only Latin Mass between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. Queen of Peace is a stunning Benedictine church in Patton, PA.
 
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