Jesuits Defy Order from Indianapolis Archbishop to Fire a Gay Teacher

Both the less than saintly Pope John Paul II and his successor, former Hitler youth Pope Benedict XVI stacked bishoprics across the globe with reactionaries who desired to take the Catholic Church backwards in time and keep women subjugated to men and gays stigmatized and marginalized. The Church remains saddled with many of these reactionary bishops and cardinals who seemingly prefer to drive members from the Church than face new scientific and medical knowledge and social enlightenment.  These reactionaries also seek to wage war with the Church's religious orders that do not fall directly under their leadership but instead have their own independent leadership.  One order, the Jesuits, has for centuries been the home of the Church's intellectuals and also the most educated of the Church's religious orders.  Now, this dichotomy within the Church has collided in of all places, Mike Pence's state of Indiana where a Jesuit run high school is defying a reactionary archbishop's order to fire a gay teacher.  NBC News looks at the conflict.  Here are highlights:

A Jesuit-run prep school in Indianapolis is defying a demand by the local archbishop that it fire a veteran teacher who is in a same-sex marriage, prompting the archdiocese to revoke recognition for the school as a Catholic institution.

In a letter to parents, the leaders of the Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School said Archbishop Charles Thompson’s “direct insertion into an employment matter of a school governed by a religious order is unprecedented.”

“After long and prayerful consideration, we determined that following the Archdiocese’s directive would not only violate our informed conscience on this particular matter, but also set a concerning precedent for future interference in the school’s operations,” school officials said.

The letter was signed by the school president, the Rev. William Verbryke, and the heads of the board of trustees, W. Patrick Bruen and Daniel M. Lechleiter.

They wrote that for 57 years, school leaders have decided who gets hired.

“Brebeuf Jesuit has respectfully declined the Archdiocese’s insistence and directive that we dismiss a highly capable and qualified teacher due to the teacher being a spouse within a civilly-recognized same-sex marriage,” they said in the letter.

The school leaders reassured parents that their stand “will not change the mission or operations of Brebeuf Jesuit” and insisted that “our identity as a Catholic Jesuit institution remains unchanged.”

“We will continue to offer a rigorous academic program that follows more than 450 years of Jesuit tradition and is committed to expansive and critical thinking, competent and compassionate ethical concern, creative and artistic expression, and excellence grounded in faith and the dignity of the human person,” they wrote.

The Archdiocese of Indianapolis said in a statement that a Catholic school is required to "clearly state in its contracts and ministerial job descriptions that all ministers must convey and be supportive of all teachings of the Catholic Church."

The battle over the gay teacher has been going on for two years.

Brian Paulson, who leads the Society of Jesus Midwest Province, which represents Jesuits in the Midwest, called the archdiocese’s move “disappointing.”

“In the summer of 2017, Brebeuf Jesuit became aware that one of its teachers entered into a civil marriage with a person of the same sex,” Paulson said in a statement. “This fact became publicly known via social media.”  When the archdiocese asked that the teacher’s contract not be renewed, Paulson said the school refused.  “The teacher in question does not teach religion and is a longtime valued employee of the school,” Paulson wrote.

Paulson said they will appeal the archdiocese's decision.

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who is one of the leading advocates for LGBT Catholics, called the move by Brebeuf's leadership "courageous."

One of the top private schools in the city, Brebeuf Jesuit serves about 800 students in grades 9-12.

The Catholic Church needs to leave its 12th century dogma on sex and sexuality behind or else, over time, it will find itself a much smaller, Africa centered church.  Kudos to the school leadership for saying "no" to ignorance and bigotry. 

Lists of Priests Accused of Sexual Abuse Are Spilling Out Across the Country

In a prior post I noted how organized religion has been the worse purveyor of anti-LGBT abuse and hatred for centuries.  No part of organized religion has done more to make life a living hell for LGBT people than the Roman Catholic Church which still labels gays as "inherently disordered" and "inclined towards evil" even as the Church is being increasingly shown to be full of predator clergy and defined by rank hypocrisy.  Rather than admit that the Church's rampant sex abuse problem stems from its warped dogma on sex and sexuality and the Church's quest for power and control over others, Pope Francis is joining the chorus that blames the enter problem on gays within the ranks of the clergy.  This lame and disingenuous scapegoating ignores the cover ups and all too often aiding and abetting of predator priests throughout bishoprics literally all across the globe.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the lists (which are said by many to be woefully incomplete) of predatory priests being belatedly released by some bishops as they seek to stem the hemorrhaging of parishioners who are finally walking away in disgust. As the piece notes, it will likely take federal and state prosecutors to ever secure a full accounting of the true numbers of child rapists and molesters the Church has sheltered.  Here are article highlights (the piece begins by referencing a list released by the Diocese of Syracuse where I was raised through high school): 

It was a list Charles L. Bailey Jr. had wanted to see for years: the names of the priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse. . . . on Dec. 3, Mr. Bailey got a call from a local reporter. It was up, on the diocesan website. Fifty-seven priests. None were still in ministry and most were deceased, including, there on Page 4, the priest who had repeatedly raped Mr. Bailey when he was not yet a teenager.

