Catholic homosexual priests are significant

Topic: Catholic homosexual priests are significant
By David Cox

Pope Bendict has given a papal document declaring that men which are homosexuals or have homosexual tendencies should not apply for the priesthood, and even “slight” homosexual tendencies should be overcome at least 3 years before applying to the priesthood (churchmilitant.com). While outwardly the Church stands strongly against homosexuality, inwardly the truth is that it is rampant among their priests and bishops.

There is spectulation that there is a complete “gay” lobby within the Vatican curia. Catholic homosexual priests is real.

La Repubblica, reported that a “gay lobby”—a more or less unified cabal of homosexual power brokers—might be operating inside the Vatican… The internal VatiLeaks report, according to La Repubblica, indicated that gay clerics in the Vatican were being blackmailed. The report was also said to document the alleged gay lobby’s social structure and customs. Yet details concerning gay priests’ gatherings added up to old news: the tales had been told in articles previously published by La Repubblica itself. Sensationally, the newspaper suggested that Benedict’s concern about the alleged gay lobby was one reason he had suddenly resigned the papacy… Francis was quoted as saying, “The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there … We need to see what we can do.” (Vanity Fair)

In another article by the Huffington Post…

“Pope Francis seems to feel that as long as a gay priest is not acting out sexually, he should not be judged,” said Richard Gaillardetz of Boston College, president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. “And he apparently sees no impediment to that priest serving the church well.” … Throughout his discourse there was none of the clinical, distancing talk of gays and lesbians as “objectively disordered.” Nor did Francis say, as Benedict did, that homosexuality “is one of the miseries of the church.” As the Rev. James Martin noted, Francis even used the word “gay,” and in a positive sense, whereas popes and Vatican officials have traditionally spoken only of “homosexuals.” (Huffington Post)

The issue of Catholic homosexual priests is not an idol gossip without specific cases. (What it’s like being a Gay Priest) There are many cases of acting priests who admit that they are homosexual, and the Catholic Church does not respond to these declarations with any kind of punishment, correction, or rejection of the statement. In fact they generally do not act against that priest in a corrective nature at all.

According to Wikipedia.org it is very difficult to estimate the numbers, but one estimate is that there are 33% of Catholic clergy are gay, and another anywhere from 15% to 58% (according to actual studies). Priests dying of AIDS is apparently a great concern among priests being 6x more common than in the population in general. In a 2002 survey, 9% admitted to being gay and another 6 percent somewhere between straight and gay, but more on the gay side. Another survey found 27%, and yet another found 53% of the priests ordained in the last 20 years are gay, even going so far as to admit that there was a homosexual subculture in the Catholic seminary that they studied at. See this article at religioustolerance.org for more guesses.

From the Wikipedia article…

Although gay lifestyles have been condemned by the church, a number of senior members of the clergy have been found to have had homosexual relationships.

Another article from the Kansas City Star…

Back in 2000, just as news of the homosexual priest sex abuse crisis was beginning to break, the  Kansas City Star did an in-depth exposé on a horrible topic: the large number of  homosexual priests dying of AIDS. … Far from denying the paper’s stories, the bishop of Kansas City at the time, Raymond Boland, admitted the findings were true and said, “Much as we would regret it, it shows that human nature is human nature.”… The issue of the AIDS death aside (God rest their souls), it reveals the reality of homosexuality in the ranks of the ordained — and not just its presence, but itsoverwhelming presence… Its  (an internal report for the National Federation of Priests Councils) contents contain discussions of how each diocese and religious order should go about preparing for the financial strain of caring for so many priests with AIDS. It makes recommendations about whether to screen seminarians for HIV, a policy eventually adopted across the country…  Across the country, estimates from assorted experts put the number of Catholic priests dying from the disease at as high as 1,000 in roughly a 10–15 year span. Numbers were showing that priests were becoming infected and dying at a rate of as high as 10 times the national average. All this strongly suggested that the number of homosexual men in the Catholic priesthood was much higher than even the most suspicious had guessed…  One survey done by a New Jersey Franciscan priest and researcher revealed that 45 percent of 500 priests surveyed volunteered that they were gaym and that one in four of them had AIDS — proving a rampant promiscuity… Over the years, a large number of surveys, polls and research have produced a wide range of estimates of the percentage of men in the ranks of the ordained who are homosexual: as low as 15 percent all the way up to 58 percent. That compares to the overall national percentage of about 1.5 percent… Even if the lowball estimate of 15 percent of priests are gay is right, it would still be 10 times the national average. And if the high end is closer to reality, then over half of all men in the priesthood and episcopate are homosexual, and would represent a population almost 50 times the national average.churchmilitant.com

This gets even more serious. In an article in US News, Catholic Priests: It’s ‘Empirical Fact’ that many Clergy are gay.

Gay and straight priests alike are cheering Pope Francis’s comments about homosexuality in the priesthood, saying gay priests make up a significant segment of the Catholic clergy and deserve papal recognition.

On a plane from Brazil Monday, Francis told reporters that, “if someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”…

“It’s an empirical fact that lots of men are gay who are priests. And they are very good priests,” he says. “I would also observe that the numbers of gay men and women in the church ministry is probably larger than the general population, precisely because they are not seeking marriage.”

The notion that many Catholic priests are quietly gay is not new. In the 2000 book “The Changing Face of the Priesthood,” Rev. Donald B. Cozzens suggested that the priesthood was increasingly becoming a gay profession. Cozzens estimated that as much as 58 percent of priests were gay, and that percentages were even higher for younger priests. His numbers matched previous estimates by sociologists who put the numbers of gay priests between 10 and 60 percent.

Father Gary Meier, a gay, St. Louis-based Catholic clergymen, says there’s a wide range of statistics out there on gay priests, but jokes that in his experience, “30 percent are gay, 30 percent are straight, and 30 percent are in denial.”

What this tells us is that the atmosphere and culture within the Catholic priesthood and administration of the Catholic Church is an atmosphere specially receiving of homosexuality. With celibacy (supposedly to make a man more morally pure), these men are turning to homosexuality, and unfortunately, they are dragging young men and even children into this morass with them.

Take-Aways

So what can we conclude from all of this? First of all, we need to understand that the presence of homosexual men in the Catholic church (lesbian nuns also) is just a given fact. Any serious Catholic clergic or Vatican official would not deny it. Secondly, we must understand that their very system of celibacy is exactly the source of this (along with perversion of many essential doctrines), and that their system either/both causes homosexuality and/or attracts homosexuals. Thirdly, the real issue here is the lack of any resolve within the Catholic church to fight this. Since so many of the Catholic priests, archbishops, and cardinals are homosexual, any feigned attacks against it are ridiculous. If the Catholic church really wante to fight against Catholic homosexual priests within its ranks, it should disciple each and every case and remove that person from any ministry or official association with the ministering Catholic church. Anything less than this is a tactic endorsement and support of homosexuality.

See also Roman Catholic Jacuzzi: The Pink Elephant in the Room which is a review of a book about a retreat for gay Catholic clergy.