I suppose that anyone who remains a devout Catholic after the Church’s child predator scandal will swallow anything…sorry, poor choice of words.
The Vatican approved new guidelines for Italy holding that an applicant for the seminary cannot be rejected simply because he is gay, as long as he remains celibate.
How can this cynical, openly obtuse “liberalizing” of standards for the priesthood be received with anything but mockery? The Church already has gay priests, lots of them, and has since Peter was hearing cocks crow. I can name three in my limited experience with the Church. When I worked at Georgetown, the priest who was then President had a young male companion who followed him around like a puppy.
Many Catholic Church holy men of all sexual orientations aren’t celibate: What the latest edict amounts to is a rule that the Church officially will allow priests to be gay as long as they don’t post photos of their sexual liaisons on Facebook. Good rule!
The new guidelines say that seminary directors “should consider sexual orientation as only one aspect of a candidate’s personality.” Yeah, I’d agree that this is fair, but rational, ethical people came to this conclusion a long time ago. Still, the Times article says, “the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching that ‘homosexual tendencies’ are ‘intrinsically disordered’ and that men with ‘deep-seated’ gay tendencies should not become priests.” Take me now, Lord! If you are gay, you are gay. What is the difference between a “deep-seated” gay and a, you know, everyday, run-of-the-mill, can-take-it-or-leave-it gay?
After all this time, this is the level of understanding and erudition the Catholic Church leadership possesses on a topic that it has been struggling with for years? How does an institution survive when its leadership is so clueless? How can anyone have faith, never mind trust, in boobs capable of such nonsense? The answer, of course, is that anyone paying attention knows that the Church leadership is just pretending to be clueless. Is dishonesty less unethical than contrived ignorance?
I don’t get it.
Ethics Alarms 
The reason for remaining a devout Catholic is because of the belief that the worthiness of the minister has nothing to do with the efficacy of the Sacraments or Jesus’s promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church.
The Catholic Church has careened from scandal to crisis to extreme crisis to scandal for most of its existence. I’m currently reading a book by Steve Weidenkopf, “Light from Darkness” on 9 times the Catholic Church experienced crises and emerged stronger than before. It is written to be popularly accessible, moreso than Monseigneur Philip Hughes’ “A History of the Church,” but when you look at either, you find that the history of the Catholic Church is truly embodied by the apocryphal tale of Napoleon and the Papal emissary. Allegedly the story has Napoleon taunting the bishop by saying, “Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” To which the bishop replied: “Oh you little man, we Catholic clergy have done our best to destroy the Church for the last eighteen hundred years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”
The issue with homosexuality is far more nuanced than “gay is gay”. At least, when I look at research presented by some organizations that are dedicated to helping men with same-sex attraction live a holy life, we find a spectrum. The same-sex attraction can be greater or lesser, not just across different men, but in the same man across time. Some men can be attracted to both sexes. Some men can choose to live a heterosexual lifestyle (i.e. marrying a woman and having children with her) against their homosexual attractions. There are men who launch into the most stereotypical, swinging, promiscuous gay lifestyle imaginable. And there are all kinds of shades of attraction and behavior in between. So it is far from sufficient to say “gay is gay.”
That the Catholic Church is wrestling with the right way to handle homosexual attraction in the clergy is not something to deride, as it is a thorny problem. We do have a disproportionate number of priests with same-sex attraction. I believe one study put it at its height somewhere around 33% (for the West, anyway). In the past, many men thought they could properly handle their same-sex attraction by taking holy orders, since they had no interest in marriage. Where this became problematic was when these men started covering for each others’ sexual sins instead of encouraging each other to holiness. It is born out by evidence and bears repeating: the sexual scandal that erupted in the Catholic Church was over 90% homosexual behavior. So what is the Church supposed to do with this? The vast majority of priests with homosexual attraction are holy men who have led chaste lives, to the point we can actually show that homosexual Catholic priests commit sex crimes at a lower rate than homosexual men in general. (I hope that data hasn’t changed since I researched that back in 2006…)
The “no gays allowed” policy was a response to the fact that so many of the scandalous priests were indulging in homosexual behavior. Now it seems the Church is looking to take a more nuanced approach. That’s hardly deplorable.
Ryan, you said it better than I could have. Thanks!
Only addition I have is that unchaste priests of any orientation have been part of the Church since forever as illustrated by the old joke: “Who is a Catholic priest? A man everyone calls Father, except his children who call him uncle.”