As the Catholic Church faces a wave of federal and state attorney general investigations into its handling of sex abuse, bishops around the country have struggled with how to react. Some have locked down defensively. Others are waiting on guidance from the Vatican, which instructed American bishops last month to wait on taking any collective action until the new year.

But dozens of bishops have decided to take action by releasing lists of the priests in their dioceses who were credibly accused of abuse. And they are being released at an unprecedented pace.

The disclosures have trickled out week by week — 10 names in Gaylord, Mich.; 28 in Las Cruces, N.M.; 28 in Ogdensburg, N.Y.; 15 in Atlanta; 34 in San Bernardino, Calif., among many others. All 15 dioceses in Texas have agreed to release lists. Last week, the leaders of two major Jesuit provinces, covering nearly half of the states, released the names of more than 150 members of the order “with credible allegations of sexual abuse of a minor.”

Many of the priests named on the lists are dead, but not all. Many had already been known as abusers, but scores of names are new, even to activists who have been closely following the church abuse scandals for years. Among the known allegations, many of the cases date back generations.

Some victims, as they comb through the lists, say there are names missing. Others see reason for distrust in the fact that the church had names to release at all, nearly two decades after claiming the sexual abuse scandals introduced a new era of transparency.

The lists are coming in the wake of an explosive grand jury report released in August by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office, detailing at grim length the abuse of over 1,000 people by hundreds of priests. Investigations have followed in more than a dozen states.

The scope of the federal investigation remains unclear. Last month, William M. McSwain, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, sent a request to every Roman Catholic diocese in the United States not to destroy documents related to the handling of child sexual abuse.

Still, if releasing the lists was meant to defuse the anger of the church’s critics, there is little evidence it has done that.

In Syracuse, Mr. Bailey said that he had already received calls from victims who said their abusers were not on the list. The name of the priest who had raped Mr. Bailey was listed in a section for clergy who “were deceased at the time of the reporting of the allegation,” a claim he said was contradicted by some of the priest’s abuse victims.Among a laity distrustful of the church’s handling of sex abuse, there is a widespread sentiment that the only way to get the truth is through the subpoena power of law enforcement.

“The civil court system, that’s the new way the Holy Spirit moves,” said Patrick Wall, a former priest and canon lawyer who now works on behalf of abuse victims.

Advocacy groups suggest that bishops could invite the authorities to pore through all of a diocese’s files. Or the authorities could come in uninvited, as was the case when dozens of federal and local agents conducted a surprise search of the offices of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston last month.

The mistrust underlying all this was earned, Bishop Coyne said. The bishops had proven over the last two decades that they had not been able to police themselves. But given the current atmosphere, self-policing might not be an option any more.

“Now I have a reason,” Bishop Coyne said of pushing for the publication of a list. “The list is going to get published anyway.”

Given the complete moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy, I remain amazed how otherwise decent people can remain a part of and continue to fund what might well be called a criminal enterprise, especially now that the third highest official at the Vatican has been convicted of child molestation. 

Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Charges of Sexually Abusing Choir Boys

How high up in the Vatican do charges of sexual abuse of minors go?  Very high it appears.  A jury in an Australian court unanimously convicted Cardinal George Pell - the No. 3 figure in the Vatican hierarchy and former Archbishop of Sydney and Melbourne - of sexual molesting two choir boys.  That's right it was a unanimous verdict. Details are scarce since the court had imposed a gag order in the case to prevent details from leaking out and potentially impacting the trial and jury.  Pell had been on a "leave of absence" from his Vatican posts and now, albeit belatedly, Pope Francis has dropped him like a hot potato and removed Pell from Francis' informal cabinet (a Chilean cardinal implicated in sex abuse cover ups has likewise been dropped).  As a former gay Catholic, I now wonder why I ever allowed myself to be filled with guilt and self-hate by the dictates of what is now so clearly a morally bankrupt and corrupt Church hierarchy.  The Daily Beast has details on the trial and jury verdict:

The Vatican’s third most powerful official has been convicted in Australia on all charges he sexually abused two choir boys there in the late '90s, according to two sources with knowledge of the case.

A unanimous jury returned its verdict for Cardinal George Pell on Tuesday (Australian time) after more than three days of deliberations, the sources said, in a trial conducted under a gag order by the judge that prevented any details of the trial being made public.

