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Gay priests


Gay Priests            Gerry O'Shea          January 2018

About 4% of people in America are homosexuals, but the figure for priests is estimated at about 33%. It is ironic that while so many priests are homosexual, most leaders of the Catholic Church speak very negatively of the gay lifestyle.

Jesus had very little to say about any sexual issue, and there is no record that he ever addressed  questions about  homosexuality - in fact there is no word for it in Aramaic, the language he spoke.

The church's thinking was clearly set down in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas, a brilliant Dominican priest, whose  writings are still the basis for theology programs in most Catholic seminaries.

 Belief in Natural Law ethics is central to Thomism. Female and male genitals are designed by God for one purpose only, procreation. In this thinking, any other kind of copulation  is gravely sinful. Aquinas considered homosexual behavior by men or women to be seriously depraved. He wrote that only bestiality was more morally reprehensible.

This simplistic  correlation  defining moral behavior in terms of the natural functions of particular body parts takes no account of the science of genetics which shows that  gay sexual feelings are rooted in biology. Talking about homosexuality as if it were just a lifestyle choice is contradicted by all the serious scientific research.

Papal pronouncements before Pope Francis was elected pointed to a person's homosexual orientation as "an objective disorder" and gay sex as an "abomination" and "an intrinsic moral evil." Pope Benedict described homosexual priests as "one of the miseries of the church."

How do ministers of the gospel in our time, including  Benedict and many members of the hierarchy, use such crass, humiliating and ignorant language describing the gay expression of sexual love?

Francis dispenses completely with the narrow Thomistic reasoning. For him, we are all on a pilgrimage and the only moral imperative is to reach out and help others. He urges priests to engage the people on the street, especially the poor and suffering, in a loving and compassionate way. There is no room for the judgment hat in this transactional approach.

Why do so many gay men become priests? Most, for sure, have altruistic motives, driven by a commendable desire to minister to others. Some may be influenced by the attraction of training and living with other men. A few have taken advantage of their position of priestly power and they have sexually abused vulnerable children.

Most priests, gay and straight, live chaste lives, in accordance with their promise at ordination. However, a significant minority are in intimate relationships with mature adults, male and female. Good luck to them - none of our business. One estimate says that over 300 American priests contracted AIDS during the epidemic in the 80's and 90's.

Fr. James Martin, the distinguished Jesuit theologian from New York, argues that gay priests who are closeted, would be much better off declaring their sexual inclination to their congregations. This is healthier for the priest and, just as important, would send a clear message especially to young gay people that they should  feel free to talk in a mature and enlightened way about their own sexual preferences.

The old unhealthy Natural Law thinking about sexuality is being scrutinized and rejected more and more by theologians and scripture scholars throughout the world.

 A consensus is slowly emerging in support of making clerical celibacy optional, thus allowing married priests. Outmoded and disrespectful regulations concerning female roles in the Catholic Church are being discarded with the possibility of women being ordained as deacons in Francis' time. In this atmosphere of a modernizing and more enlightened church, surely the unchristian rhetoric about disordered or depraved homosexuals, priests or lay people, should have no place in the discussion.

 
Gerry O'Shea blogs at  wemustbetalking.com

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