“A friend forwarded to me your your recent (July 16, 2005) comments about a possible upcoming Vatican document that may ban gay men from priestly ordination. After reading your comments, John Allen’s article, and the email from a gay priest who wrote about his own struggles, I find myself so incensed that words almost escape me.
I, too, am a gay priest. While I am no longer in active ministry (currently on a leave of absence), I can fully understand and identify with the pain and anguish that the priest expressed. Though I no longer function as a priest in the sacramental or adminstrative sense, I have always considered who I am and the work I do to be “priestly.” I am a professional “do-gooder,” a social worker with a non-profit mental health organization; I am active in my Washington, DC parish, teaching RCIA to those seeking the good news that Christ and the Church proclaim. Though conscious of my own sinfulness and shortcomings, I try to live my life in the light of the truth that my ordination forever changed the essence of my soul, calling me to “be there” for others, as Christ has been and always is “there” for us.
For the Church even to consider taking a position that gay men are “unfit” for priestly ordination must be called what it is. You labeled it as bigotry; indeed, such a statement would be an expression of indefensible bigotry and discrimination. It also would be an evil of immense magnitude. If the current Holy Father were to promulgate such a statement, I cannot tell you the range of thoughts and emotions such an action would engender in me (anger and dismay being at the top of the list). I would also feel great sadness for Benedict XVI himself, and I would fear for his salvation. To knowingly inflict such immense harm on part of God’s flock, doing so in his role as the Church’s Universal Pastor, would, I believe, place on him the burden of one day standing before the Lord in need of the boundless mercy and forgiveness that only God can give.
Like the priest who wrote to you, I feel I must do something, but don’t yet know what that is. While I reflect and pray for guidance on what that “something” is, I wish to thank you for providing an enlightened place in these “darkening times” for all gay men and women seeking to follow the light of Christ.”
Another gay priest recommended this book to me. It’s a biography of one of the great Catholic intellectuals and priests of the twentieth century, Henri Nouwen. And, yes, he was gay.
The Dish 