Pell, the Vatican’s finance chief and the highest Vatican official to ever go on trial for sex abuse, left Rome in June 2017 to stand trial in Melbourne.

As that trial was about to get underway in June, a judge placed a suppression order on all press coverage in Australia, according to the order reviewed by The Daily Beast. Prosecutors applied for the order and it was granted to “prevent a real and substantial risk of prejudice to the proper administration of justice.” That order remains in place in Australia.

That trial, known as “the cathedral trial,” was declared a mistrial earlier this year after a hung jury, the sources say. A retrial began immediately and ended this week with the unanimous verdict.

Pell was accused by two former choir boys of sexual abuse while he was archbishop of Melbourne in the '90s. The boys sang in the choir at St. Patrick's cathedral and were allegedly abused by Pell in a room in the confines of the church. Pell’s office told The Guardian in 2017 he “repeats his vehement and consistent denials of any and all such accusations.”

A second trial known as “the swimmers trial” is due to get underway early next year, according to sources familiar with the case. That trial is expected to hear evidence that Pell “sexually offended” two men when they were boys playing games in a swimming pool in Ballarat, Victoria.

Sadly, Pell is likely to be far from a lone predator in light of the resignations of two former archbishops of Washington, D.C., one of whom was credibly accused of sexual abuse of seminarians and others, and the other of whom was implicated in cover ups of sexual abuse. The Sydney Morning Herald looks at Francis dropping Pell like a hot potato.  Here are excerpts:

Pope Francis has removed two cardinals from his informal cabinet amid the Catholic Church's sex abuse and cover-up scandal, shedding embarrassing advisers ahead of a high-stakes Vatican summit on abuse early next year.

The Vatican said on Wednesday that Francis in October had written to Cardinal George Pell and Chilean Cardinal Javier Errazuriz thanking them for their five years of service on the so-called Group of Nine, or C-9.

Their continued presence on the C-9 had been a source of scandal for Francis, given the explosion of the abuse and cover-up crisis this year. Francis himself was implicated in the scandal after he strongly defended a Chilean bishop accused of covering up for the country's most notorious predator priest - a position he took apparently on the advice of Errazuriz.

Though he has been away from Rome since announcing his leave of absence in June 2017, Pell technically remains prefect of the Vatican's economy secretariat.

No doubt right wing extreme Catholics will continue to scapegoat gays as the root cause of the sex abuse by Catholic clergy rather than admit that the real roots of the problem are : (i) the Roman rite priestly celibacy requirement , (ii) the Church's warped and ignorant 12th century dogma on sex and human sexuality, and (iii) the Church's unhealthy structure of seminary high schools and seminaries that have long guaranteed abnormal psycho-sexual development of candidates for the priesthood.

If one is a decent, moral Catholic, the only option is to leave the Catholic Church until such time as(A) a thorough house cleaning is done of all implicated bishops and cardinals, and (B) the Church discards its warped (and anti-woman) dogma on sex and sexuality.  The Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America offer wonderful alternatives that have a Catholic like liturgy and are free from the corrupt, feudal  Catholic Church hierarchy.

Catholicism: The Sins of Celibacy

I often write about religion and Christianity because since the 12th century conservative Christianity has been the nemesis of LGBT individuals, with homophobia spread by Christian missionaries like a plague across the globe. Countless LGBT lives harmed or even snuffed out during periods that gays were executed, often by burning, give rise to the pejorative "faggot."  Women too have suffered from the blame placed on Eve, a mythical figure, for induce her mate, Adam, to eat of the forbidden fruit.  All of this persecution and subordination of women based on 12th century knowledge and lack of understanding of normal human sexuality.  Sparking and leading this misogyny for centuries is the Roman Catholic Church, an institution wracked with dishonesty and hypocrisy and the cover up of crimes against children and youths.   A piece in the New York Review of Books looks at a new book entitled "Sins of Celibacy" that traces the current crisis in the Catholic Church and the global sex abuse scandal to celibacy and the Church's refusal to reject 12th century ignorance and adjust to modern knowledge and, indeed, modernity itself.  The premise is consistent with what I have long argued and which is set out at length in "The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relationships in Human Societies" which I have referenced in past posts.  Here are lengthy excerpts from the review:

On August 25 Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published an eleven-page letter in which he accused Pope Francis of ignoring and covering up evidence of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and called for his resignation. It was a declaration of civil war by the church’s conservative wing. . . . He was the central figure in the 2012 scandal that involved documents leaked by Pope Benedict XVI’s personal butler, including letters Viganò wrote about corruption in Vatican finances, and that contributed to Benedict’s startling decision to abdicate the following year. Angry at not having been made a cardinal and alarmed by Francis’s supposedly liberal tendencies, Viganò seems determined to take out the pope.