Ryan. you’re talking in the abstract and leaping over reality. The Church may be a wonderful thing, but the human beings running it are absurd, and based on this episode, not trustworthy or bright. What the heck is the difference between a “deep-seated” gay man and a less-deep-seated on? The latter doesn’t like Bette Midler? The fact that there are bi-sexuals and closeted gays who force themselves into hetero life styles doesn’t change the fact that this “nuance” is not nuance, but ignorance. I have spent a lot of time with gays—some of my best friends really are gay, and I have never heard one talk about how there is gay, then really gay, then really really gay, and finally “deep-seated” gay, much less explain how anyone, especially the gay in question, would know how to draw this line.
You really think the Church has come out of the child-molestation scandal stronger? How?
33% gays is much higher than the general population! How can any group with a higher percentage of gays than the general population NOT look ridiculous when it solemnly announces, “We will now welcome gays (as long as they aren’t deep-seated, of course).
I just reread your last paragraph. I agree “looking to take a more nuanced approach” isn’t deplorable. But doing such a terrible, cynical, silly job of it when you actually try IS deplorable.
My favorite William F. Buckley quip: “If only two or three percent of the population is gay, I’ve met all of them.”
I’d guess the percentage of gay priests is near one hundred percent. The straight ones get picked off by the women to whom they minister.
Or, the straight priests get to, er, minister to the women in the congregation with impunity because the gay priests know if they expose the straight guys and what they’re up to, the straight guys will blow the whistle on the gay guys.
As a Catholic, I always thought this was the rule. Celibacy was always the rule. (always being defined as about the last thousand years.) This was advocated by St Paul back in one of his letters.
I’m not sure what you are objecting to. Celibacy? It applies to all priests regardless of sexual orientation. It means a dedication to God. Are you just commenting that it took this long for them to say it is ok for gay men to be priests?
It’s clear what I am objecting to, or should be. I object to denials of reality in any context, especially reality that is so obvious and well documented. “You can do X as long as you don’t do Y, but we know you WILL do Y and we have no way to stop you as you know because so many others in our organization do Y” ” is a dishonest, irresponsible, incompetent and unethical policy. It’s hypocrisy, it’s cowardly, it’s posturing, and it’s deliberate obfuscation.
Again, I don’t get why Catholics tolerate it.
Because facing really unpleasant truths is hard to do. As children we are taught that the Catholic Church is the only church created by God and not by man, who twice split from the original vision. We are also taught that the church and its history are filled with good and holy people who did great good and were persecuted and even martyred for this good. We were also taught that the clergy, both secular and regular, were God’s own representatives in this world, and couldn’t be argued with, but must be obeyed.
Obedience is a cardinal virtue within the church and within the Catholic household. You obey the church’s representatives as you obey God, and you also obey all those that God has set over you in the world. That’s why a lot of coronations include a holy anointing, to show that this ruler is chosen by God.
You are also taught that you have to respect God’s will and not challenge authority, and that any punishment melted out to you by those above you must be right and you must deserve it. How many of us grew up with parents whose first question to us after being struck or beaten was “what did you do to make that person that angry?”
The price of obedience is sometimes quite high and there is a feeling that this had better be worth it in Heaven. That’s why discovering that the church is, in a lot of ways, about keeping the powerful in power and the not powerful from challenging the status quo, and about pleasing the sick appetites of the powerful and making those sacrificed to do that unable to believe it.
Why do Catholics tolerate it? Among the faithful (who are wonderful people), deference and overweening respect and admiration for priests is simply innate. Hard to explain, but true.
I used to be grateful my mother died before the big Boston stuff came out. But I’ve come to realize my mother was much, much sharper than than I thought she was. She knew what was going on, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it. Honestly, I think she’d have been fine with me being gay if it would have resulted in my being ordained.
And, of course, there’s the whole Irish Catholic cultural thing going on as well. Oy!
Jack,
I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but are saying it is an impossibility for people to forgo sexual activity? If a person has same-sex attraction, do you believe he will be unable to resist engaging in sexual relations?
To reiterate, the Church distinguishes between having a desire for something and the acting on that desire. The Church has always held that having a disordered desire is not in itself sinful; but acting on that desire is. What the Church is willing to entertain here is allowing men who are sexually attracted to other men to enter the seminary, provided they are committed to avoiding acting on their sexual desires. If it really is the case no man with same-sex attraction can avoid having sex, then there are no qualified candidates from that pool of men that can enter seminary.
