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Articles > Status
Ecclesiae November 2005: “Gay” Priest: An Oxymoron
Status Ecclesiae
November 2005
“Gay” Priest: An Oxymoron
“It’s not about you. It’s
about the Church and the good of the Church”
- by John Mallon, Contributing Editor, Inside the Vatican
The Rev. Gerald Chojnacki, SJ, head of the
New York Province of the Society of Jesus, is unhappy. According
to a recent Associated Press report on a forthcoming Vatican
document (expected in November) which will reiterate the Church’s
teaching that “gay” seminarians should not be
ordained priests, Chojnacki, in a September 26 letter to the
Jesuits of his province, said he is asking bishops to tell
Vatican officials who are drafting the policy “of the
great harm this will cause many good priests and the Catholic
faithful.”
Great harm? Father Chojnacki must not speak to many of the
faithful, who simply want to attend church and have their
children taught the Faith with fidelity by priests who are
happy with Church teachings and their priesthood, and are
not ostensibly celibate men preoccupied with their sexuality.
The AP said Chojnacki wrote in the letter that he had participated
in the funerals of several gay Jesuit clergy over the last
few years. “I find it insulting to demean their memory
and their years of service by even hinting that they were
unfit for priesthood because of their sexual orientation,”
he wrote. Chojnacki said he would be working with the Conference
of Major Superiors of Men, which represents leaders of religious
orders in the United States including the Jesuits, Franciscans
and others, and with bishops, to fight “for the opportunity
of a gay person to say yes to God’s call in celibate
service of priesthood and chaste religious life.”
It seems odd, if not telling, that Father Chojnacki cites
these men’s deaths. It raises the inevitable question,
“How did they die?” One cannot help but think
of AIDS in this connection. If, in fact, these men met untimely
deaths from AIDS, the question is of course raised as to whether
this is the “celibate” and “chaste”
religious life of which Chojnacki speaks. Don’t dead
young priests qualify as “great harm?” Most sane
Catholics would say yes.
Jesuits have reason to be concerned. According to a document
that came into my possession a few years ago, complete with
names, in the New England Province alone, four priests and
one novice died of AIDS between 1984 and 1997. In 1991 the
Master of Novices left the order and priesthood to cohabitate
with the “lover” of a former novice. In 1993 a
Jesuit of the New England Province was convicted of drugging
and indecently assaulting Marines and sentenced to five years
in Leavenworth Prison. Between 1997 and 2000, seven Jesuits
of the New England Province left the order to take up the
“gay” lifestyle. In 1999 the Jesuit Urban Center
in Boston was named the “Best Place To Meet A Mate,
Gay” by Boston Magazine (August 1999).
If vows of chastity were being kept, there would be no issue.
This is not a matter of scapegoating or a witch hunt. Active
homosexuality in the priesthood or the seminary is a scandal
all by itself. Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times recently
quoted our old friend Rev. Thomas J. Reese, SJ, former editor
of the Jesuit Weekly America magazine, saying that with the
shortage of priests, the Church can hardly afford to dismiss
gay seminarians.
What are you telling us, Father? That the priesthood is a
numbers game? That fidelity to Christ and the doctrine of
His Church should be dropped so we can have lots of priests
to preach the resultant compromised Gospel? That the priesthood
of Jesus Christ cannot survive without homosexuals? That in
time we won’t work our way out of the humiliating scandals
caused by “gay” priests demanding their “rights”?
It is more likely that men with a serious interest in prayer,
pursuing holiness and serving Christ will no longer be run
out of the seminary by dissent and homosexual hazing.
Reese continues, “It’s much healthier if a seminarian
can talk about his sexuality with a spiritual director, but
this kind of policy is going to force it all underground.”
The attitude of these Jesuits and other clerics making comments
to the secular press seems to be that the Church and priesthood
is their own private bathhouse and the Pope has a lot of nerve
to impose Catholicism on them.
“Gay” Ideology vs. Catholicism
So, what is really wrong with this? The statements of Fathers
Chojnacki and Reese cited here are scandalous themselves,
and yet they appear not to realize it. They seem to imply
that it is Pope Benedict who is creating the scandal. It illustrates
how far gone they are, and what living in the cocoon of the
Culture of Dissent does to one’s faith. Perhaps the
most depressing thing about this issue is the flood of ignorance
being voiced by clergy—who should know better—about
the Church’s motives on this. Though the 1961 document
setting forth this policy (with the signature and full support
of “Good Pope John”) has been widely ignored,
the Church’s teachings on homosexuality have always
been very clear. Now that the policies are being reiterated,
many are crying foul. What indeed were their motives and expectations
in pursuing the priesthood?
Dissenters have long used the tactic of the fait accompli—
ignore a certain teaching and then claim falsely that it has
changed. Then accuse the Church of being unfair or “uncaring”
when it restates the teaching. Now, this fait accompli approach
has failed.
Almost every argument being made in American op-ed pages
by angry priests is based on emotion, not theology. The media
naturally obtain comments from priests who object to restating
the policy, originally spelled out in 1961.
Perhaps what is most disturbing is the number of priests
who use the term “gay priest” seriously. It is
one thing to be a faithful priest who struggles with same-sex
attractions, but to openly proclaim one’s self “gay”
is another matter. It calls fidelity into question. Is calling
oneself “gay” in keeping with chastity? Such a
man is trying to serve two masters.
The word “gay” is a term of ideology. It implies
that homosexual attractions are not merely a struggle but
an identity. Some even go so far as to claim their homosexuality
is a “gift from God” or that “God made me
this way.”