As a result of Viganò’s latest accusations and the release eleven days earlier of a Pennsylvania grand jury report that outlines in excruciating detail decades of sexual abuse of children by priests, as well as further revelations of sexual misconduct by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., Francis’s papacy is now in a deep, possibly fatal crisis. After two weeks of silence, Francis announced in mid-September that he would convene a large-scale gathering of the church’s bishops in February to discuss the protection of minors against sexual abuse by priests.

The case of Cardinal McCarrick, which figures heavily in Viganò’s letter, is emblematic of the church’s failure to act on the problem of sexual abuse . . . . . Despite explicit allegations that were relayed to Rome, in 2000 Pope John Paul II appointed him archbishop of Washington, D.C., and made him a cardinal. Viganò speculates that the pope was too ill to know about the allegations, but does not mention that the appointment came five years before John Paul’s death. He also praises Benedict XVI for finally taking action against McCarrick by sentencing him to a life of retirement and penance, and then accuses Francis of revoking the punishment and relying on McCarrick for advice on important church appointments. If Benedict did in fact punish McCarrick, it was a very well kept secret, because he continued to appear at major church events and celebrate mass; he was even photographed with Viganò at a church celebration.

Viganò’s partial account of the way the church handled the allegations about McCarrick is meant to absolve Pope Francis’s predecessors, whose conservative ideology he shares. Viganò lays the principal blame for failing to punish McCarrick on Francis, who does appear to have mishandled the situation—one he largely inherited.

The greatest responsibility for the problem of sexual abuse in the church clearly lies with Pope John Paul II, who turned a blind eye to it for more than twenty years. From the mid-1980s to 2004, the church spent $2.6 billion settling lawsuits in the US, mostly paying victims to remain silent. Cases in Ireland, Australia, England, Canada, and Mexico followed the same depressing pattern: victims were ignored or bullied, even as offending priests were quietly transferred to new parishes, where they often abused again. “John Paul knew the score: he protected the guilty priests and he protected the bishops who covered for them, he protected the institution from scandal,” . . . .

Benedict was somewhat more energetic in dealing with the problem, but his papacy began after a cascade of reporting had appeared on priestly abuse, beginning with an investigation published by the Boston Globe in 2002 (the basis for Spotlight, the Oscar-winning film of 2015). The church was faced with mass defections and the collapse of donations from angry parishioners, which forced Benedict to confront the issue directly.

“I feel badly for Francis because he doesn’t know whom to trust,” Father Doyle said. Almost everyone in a senior position in the Catholic Church bears some guilt for covering up abuse, looking the other way, or resisting transparency. . . . . Francis may have hoped that the problem would go away and feared that a true housecleaning would leave him with no allies in the Curia.

Much of the press coverage of the scandal has been of the Watergate variety: what the pope knows, when he found out, and so forth. This ignores a much bigger issue that no one in the church wants to talk about: the sexuality of priests and the failure of priestly celibacy.

In his letter Viganò repeats the finding in the John Jay Report that 81 percent of the sexual abuse cases involve men abusing boys. But he ignores its finding that those who actually identify as homosexual are unlikely to engage in abuse and are more likely to seek out adult partners. Priests who abuse boys are often confused about their sexuality; they frequently have a negative view of homosexuality, yet are troubled by their own homoerotic urges.

Viganò approvingly cites Sipe’s work four times. But he ignores Sipe’s larger argument, made on his website in 2005, that “the practice of celibacy is the basic problem for bishops and priests.” Sipe also wrote, “The Vatican focus on homosexual orientation is a smoke screen to cover the pervasive and greater danger of exposing the sexual behavior of clerics generally. Gay priests and bishops practice celibacy (or fail at it) in the same proportions as straight priests and bishops do.”

Viganò believes that the church’s moral crisis derives uniquely from its abandonment of clear, unequivocal, strict teaching on moral matters, and from overly permissive attitudes toward homosexuality in particular. He does not want to consider the ways in which its traditional teaching on sexuality—emphasized incessantly by recent popes—has contributed to the present crisis. The modern church has boxed itself into a terrible predicament. Until about half a century ago, it was able to maintain an attitude of wise hypocrisy, accepting that priests were often sexually active but pretending that they weren’t. The randy priests and monks (and nuns) in Chaucer and Boccaccio were not simply literary tropes; they reflected a simple reality: priests often found it impossible to live the celibate life. Many priests had a female “housekeeper” who relieved their loneliness and doubled as life companions. Priests frequently had affairs with their female parishioners and fathered illegitimate children. The power and prestige of the church helped to keep this sort of thing a matter of local gossip rather than international scandal.