When did the dictionary definition of celibacy become conflated with chastity.
The current definition of celibacy in online sources give the first order definition as one who practices sexual abstinence – which is of course the definition of chastity. The second order definition is one who is unmarried for religious reasons and does not engage in sexual activities.
The above definitions illustrate how words change meaning when they are incorrectly used over time. The second order definition is unnecessary if the first is accurate but the word chaste is the accurate word for the first order definition. Celibate simply means unmarried when I grew up
Since the church forbids sexual relations outside of marriage, it’s a distinction without a difference as far as Catholics are concerned. Right? If you are celibate, you have to be chaste.
Chaste means sexual moral. Priests are called to both celebacy AND chastity.
Married couples are themselves called to chastity (but by definition, not celebacy). Chastity in marriage means fidelity and exclusivity to one another, as well as treating each other with respect and dignity.
We’re talking priests, and by definition, like love and marriage in the song, “you can’t have one without the other.”
…and the Apostle Paul warned us about this thinking when he wrote his first letter to Timothy. The notion that church leaders – including priests – are forbidden the privilege of marriage is, in my opinion, both unbiblical, at odds with human reality, and as we have seen, doomed to failure, corruption, and abuse.
Paul writes in his letter “…that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.” I Timothy 4: 1-ff.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes about his decision to be single, but while he recommends bachelor-hood for men, there is no demand it be enforced. Quite the opposite, he encourages men and women to marry rather than burn with passion. And this is sound teaching.
We already have too many problems with married pastors failing morally. Forcing unmarried priests into celibacy in no way enhances their…and it sets them up for failure.
My apologies…the final sentence should start “Forcing unmarried priests into celibacy in no way enhances their ministry…”
I wish I had had more time over the weekend, because once a few days pass, keeping up a good conversation on these topics is difficult, as newer topics take precedent. But I will say that 1 Tim 4 is likely a reference St. Paul is making to the Gnostics, who would forbid marriage to everyone, given that marriage leads to babies, which is evil according to Gnostic teaching. Because St. Paul makes a strong recommendation for celibacy for the sake of the kingdom, and because Jesus himself states that whoever can accept being unmarried for the sake of the kingdom ought to (see Mt 19:9-12), the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church requires celibacy in its priests. Not every Rite in the Catholic Church makes that requirement, but there are many considerations that go into why the Latin Rite still holds to this discipline. But to be brief, the requirement to celibacy has largely been a discipline that inspires greater holiness, not less. The more lax churches as a whole have become in disciplines of holiness, the fewer people want to follow them, because as they conform more and more to the world (cf Rom 12:1), the more people ask why they bother with the whole religion thing in the first place. Holiness attracts.
Ryan, I appreciate the response. It’s possible that Paul was writing in reference to the Gnostics, but it could be he was writing to counter a more general sense of asceticism (the denial of worldly pleasures as a form of piety).
False teaching abounded in Ephesus, and it was constantly creeping into the church. Those teachings included giving up things like marriage and certain foods. But by the time Paul wrote to Timothy, Peter’s vision in Joppa and Paul’s writing to the Galatians were history, and both had removed all restrictions but those of conscience on what could be eaten.
As for marriage (the main topic in this moment), again, Paul strongly recommended that those who could remain single while simultaneously honoring God and keeping free from immorality would best serve His kingdom by doing so. The implication here is not that people must remain single and then fight a losing battle against sexual temptation, or even worse, fall into perverse conduct. There is no mandate, only a recommendation.
Jesus’ words in Matthew 9 were said as an endorsement of the covenant of marriage. He lays the groundwork that Paul later picked up in First Corinthians. The disciples responded to his statements around divorce and adultery by kind of throwing in the proverbial towel on marriage. Jesus, like Paul later, does not mandate remaining single, but only recommends it “for the one who can accept it.” Again, no mandate.
In my opinion, the forced celibacy of the Catholic Church with regards to its priests and nuns runs in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus and Christianity’s greatest apostle and is, for a non-trivial percentage of them, a form of the false piety or asceticism about which Paul warned Timothy. If the Catholic church really wanted to follow the teachings of Jesus in this area, it would tell its priests to remain single if they are able to do so with their integrity and morality intact, but otherwise to marry and continue to serve the Lord in their endeavors. No mandate.
