Gay Priests Speak Out
The Vatican’s position on homosexuals becoming priests has been fairly firm: homosexuals are not considered fit to be priests. Now, it should be noted that this isn’t about sexual activity, but about inclinations. Priests are supposed to be celibate (which is an argument for another day, so let’s just take that at face value).
I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but there is a good article in the AP about homosexual priests who are speaking out against the church’s position that homosexuals are not fit to be priests.
The Rev. Fred Daley, a gay, Roman Catholic priest, had grown increasingly disturbed by Vatican pronouncements over the years that homosexuals were unfit for the clergy.
Then the situation escalated – some church leaders suggested that gays were responsible for the clergy sex abuse crisis. Daley was so angry, he did something last year that almost no other gay Catholic cleric in the country has done: He came out to his bishop, parishioners and his entire community to show that homosexuals were faithfully working in the church.
“I’m as much a member of the church as anybody else,” said Daley, of St. Francis de Sales Church in Utica, N.Y., who was ordained in 1974 and said he has never considered leaving the priesthood. “I love being a priest.”
Researchers have estimated that thousands of homosexual clergy across the United States have dedicated their lives to a church that considers them “intrinsically disordered” and prone to “evil tendencies.” Soon, the Vatican will back up that teaching with a document that could set new restrictions on candidates for the priesthood – a pronouncement U.S. bishops may discuss in private during their national meeting starting Monday in Washington.
Yet, through decades of consistent signals from the Vatican that they are unwelcome, homosexuals have continued to join the priesthood, raising questions about how they can devote themselves to an institution that so questions their ability to serve.
“As I have, through the years, become more comfortable with who I am, it seemed the institutional church and its decrees and its pastoral letters from the Vatican seemed more harsh and almost mean-spirited,” said Daley, who didn’t realize he was gay until after he was ordained and has remained celibate. “But what I find on the grass-roots level is vibrant, alive communities of faith in my everyday ministry.”
Also note that these priests are not sexually active and are not speaking out against the church’s position on homosexual activity. They are merely questioning the official position that those with homosexual tendencies are unfit to serve as priests.