Opposing priestly marriage and contraception placed the church on the conservative side of the sexual revolution and made adherence to strict sexual norms a litmus test for being a good Catholic, at a time when customs were moving rapidly in the other direction. Only sex between a man and a woman meant for procreation and within the institution of holy matrimony was allowed. That a man and a woman might have sex merely for pleasure was seen as selfish and sinful. . . . Priestly vocations plummeted.

Conversely, the proportion of gay priests increased, since it was far easier to hide one’s sex life in an all-male community with a strong culture of secrecy and aversion to scandal. Many devout young Catholic men also entered the priesthood in order to try to escape their unconfessable urges, hoping that a vow of celibacy would help them suppress their homosexual leanings. But they often found themselves in seminaries full of sexual activity. Father Doyle estimates that approximately 10 percent of Catholic seminarians were abused (that is, drawn into nonconsensual sexual relationships) by priests, administrators, or other seminarians.  This problem is nothing new.

Priestly celibacy was not firmly established until the twelfth century, after which many priests had secret wives or lived in what the church termed “concubinage.”

The obsession with enforcing unenforceable standards of sexual continence that run contrary to human nature (according to one study, 95 percent of priests report that they masturbate) has led to an extremely unhealthy atmosphere within the modern church that contributed greatly to the sexual abuse crisis. A 1971 Loyola Study, which was also commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, concluded that a large majority of American priests were psychologically immature, underdeveloped, or maldeveloped. It also found that a solid majority of priests—including those ordained in the 1940s, well before the sexual revolution—described themselves as very or somewhat sexually active.

Sipe, during his decades of work treating priests as a psychotherapist, also concluded that the lack of education about sexuality and the nature of celibate life tended to make priests immature, often more comfortable around teenagers than around other adults. All this, along with a homosocial environment and the church’s culture of secrecy, has made seminaries a breeding ground for sexual abuse.

There are possible ways out of this dilemma for Francis. He could allow priests to marry, declare homosexuality to be not sinful, or even move to reform the patriarchal nature of the church—and to address the collapse in the number of nuns, which has decreased by 30 percent since the 1960s even though the number of the world’s Catholics has nearly doubled in that time—by allowing the ordination of women. But any of those actions would spark a revolt by conservatives in the church who already regard Francis with deep suspicion, if not downright aversion.

Since the French Revolution and the spread of liberal democracy in the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church has been torn between the urge to adapt to a changing world and the impulse to resist it at all cost. Pope Pius IX, at whose urging the First Vatican Council in 1870 adopted the doctrine of papal infallibility, published in 1864 his “Syllabus of Errors,” which roundly condemned modernity, freedom of the press, and the separation of church and state.

John XXIII, who became pope in 1958, saw a profound need for what he called aggiornamento—updating—precisely the kind of reconciling of the church to a changing world that Pius IX considered anathema. John XXIII was one of the high-ranking church leaders who regarded the Nazi genocide of the Jews as a moral crossroads in history. An important part of his reforms at Vatican II was to remove all references to the Jews as a “deicide” people and to adopt an ecumenical spirit that deems other faiths worthy of respect. After Vatican II, the church made optional much of the traditional window-dressing of Catholicism—the Latin Mass, the elaborate habits of nuns, the traditional prohibition against meat on Friday—but John died before the council took up more controversial issues of doctrine.

Both radical change and the failure to change are fraught with danger, making Francis’s path an almost impossible one. He is under great pressure from victims who are demanding that the church conduct an exhaustive investigation into the responsibility of monsignors, bishops, and cardinals who knew of abusing priests but did nothing—something he is likely to resist. Such an accounting might force many of the church’s leaders into retirement and paralyze it for years to come—but his failure to act could paralyze it as well. As for the larger challenges facing the church, Francis’s best option might be to make changes within the narrow limits constraining him, such as expanding the participation of the laity in church deliberations and allowing women to become deacons. But that may be too little, too late.

The longer the Vatican refuses to clean house and reject ignorance based dogma, the larger the defection of educated western Catholics and the further the concentration of Catholicism in the ignorant, least educated parts of the world.  

Catholics Want Vatican to End Anti-Gay Stance

Click image to enlarge.