Joel,
There is a lot you say that I agree with. Most people are called to marriage. For those who can remain celibate for the Kingdom, that is a recommendation. Trying to seek the celibate life when one is really ordered towards marriage does tend to result in problems. St. Paul is clear on that point when he recommends that young widows remarry, because they would probably be a high risk of breaking their vows, and when he suggests that it is better to marry than to burn with temptation.
What I would like to do is offer a nuance. Rather than looking at the Church as imposing celibacy upon these unfortunate men, instead the Church says it would prefer to draw its priests and bishops from the ranks of those whose charism is for a celibate life. Yes, that limits the pool of people that can become priests, but that is really as it should be. The clergy should be people of high moral character, able to abstain from the temptations of the world, and free to devote their whole selves in service to the Lord. The Church is better off when it rigorously demands the clergy to be of that high caliber. It is when the Church lowers the bar that all kinds of terrible clergy creep in. (Do we really believe that the likes of Pope Alexander VI would have been holy men if they were allowed to marry?)
I do want to say thank you for such a thoughtful and convivial response! I appreciate it.
Ryan,
Thanks again! I also agree with much you write. To a degree, I can concede your point that the Church seeks celibate men – rather than imposing it on them. But what about the married man who wants to become a priest? Is that person allowed to move forward towards priesthood? If the answer is no, and the reason is his marital status, then the leadership is at least indirectly forcing a restricting standard. Of course, the Church is an entity with rules and regulations and every right to set standards as it chooses. My church – affiliated with a denomination – does exactly the same.
But my contention respectfully remains that restricting the priesthood to unmarried men is an extra-biblical standard. It is not consistent with the priesthood of the Old Testament, nor with the New-Testament priesthood in Jesus’ day, despite its Jewish nature. And I don’t see it as consistent with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 9. He was giving his disciples – none of whom were priests nor sought the priesthood, with at least one in their number (Peter, later declared the first Pope) who was married – a general principle for Godly devotion rather than a filter through which clergy should be sifted.
Thank you again for your insights. I really appreciate them!!
First of all, please remember that the Church, as represented by the Vatican (not just the Pope), is a political entity as much as it is a religious institution. Yes, that was openly the case when we had the Vatican States and wars etc. ad nauseam. But internally it has always been and continues to be political in so many ways, because regardless of what the Church teaches about the Pope and the Holy Spirit, etc., the hierarchy is made up of human beings who can’t help but be political. There were certainly intrigues in the old days and there’s no reason to believe they don’t continue. Voting for the next Pope is one of the most political activities in the world. When Pope Francis appoints a perceived-to-be liberal cardinal, he is stacking the deck for the next Pope to be more like him than not.
“The new guidelines say that seminary directors “should consider sexual orientation as only one aspect of a candidate’s personality.” Yeah, I’d agree that this is fair, but rational, ethical people came to this conclusion a long time ago.”
The Vatican hierarchy changes course with the alacrity of a battleship. It doesn’t matter that more modern rational, ethical conclusions arise. The Church is no better than the U.S. coming late to the party regarding anti-slavery, anti-racism, anti-misogyny, ad nauseam (if in fact they have actually really ever entered the celebrations. But I digress.)
When I was a student at Georgetown (back when we used an abacas and scrolls), there was a well-liked young priest who was gay. I can no longer remember if he was openly gay, if someone outed him, or what. But it was a BIG controversy. Even though he swore that he was celibate, they wanted to get rid of him. He fought it, but I don’t think he won. Not sure, but I think the president of the university to whom you refer was indeed president at the time.
Homosexuality and sexual abuse within the priesthood must be put into the two main contexts under which they have occurred. Back in the 80s or 90s I think, there was a rash of the uneven power dynamics sexual abuse of seminarians by higher-ups at seminaries (with one particularly egregious example in Dallas TX). This may have been at least as much about the power dynamic as it may have been about homosexuality. Another “shining” example was Cardinal McCarrick, before he was a Cardinal.
The other context has homosexuality being blamed for the pedophilia scandals. I knew a convicted pedophile priest. His problem was not homosexuality. His problem was pedophilia. Pedophiles are not necessarily homosexuals; homosexuals are not necessarily pedophiles. And also remember – clerical sexual abuse in other countries is a thing, and many times the victims are women.
