Thoughts from
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Gay priest on recent Vatican letter on gay seminarians
By Tom Smith

Here.

I hardly know what to think on this issue. On the one hand, the whole pedophile scandal was and is a disaster for the Church, and it's naive to pretend it is not very largely a homosexual scandal. The argument that at least some US Catholic seminaries have become too tolerant of what one might call the actively gay lifestyle, strikes me as pretty obviously true. On the other hand, it also seems clear that at least some of the proponents of anti-gay measures in the Church are motivated by anti-gay animus of a kind that doesn't seem Christian, in addition to seeming stupid and pig headed. Of the various priests I have known and admired over the years, I would guess maybe one in three were celibate, gay men. Moreover, though it may be heretical or something to say so, if you look at the lives of the saints, some of them sure seem like their orientation, though not their practice, was more homosexual than otherwise. I know very little of St. Francis of Assisi, but if you had to guess, well, you see where I am heading. On yet another hand, you definitely want to prevent the RC priesthood from becoming a kind of club for gay men, as some say the Jesuits have become, though for all I know this is just more anti-Jesuit slander of the kind popular since the tyrant Elizabeth tortured and murdered them. I also think a married priesthood would be a mistake for the Church, not for theological reasons, on which I have no educated opinion, but because it would lead to a caste of priests, such as the Anglican Church in the UK has, with your father the bishop getting you placed in an influential post, and all of that. RC politics are Byzantine enough without introducing clans of priests. We have orders for that.

This is also interesting.

Shockingly, the NYT distorts the story.
posted by thomas at 11/29/2005 09:55:00 AM