A new survey indicates that 63% or more of Catholics from the eight countries with the largest Catholic populations want the Catholic Church hierarchy to end the Vatican's continued anti-gay dogma and animus.  The countries surveyed were Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Philippines, United States, France, Spain and Italy. Collectively these countries comprise half of the world’s total population of baptized Catholics.  Among Millennials and younger generations anti-gay stances are a number one factor in the decision to walk away from religion (rank hypocrisy of supposed "Christians" also plays a significant role).  The release of the findings comes less than two weeks before the beginning of the Catholic Church’s Synod on Young People in Rome which, among other things, seeks to find ways to stem the hemorrhaging of younger generations from the Church (my own three Millennial children have all walked away).   Gay Star News looks at the findings and Pope Francis' statement earlier in the year that psychiatric help was appropriate for LGBT youth.  Many saw this as an endorsement of discredited "conversion therapy."  Here are article excerpts:

The majority of practicing Catholics want the Church to be more inclusive of young LGBT people, a survey reveals.

Many Catholics are calling for a more positive approach towards young people. They are also urging the Church to change its teaching on LGBTI in order to be more welcoming of lesbian, gay, bi and trans teens.

YouGov carried the survey for the Equal Future 2018 Campaign.  Equal Future 2018 is an international campaign aiming to convey a positive message of acceptance to LGBT kids. Its goal is to raise awareness around the world of the damage done to children when they perceive that being LGBT would be a misfortune or a disappointment.

These poll findings are a clarion call to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church from its members that it is time to change their approach to LGBT people,’ Campaign Director of Equal Future 2018 Tiernan Brady said.

‘The people of the Catholic Church are leading the way on LGBT issues and it is time the upper management caught up with their flock.’

“The figures clearly show that Catholic people across the globe believe that the current teaching and approach of the hierarchy towards LGBT people is now damaging to children and young people and the clear majority wants the Church to change its approach.”  This is not a call for change from outside the Church, it is from its own people.’

‘The truth is that far too many children and young people grow up thinking that if they or someone they knew turned out to be LGBT it would be bad luck or a disappointment. Most of the damage that comes from learning such attitudes happens to children and young people long before anyone knows if they are LGBT or not,’ Brady continued.

On his way back from Dublin, where the Meeting of Families took place in August, the pope replied to a journalist asking what to do if a child comes out as gay, bi, or trans.

He said that if children comes out as LGBT in their early years, therapy might be a useful solution.  Perceived by some as an eerie reference to conversion therapy, the statement received the criticism of the LGBT community.

My own Catholic upbringing did severe damage to me and it took years of therapy to get over the damage.   The Vatican's position on gays certainly played a role in my children's exodus from the Church.  Historically, lost of membership and the attendant loss of financial revenues are the only things that has caused the Vatican to change.  The question ultimately becomes one of whether the Vatican is willing to have the Catholic Church shrink in size and have an increasingly ignorant and uneducated membership. 

Philadelphia Archbishop: LGBT People Don't Exist

With all of its problems and its legitimacy among educated portions of the world plummeting, one would think that the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church would focus on putting its own foul and morally bankrupt house in order.  Yet, instead, these same leaders who turned a blind eye to abuse and helped in massive cover ups to protect their own power and status continue to wage a war against LGBT individuals and basically modernity itself.  A case in point is Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput who railed against even using the term "LGBT" and claimed that LGBT individuals do not exist and parroting the Christofascist lie that sexual orientation is a choice.  A piece in The Advocate looks at this batshitery.  Here are excerpts (Note that this raging homophobe was selected by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to be its representative):

Philadelphia Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput, one of the more anti-LGBTQ voices in American Catholicism, says the church should avoid using term “LGBTQ” in official documents — and he blames liberal beliefs about sexuality for the church’s abuse crisis.

“There is no such thing as an ‘LGBTQ Catholic’ or a ‘transgender Catholic’ or a ‘heterosexual Catholic,’ as if our sexual appetites defined who we are; as if these designations described discrete communities of differing but equal integrity within the real ecclesial community . . .

Chaput objected to the fact that the working document for the synod said, “Some LGBT youths, through various contributions that were received by the General Secretariat of the Synod, wish to ‘benefit from greater closeness’ and experience greater care by the Church.”

“‘LGBTQ’ and similar language should not be used in church documents, because using it suggests that these are real, autonomous groups, and the church simply doesn’t categorize people that way,” he said.

Chaput said young people are being shaped “by a culture that is both deeply appealing and essentially atheist.” He went on to blame contemporary culture for the church’s sexual abuse crisis.  “The clergy sexual abuse crisis is precisely a result of the self-indulgence and confusion introduced into the church in my lifetime, even among those tasked with teaching and leading,” he said. “And minors — our young people — have paid the price for it.” His admonition to avoid using “LGBTQ” and similar language came after that, so it wasn’t clear if he was specifically blaming gay people for the crisis or sexual liberalism in general.

Chaput was chosen by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to represent the group at the synod. He is a member of the synod’s permanent council as well.