One last thing, back to the intrigues of the Vatican. Who knows how long ago this idea was floated and was drowned in Vatican bureaucracy. I haven’t counted, but I believe there are more dicasteries and secretariats and other bureaucratic entities in the Vatican than there are by any count of such things in American bureaucracy. And authors from Andrew Greeley to Morris West to Dan Brown to Umberto Eco, and probably many more whom I haven’t read, have written about Vatican intrigue. They can’t all just be making it up.
So, the Battleship Vatican is maybe just catching up. Maybe it’s virtue signaling, but I don’t think so.
Excellent and very helpful comment….and you didn’t quibble about terminology to duck the issue.
“The other context has homosexuality being blamed for the pedophilia scandals. I knew a convicted pedophile priest. His problem was not homosexuality. His problem was pedophilia. Pedophiles are not necessarily homosexuals; homosexuals are not necessarily pedophiles.”
Not sure whether to say, “So what?” or “Bull shit!” And also throw in a charge or rationalization along the lines of “It’s not the worst thing,” or, “Everybody does it.” Or is there a “You can’t do a damned thing about it” rationalization. It pisses me off. Adoration of young boys is an essential aspect of homosexuality and even celebrated. Adoration of young girls by heterosexuals is illegal and penalized by society. If you put gay guys around young boys, they will predate. Of course, they’ll just say, “Oh, that boy’s gay. I’m just enlightening him. It will do him good.” At my brother’s funeral a year or so ago, I noticed all the “servers” were retired guys. No more altar boys. Good damned thing, I’d say.
Bottom line, the gay cabal that is the Church’s hierarchy is a problem that goes to the heart of the Church. It’s vicious hypocrisy on steroids.
And you know what, all those “In this house we believe love is love” people are either idiots or they should just admit they’re advocating the elimination of any and every societal control over intimacy. They’re saying there should be absolutely no such thing as statutory rape of any orientation. Humans should be free to be intimate with anyone they desire to be intimate with regardless of their age or even capacity. Because love is love. Grrr.
Chastity is a virtue related to temperance. All are called to live the virtue. It is the control of ones sexual passions according to ones state of life.
Celibacy is a the chosen state of life of remaining un married.
Continence is the abstention from sexual activity.
Long-time lapsed Catholic whose mother wanted nothing more than her two sons to become priests here.
Our parish and parish school were a great place to grow up. Great mothers and fathers who kept the priests in line. But ever since Catholic boys’ high school where one of the guitar mass brothers propositioned a guitar playing buddy of mine. And the brother who became the principal at the school initiated and continues to this day an open affair with another buddy’s divorced mother. Oh, and I also taught in a Catholic grade school for a year and a Diocesan high school for a year and a half.
To me, the church hierarchy has never been anything other than a gay cabal. Why no women priests? Who’d want women in the rectory spoiling the party? To me, there’s no separation between “the church” and its ministers. They are simply one and the same.
Which is a shame. Christianity has given us Western Culture. Unfortunately, the Church has forfeited the right to lead Christianity. And don’t get me started on Comrade Francis, speaking of gay Commies.
And by the way, the “new” policy is, to my understanding, the longstanding policy on gays and lesbians, simply applied to priests. You can be gay or lesbian, you simply can’t have gay or lesbian sex. Plus, if they ran off gay seminarians, they’d run out of priests. As a ninth grader, I was supposed to go to a residential seminary with a bunch of other guys? Fat chance.
So, it’s quite remarkable that policy on church members has been extended to clergy. So, not even the priests are any longer expected to live up to the Church’s teaching that being gay is wrong.
Finally, a few years ago, there was talk about doing something about seminaries being overly gay. Flagrantly gay guys were to be avoided in the admission process. There was a cartoon of that vintage. A guy is standing in front of a table of interviewers one of whom says to the applicant, “So, how are you?” The applicant replies, “FABULOUS!” The interviewer drones, “Next!”
There’s recently been a kerfuffle among Mormon adherents (AKA Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints) about a decision to require BYU professors (and other Mormon affiliated faculty) to affirm their support of Mormon theology before they’re allowed to teach at BYU. While I’m neither a Mormon and certainly don’t subscribe to their ‘creative’ theological perspective, I am in full agreement with those who expect BYU faculty to subscribe to Mormon theology. It’s a Mormon university – what else should one expect?
Here’s a good discussion of the situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nl3Pr7pu5s
“what else should one expect?”
I don’t know if this is still the case, but there were plenty of non-Catholic professors at Georgetown when I was there. Of course, there are many who would dispute that Georgetown is a Catholic university, its Jesuit founding and persistent Jesuit presence notwithstanding.