If homosexual attractions are, as the Church teaches, intrinsically
disordered, and homosexual acts intrinsically evil, then it
cannot be claimed that God made them. Rather they are the
result of the Fall—Original Sin. This is not to single
anyone out; we all suffer from the effects of Original Sin.
The ideology implicit in the word “gay” denies
that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered, and that homosexual
acts are intrinsically evil, and attempts to grant homosexuality
the same moral status as race and ethnicity. To accept this
Big Lie recalls St. Paul’s warning: “They exchanged
the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshipped the
creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever.
Amen. Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions.
Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and
the males likewise gave up natural relations with females
and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things
with males and thus received in their own persons the due
penalty for their perversity.” (Romans 1:25-27)
Do we believe this, or do we accuse St. Paul of spreading
“hate speech”? Despite the astonishingly up-to-date
description this passage provides of today’s world—and
today’s Church—citing Scripture is dismissed as
“out-of-date prooftexting.” How about what it
says?
The Culture of Death is a two-legged stool which only remains
standing because it is propped up by lies. Death and lies
go together as Christ taught about the Church’s Adversary,
“He was a murderer and a liar from the beginning.”
The two legs of this stool are homosexuality and abortion.
The Culture of Death is the main Adversary of the Church today.
The two legs of this stool also comprise not merely sin, but
two of the four sins that cry out to God for vengeance: murder
of the innocent and sodomy.
Being a Catholic, much less a priest, implies a degree of
conversion, and conversion implies a certain degree of renunciation,
including first of all renunciation of sin and ultimately
renunciation of one’s very self in order to die with
Christ. This, in part, is what vows of chastity are all about.
As St. Paul said, “I urge you therefore, brothers,
by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,
holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform
yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of
your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what
is good and pleasing and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2)
The First Commandment states, “You shall love the Lord
your God with your whole heart, mind and strength.”
It is not unreasonable to presume this includes one’s
sexuality. To accept the validity of the term “gay”
and the ideology and view of the human person it represents
is to be in conflict with the Church and the teaching of Christ,
accepting the terms laid down by the world, the flesh and
the devil over those of Christ.
Therefore the term “gay priest” is an oxymoron.
A priest may well struggle with same-sex attractions but to
declare himself “gay” is in a sense a capitulation
to the Church’s enemies. It is an acceptance of the
way of the world, the flesh and the devil and a rejection
of Christ and His teachings. A man in Holy Orders is an alter
Christus, not a “gay man.” Some will argue, “I
am both a gay man and a priest,” but invoking the Biblical
language of God being a jealous God, one cannot be both and
not be guilty of idolatry. The question is who is on the throne
of our lives? Christ the King? Or someone or something else?
For a celibate man vowed to chastity to have his sexuality—or
homosexuality—on the throne of his life is a recipe
for disaster and requires conversion. We have had enough disasters
in the Church.
None of us, clerical or lay, lives in perfect conformity
to Christ, which is why Christ gave us the Church and the
sacraments, to assist us in our daily conversion to Christ,
who is our true identity. How can a true priest of God, or
any Christian, proclaim his identity to be in his sexual preferences
rather than in Christ? It is absurd that Christ would want
us to identify ourselves with what is intrinsically disordered
or evil. This is not discriminatory; all of us must deal daily
with that which is intrinsically disordered and evil. It’s
called sin. No one is exempt from the struggle.
Confusion on this is not surprising after a century of Bible
scholarship that has sought to tell us that the Bible doesn’t
mean what it says, and a half century of dissent within the
Church which tells us that the Church must conform to the
world, for the sake of “credibility” instead of
vice versa.
If I could say one thing to the gangs of clergy writing angry
op-eds and letters to the editors to secular newspapers filled
with clichés about witch hunts, hurt feelings and being
ashamed of the Church, scapegoating for the pedophilia scandals,
“outdated teachings from the Dark Ages,” ad
nauseam, it would be a cliché of my own: It’s
not about you. It’s about the Church, and the good of
the Church. It’s about the eternal salvation of souls
which homosexuality places in grave danger. How many times
does a child have to hear that his priest is “gay”
before concluding there’s nothing wrong with it—or
even something noble about it—and starts experimenting?
A priest’s job is to proclaim Christ, not his sexual
preferences.
The credibility of the Church lies precisely in how it stands
against the sinful trends in the culture as a sign of contradiction
in fidelity to the Gospel, not in going along with these trends.
The world has erected an ersatz morality in opposition to
the Church which says homosexuality is simply an “alternate
lifestyle” and not to accept it constitutes bigotry
and unfair discrimination and that abortion is a “right”
and “necessity.” This is an “angel of light”
the Church must stand against, not something to which she
may acquiesce.
And yet the house of Israel says, “The Lord’s
way is not fair!” Is it my way that is not fair, house
of Israel, or rather, is it not that your ways are not fair?
Therefore I will judge you, house of Israel, each one according
to his ways, says the Lord GOD. Turn and be converted from
all your crimes, that they may be no cause of guilt for you.
Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, and
make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why should
you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the
death of anyone who dies, says the Lord God. Return and live!
(Ezekiel 18:29-32)
John Mallon is a Contributing Editor to Inside the Vatican
magazine. He also has regular columns on the website Catholic.Org.
An archive of Mr. Mallon's work also appears here: http://www.petersvoice.com/mallon/index.html.
You can reach Mr. Mallon at
johnmallon@insidethevatican.com.
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