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ equality within the church, denounced Chaput’s message. It “is a perfect example of how some church leaders have been so blinded by ideological homophobia and transphobia that they cannot perceive plain human facts accurately,” he wrote in an online essay published Friday. “His comments reflect the dangerous avoidance mentality that is the cause of the clergy sexual abuse scandal and so many of the ills which plague the Catholic Church today.”

“There are LGBTQ Catholics and transgender Catholics and heterosexual Catholics, just as there are Italian Catholics, elderly Catholics, disabled Catholics, Latin American Catholics, traditionalist Catholics, poor Catholics, educated Catholics, and so many other distinct groups within our big tent church,” DeBernardo wrote. It appears that Chaput “is trying to make LGBTQ people invisible in the church by pretending that they don’t exist,” he continued.

Chaput, who has a long history of anti-LGBTQ stances, was named archbishop of Philadelphia in 2011, having previously led the archdiocese of Denver. In Colorado, he supported the decision by a Catholic school in Boulder not to reenroll a lesbian couple’s child, and he used his regular column in Denver’s Catholic newspaper to celebrate the defeat of legislation that would have established civil unions for same-sex couples in the state. He further called same-sex marriage “the issue of our time.”

In 2016, with same-sex marriage legalized nationwide by the Supreme Court the previous year, he announced that people in “irregular” relationships, including same-sex ones, must refrain from sex if they are to receive communion or participate in certain other church activities.

Chaput is guaranteeing that more young Catholics will rightfully walk away from the Church.

The Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal Continues in New York and Pennsylvania

As much of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy continues to work to stifle moves by Pope Francis to modernize the Church, two new sex abuse bombshells await to explode.  One is in Pennsylvania where the Pennsylvania bishops are fighting tooth and claw to block the release of what will no doubt be a scathing grand jury investigation report. The other is in New York State where revelations are coming out about the magnitude of priestly sex abuse in the Diocese of Buffalo.   The irony, of course is that in many instances, the bishops and cardinals seeking keep the Church locked in the 12th Century are the same ones who allowed the rampant rape of children and youths on their watch.  These vain, bitter old men in dresses will go to any lengths to block modern knowledge on sexual orientation and the reality of divorced and remarried Catholics. The Allentown Morning Call looks at the grand jury report that is being suppressed and depriving the public of much needed information on the depravity of the Church hierarchy in Pennsylvania.  Here are excerpts:

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." — Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack  This is a column about secrets.

Secrets that the Catholic Church has kept from its parishioners and everyone else about the way some of its priests have preyed on children and the way church leaders covered it up. Secrets their victims have kept, festering in some cases for decades because they were too frightened, embarrassed or confused to speak up. Secrets parents try to keep from their children about sexual orientation and other uncomfortable subjects. Secrets some schools try to keep from their parents.

Certainly there are times when secrecy makes sense. Loose lips sink ships and all that. But far more often, it's healthy, even liberating, to expose these secrets to the light of day so they can be addressed in the open.

I suppose if I were accused of being a child molester or of covering for one, I would prefer not to have the details published in a Pennsylvania grand jury report. So it's understandable that some priests want to block the release of the impending report on child sex abuse in six dioceses, including Allentown.

What's less understandable, to me, is why the state Supreme Court is letting them do it, unless it intends to upend the grand jury system that already has produced illuminating reports about abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese and in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.

Can you imagine the mixture of anticipation and fear many of these victims felt as the date approached for letting the world know what happened to them? Or the devastation of seeing the Supreme Court choose secrecy, at least for a little longer?

I can, because I've talked to so many victims of child sex abuse, by clergy . . . I've heard them talk about the guilt, the embarrassment, the betrayal, the anger that has driven so many victims to silence, to depression, to suicide.

When men who in a very real sense symbolize God betray you by sexually abusing you or by helping pedophiles find new victims instead of stopping them, religious faith becomes another casualty.  These secrets have been hidden far too long already. So I support all the efforts being made to force the Supreme Court to release this grand jury report and end this monstrous conspiracy of silence.

In Harrisburg, in East Penn, in six Catholic dioceses and everywhere else, the truth will set us free.  Or at least begin the healing.

Meanwhile, north of the border in New York State, the Diocese of Buffalo is reeling as it is revealed that 74 past and present priests are involved in claims of sexual abuse.   WKBW-TV looks at the revelations.  What is telling is that much of the abuse cited occurred relatively recently, not in the 1950's and 1960's as the Church hierarchy often likes to claim as it dismisses the allegations of victims.  Here are excerpts:

To date, 74 current or former Buffalo priests have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct. 

The Diocese of Buffalo in March 2018 released a list of 42 "diocesan priests who were removed from ministry, were retired, or left ministry after allegations of sexual abuse with a minor." It included deceased priests "with more than one allegation made against them."