My previous comment was supposed to also mention ex corde ecclesiae which was a Pope John Paul II promulgated constitution which required teachers of Catholic theology in Catholic institutions of higher learning to have a mandate from a bishop or other authority to permit them to do so. The intention, as I understand it, was to rein in those Catholic theology professors who were perhaps a little unorthodox. The required scrutiny sent a chill through Catholic academia, though.
GTown certainly appears to have gone completely woke. I think Notre Dame has as well (even more surprising, but it’s not Jesuit). Like most religious denominations, much of Catholicism has abandoned saving souls and preparing them for the life hereafter and become NGOs dedicated to social justice and life here on Earth.
“What is the difference between a “deep-seated” gay and a, you know, everyday, run-of-the-mill, can-take-it-or-leave-it gay?“
Once upon a time, Chris Rock had a bit: “There are black people, and there are N…” well, I won’t write that word, but it was the 90’s, and you get the idea. The point of the joke was to highlight the difference between good and bad ambassadors for your demographic. I could just as easily say “There are gay people, and there are fags, and most gay people don’t like the fags, fags’ll say things like “bitch please” when you ask them what time it is, like it’s the proper response to the burden of being asked to socialize with strangers.”
That makes more sense if you know the original joke. It’s still on YouTube. Headphones if there’s someone else in the room.
For a more personal example, I’ve related before how a DEI expert was brought in to audit one of the orgs I sit on the board of. We all sat down for interviews and they talked to the staff, and brought back the findings. We were told that we needed more LGBTuvwxyz+ representation at all levels of the org, with a member ideally being on the board. I’m not exactly open about my sexuality, but several of the board members had met my boyfriend, and they looked at me with raised brows, and I said, out loud: “What? They didn’t ask, what was I supposed to do? Dye my hair green and lisp?”
The way I read this was that the church wasn’t necessarily avoiding the men who will be practicing from the closet so much as it was to disinclude the walking stereotypes – The church doesn’t want to be embarrassed by a new slew of overly effeminate rainbow-haired, lispy queers with wide-rimmed, square glasses and get far too excited at the mention of Joseph’s multi-colored cloak.
It’s a little like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the fatuous and cowardly policy of the military, and one that Bill Clinton supported.
Thanks HT, I was hoping you would comment on this post.
The difference being that they *can* ask, and they *can* tell, and it’s not disqualifying. Unless I’m misreading the stance (and I could be) I think this is more: “we don’t really care, just don’t rub it in our faces.”
The problem is that what is rubbing it in some faces isn’t even perceptible to others. I think I’ve told the story here before about my wonderful friend Jeffrey Wayne Davies, a naturalized citizen from Wales and one of the first Americans to perish from AIDS. Jeff was a chef and restaurant owner and also a superb actor, and I became close friends with him when I was a college student. My father was concerned because, he said, Jeff seemed gay to him, and my Dad had the same homophobic biases that most of his generation did, though he recognized them and learned to get over them.
I told my father he was nuts—Jeff wasn’t gay, why would he think that? I told Jeff about my father’s comments, and he cracked up. “I wonder why he would think that? I’m small and slight, I wear my hair down to my shoulders, I dress like this, I walk like this, I live with a man, I’m a chef, an interior decorator, a hair dresser, a ballet dancer and an actor…the only stereotype I’m missing is that I don’t clip poodles! Of COURSE I’m gay! And explain to your father that he has nothing to worry about.”
And by the end, he and my dad were great friends full of mutual respect.
Hell, just thinking about Jeff makes me miss him. Getting awfully dusty in here…
There’s a certain amount of I-know-it-when-I-see-it to this, and sometimes that’s not horrible. It’s like a no tattoos rule, which you can have an opinion on, but is often reasonable, and relatively uncontroversial. People can’t help being gay, but there’s nothing inherent in being gay that requires them to flame.
I guess it depends how deep they want to go. People tend to be incredibly accurate with determining who is gay with very little social interaction. By far, the most common response to a man coming out is “yeah, we knew”. There is a lot of sciencey theory to how gay-dar operates, but there’s almost universal consensus that something approximating it exists. I’ve seen all kinds of theories on why this is, from discount-phrenology to social construct theories. I favor a social cues theory, I think it has to do with where we look, how long we look there, and subtle facial cues.
Regardless, like someone said earlier, it’s not like they can take a real hard line on this, because they’d have an immediate staffing crisis.
