Poll on the Subjects of Homosexual Clergy

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To educate people that not all the laws of Leviticus apply. Had I not pointed out that Leviticus 21 does not comply with Catholic teachings, someone else would have. The interpretation of Leviticus, by the Church, is subtle, intellectual, theological and liturgical. I’m new here. I am trying to gauge the crowd.
 
As I said, this is off topic which is why I started another thread, so I would rather not go into detail here. But my short answer is, the latter is closer to the truth.
 
I heard a therapist tell a story once, about a guy (same sex attracted) he was helping, who started dreaming about women after some therapy. We, the listeners to the story, all said “great, your client is on the right track!” Then the storytelling therapist said to us, “but he is gay, and that will never change!”

Maybe this is why therapy supposedly doesn’t work.
 
I would prefer if the change wasn’t caused because of a political environment.
 
I agree that their sexual orientation is irrelevant, but I’m just saying that we don’t really care if a priest were to say something that implies he was straight (for example, a priest sharing about how his partner didn’t want him to be a priest or whatever). Most straight priests don’t attempt to hide their sexual orientation, so when someone does it, it already raises questions.
 
Fair enough, but most changes are technically ‘political’ these days. For example, female alter severs wouldn’t be that accepted if there was no push for egalitarianism in the Church.

From now onwards, any changes made to the gay priesthood would be political wouldn’t it? The issue won’t stop being political now that it is?
 
I don’t know about priests you talk to, but with the exception of the handful of priests I know who “got in trouble” by keeping company with a woman in their parish, I have never met a priest who said anything at all revealing his sexual orientation either way.

Some of them have talked about sex but without getting so into detail with their own personal experiences that we could tell whether as a teen they were interested in Jenny or Johnny.

I always presumed they were coached to not tell detailed personal stories about their sex lives prior to priesthood, for fear of gossip.

The complete lack of any discussion makes me think that a percentage, though not all, may have been gay, because how would we have known if they were or not when they don’t discuss their past.
 
Not their sex lives particularly, but their attractions. For example I know a particular priest in my parish is more or less straight because he shared that he was dating a woman and was struggling between choosing marriage or the priesthood.
 
Men with same sex attractions can date women. Some have married and gone on to have families.
 
Hence I said ‘more or less’ lol. He wouldn’t be classified as ‘gay’ though, if he had predominantly heterosexual attractions to women,which he has definitely alluded to when he brings up his dating history.
 
Maybe it’s my circle of friends, but a lot of people I know date the opposite sex but are bi to some extent, or even gay. If I were a secretly bi or gay priest and didn’t want people to know, I’d be sure to mention that I dated a woman.

I think the bottom line is that unless we are asking the kinds of probing questions that the directors of vocations and the spiritual counselors ask, we never can tell about priests, unless they get in trouble, which we never want to see happen.
 
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