|
 ndrew
Sullivan is a brilliant journalist whose work I treasure, but he
is wrong on the gay-priests issue. He attacks me today for having
a "gay problem" when it comes to homosexuality and the
Church. He's right; I do. So does he. And it's on this dispute that
the future of the Catholic Church in America rests.
Sullivan is
angry that in my comments in The Corner, I've often connected the
homosexuality of priests accused of pederasty with their alleged
crimes. He resents my comments about the "lavender mafia"
running much of the institutional Church (the phrase is Fr. Andrew
Greeley's, and he's hardly a Catholic conservative). He disdains
my remarks about how some gay priests in control of seminaries and
chanceries use their power to persecute orthodox, heterosexual priests
and seminarians, and he resents my remarks about some seminaries
being not much better than "gay brothels."
I draw those
dire conclusions not on "hearsay," as Sullivan says, but
on reporting and years of conversations with priests, who have told
me more than I wish I knew about what it was really like in their
seminaries. It will be interesting to see how Sullivan will react
to author Michael S. Rose's forthcoming Goodbye!
Good Men, which is the first book I'm aware of to systematically
compile these stories from the seminaries, and to name names.
I've just finished
an early copy, and what it documents is absolutely astonishing,
and cannot be ignored except by those who do not want to see. This
bombshell book reveals a seminary underworld in which homosexual
promiscuity and sexual harassment is rampant, in which straight
men are marginalized and demoralized, and seminarians who support
the Church's teaching on sexuality and the priesthood are persecuted,
even to the point of being sent off, Soviet-style for psychological
evaluations. Many of these guys are rejected from entering the seminaries,
expelled, or driven by depression to leave.
The book was
substantially written before the Boston scandal broke, and it contains
damning information about the homosexual domination of St. John's
Seminary in Boston during the time that many of the priests accused
in the current scandal there were ordained. How can you blame people
for wondering if there's a connection between the outlaw homosexual
culture of that seminary, and the outlaw homosexual culture that
some 80 priests in Boston participated in?
Even seminary
rector the Rev. Donald Cozzens, in his much-praised book The
Changing Face of the Priesthood, writes that the increasing
presence of homosexuals in the priesthood causes particular problems
for straight seminarians, and not for the usual bugbears of "homophobia."
The Catholic laity have a right to know if their Church's priesthood
is becoming heavily gay, and what that means. Fr. Greeley writes,
"The laity, I suspect, would say it is one thing to accept
a homosexual priest and quite another to accept a substantially
homosexual clergy, many of who are blatantly part of the gay subculture."
What's more, I have been told by a number of sources, including
psychiatrist Richard Sipe — no Church conservative he —
that there does in fact exist a network of gay priests who support
each other, sometimes through sinister ways (e.g., blackmailing
bishops and others who threaten their activities).
I have connected
the homosexuality of those priests who have been publicly exposed
as pederasts to their alleged actions for one main reason: The media
will strain to avoid making the connection, for fear of being accused
of homophobia. But this scandal cannot be understood and honestly
dealt with in its absence. We hear over and over again that "pedophiles
are mostly straight men." That may be true, but what we're
seeing with priests is not pedophilia, which is a deep-seated psychological
illness. What we're seeing is gay men who cannot or will not keep
their pants up around teenage boys. Not teenage girls. Teenage boys.
You cannot
blame people for asking if there's something about the culture of
homosexuality in the Catholic priesthood that fosters this phenomenon,
if it's something more than a few bad apples, but a systemic problem.
Maybe it's not. But it is not homophobic to ask, and the questions
do not go away because Andrew Sullivan doesn't want to face them,
for fear of what the answers might be.
One reason
this matters goes beyond the safety of teenage males, to the theological
integrity of the Church. It doesn't take a sociologist or an investigative
journalist to determine that people will go to great lengths to
believe things that will justify their sex lives. It's very human;
most of us have done it at one point in our lives. We've seen gay
priests and theologians, aligned with feminist nuns and other dissenters
(including heterosexuals, to be sure), working to change the substance
of the Catholic faith, particularly on issues of sexual morality.
And they're succeeding. In my experience, the only time most Catholics
ever hear anything orthodox said about sexual morality from the
clergy is when the Vatican says something. You can just as effectively
change the belief of the people by not teaching the truth as you
can by teaching falsehood.
No serious
Catholic could object to a homosexually oriented priest who is both
chaste and openly supportive of the Church's teaching. We're not
talking about these brave and faithful men. Does Andrew Sullivan
believe gay priests should have a special dispensation giving them
the right to be sexually active (as he apparently believes about
himself as a Catholic)? Does he believe they don't have an obligation
to live by authoritative Church teaching? Does he believe that good
works and heroism in other aspects of their priesthood exempts them
from fidelity and integrity in others (e.g., does Fr. Judge's bravery
at Ground Zero earn him a pass on the fact that he was unfaithful
to the Church on sexuality?)
Or is it more
important to Andrew Sullivan to be sexually active gay man than
a faithful Catholic? You cannot have it both ways. Hence Andrew
Sullivan's gay problem. Hence my own. Hence this painful discussion,
which will soon occupy center stage in the public square as the
scandal unfolds, and American Catholics are forced to deal with
the homosexualization of the Catholic priesthood in America.
|