Anyone want to make a bet on the likelihood of there having been a gay pope?
As to your last question: 100%. I am relatively certain that the US has had at last two gay Presidents (but Abe Lincoln was not one of them).
Interesting observations about “gaydar.” When did it become common? I still find it amazing that Liberace remained closeted for so much of his career.
I will never forget the first friend who invited me to lunch to have “The Talk” where he told me he was gay. He was so nervous about it and obviously worried about how I would react. He was so, so solemn and it was clearly such a big moment for him that I couldn’t tell the truth, which would have been, “This is not a big deal: I’ve always known.” Instead I thanked him for trusting me enough to reveal his secret.
I got so very drunk the first time I came out. Like… Incredibly, sloppy, worshipped porcelain for hours drunk. Buddy said he didn’t know…. But he also didn’t care. Which was kind of par for the course for me.
As to gaydar… It depends. A lot of the early 80’s studies leaned towards it being a myth, but I think those studies all suffered from being based on video clips of people walking as opposed to face to face interaction. Then there were some studies in the 90’s and 00’s that found that people could guess gay men’s orientation with something around 70% accuracy. More recently, AI has found facial structure patterns that developers are saying can accurately predict gay men with something like 85% accuracy based on dating profiles.
Again… It’s not the hardest of science, but I think there’s something to it. There are other correlations between gay men that buck statistical probability – For example, we’re about twice as likely to be left handed than the population at large. No clue why, might mean nothing, but it’s a thing. Also interesting is that none of these patterns have been effective at predicting lesbianism.
I’ll bet if I collect the winnings if there was a gay pope…
There have been some very bad popes in the history of the Catholic Church. Sorting out whether any of them might have been homosexual is difficult, in part because detractors would have the tendency to make unsubstantiated accusations that would enter the historical record. Pope Paul II, for example, officially died of indigestion from eating bad fruit, but detractors claimed he died while having homosexual relations with his page. Which is true? (Technically, both could be…) I think it is very likely there were popes that engaged in homosexual behavior. Whether they would fit today’s notion of gay, though, is also up to debate.
How deep does the Church want to go with this? I would hazard they want to insist on chastity, which means no sexual relations whatsoever in the case of a celibate priest, just as the Church insists on chastity among all its members.
One thing to note in all this: two major social issues that the Catholic Church is grappling with are dealing with the divorced-and-remarried, and dealing with homosexuals. These are the two areas right now where Catholics are feeling the greatest pain, and the pressure is coming from both sides of the debate. In the case of the divorced and remarried, there are those who want the Church to lighten upon on its teaching on divorce, and those who demand the Church enforce practices like refusing communion and publicly preaching against divorce. This is an issue because, at least in the West, there are so many people who have flouted Church teaching on this matter that it has reached epidemic levels. Priests that enforced refusing communion would alienate half the parish, and yet the Church must insist on refraining from communion when in a state of mortal sin.
Similarly, grappling with the modern acceptance of homosexual behavior is also a challenge. It is a difficult question in part because so much of the Church’s teaching on sexuality is being ignored by a majority of Catholics, and insistence on chastity seems targeted at gays, when in fact it should be a message for all the faithful. The Church wants to make sure homosexuals are welcomed, but it is thorny because it seems the burden is so much more onerous for homosexuals.
I think some of this hearkens back to the comment I made a few weeks ago… The church does not literally follow all of the prescriptions of the Bible, and never has, even forgiving the prescriptions reformed by the New Testament.
I’m not going to tell the faithful what they should believe, like my input has meaning, because this is the way they relate to God, and it’s fitting that a lot of good, hard thought go into that.
But like I said before, not following scripture to the letter means that Choices Have Been Made. And what choices have been made says something about the people making them, particularly at the levels we’re discussing in this context.
HT,
I get a chuckle every time you recount that story from your work place. And I echo Jack’s thanks for weighing in, as well.
I meant to reply sooner, but didn’t have the chance to research the issue. Like most things about the Vatican, the media butchered the story.
By the LGBTQ’s own definition, sexuality is a sprectrum. You have straight and gay, of course, but various levels of gay- or bi- curiosity in between.
The policy states that those with “deep seated” homosexuality (ie, are gay) should not be admitted. However, otherwise straight men who had dabbled with same sex relationships need not be prohibited if they are committed to living chastely as priests. This is what is referred to by discerning an individual’s circumstances.