That list did not include the names of dozens of additional priests who were members of religious orders, were publicly accused of sexual misconduct with adult women or men, left the diocese and moved to other parts of the country, or were identified in reporting by 7 Eyewitness News and other media outlets since March. . . .

Sadly, it is the same familiar pattern seen across the globe where priests were shuffled from parish to parish with no warning given to unsuspecting parents and youths.  The root cause in my view: the Church's bizarre obsession with all things sexual and its refusal to accept modern knowledge on sexuality and sexual orientation. Add to this (i) the western rite celibacy requirement, and (ii) the strange and isolated existence of many males who enter seminary directly from seminary high schools and/or colleges who have never been allowed to have normal psycho-sexual development. It is a recipe for disaster that will continue to lead to sexual abuse until such time as the Church leaves the 12th century and accepts modernity.

"Ex-Gay" Mormon Announces Divorce, Apologizes to LGBTQ Community

One of the things that I have worked to oppose since coming out is the efforts by Christofascists, the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church to maintain the lie that sexual orientation is a "choice" and that one can "pray away the gay."   It simply does not work and those who try accomplish the impossible ultimately end up wracked with self-contempt, and unhappy life, and likely end up depriving their opposite spouse from having the type of marriage they deserve  - namely, to someone who is heterosexual.  I know of what I speak since for 37 years I tried to "pray away the gay" having fallen for the lies propagated by the Catholic Church.  The only thing I can say in my defense is that I decided to marry 41 years ago when far less was known about the immutability of sexual orientation.  Those who continue to believe the religious based lies, especially the Millennials, have far less excuse.  But the ultimate blame rests on religious leaders who refuse to update their religious dogma even though science and modern knowledge have demonstrated beliefs to simply be untrue.  Sadly, they prefer to force individuals into marriages doomed to fail and seemingly care nothing for the lives they harm.  The latest "ex-gay" to fall Josh Weed, a Mormon, who was held out as "proof" that gays could change, marry women and "change" who they are.  My heart goes out to both Weed and his wife, both of whom are victims of the wilful ignorance of the leaders of their faith.  Here hare highlights out of Salt Lake City:

Josh and Lolly Weed, viewed as proof, and used as an example, that a gay man and a straight woman can make a successful Mormon marriage, have announced their divorce. In the same blog post where they announce their divorce, they offered an apology to the LGBTQ community.

"Today, we need to let you know that Lolly and I are divorcing," the blog said this week, after recounting the couple's accidental rise to the media spotlight when Josh Weed came out as a gay LDS man who was faithful to his church and married to a woman. They were in high demand to explain how they made the seemingly contradictory lifestyles work together.

The couple wrote, together and then individually in the same blog post on Thursday, that they came to understand over time that their deep platonic love was not a substitute for romantic love and that such a relationship is vital to everyone's happiness.

Lolly Weed wrote:  And that is what human beings need to be healthy. All of us. Romantic attachment. It’s one of the main purposes of life!

They explain at length how they came to the realization. Josh Weed said three factors led him to believe this was the case:   Love for the LGBTQ population; Love for himself as a gay person; The death of his mother

The couple rise to notoriety came about because of a blog post — that can no longer be found on JoshWeed.com — that, according to Josh, led them to be "featured on shows and newspapers around the globe." That included a story on Nightline . . .

Included with the announcement and explanation about the couple's divorce was an apology to the LGBTQ community. Among the specific things the Weeds apologies for are:  We’re sorry, so incredibly sorry, for the ways our post has been used to bully others.  And we’re sorry if our story made it easier for people in your life to reject you and your difficult path as being wrong.  We’re sorry to any gay Mormon who received criticism, backlash, or hatred as a result of our story.  We’re sorry to anybody who felt a measure of false peace because of our story.

We’re sorry to any LGBTQIA person who was given false hope by our story

Each of the specific apologies came with longer explanations.

Josh Weed also wrote that his stance on homosexuality, that once aligned with that of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had changed.

"I have spent my entire life conforming to every standard of the LDS faith because I believed it was what God wanted me to do," he explained.

"I believed this because every mentor, every exemplar, every religious teacher, every therapist, every leader I ever grew up listening to and trusting told me that that was the only way I could return to live with God. . . . over the course of my lifetime, the list of things said by these trusted leaders about my sexual orientation was profoundly inconsistent and confusing." Josh Weed listed a number of those "inconsistent and confusing" things, which included:

• My sexual orientation wasn’t real

• My sexual orientation was evil

• My sexual orientation was an abomination

• My sexual orientation was tantamount to bestiality and just shy of murder

• My sexual orientation could change in this life if I had enough faith

• My sexual orientation was a “trial” to bear

• My sexual orientation maybe couldn’t change in this life after all

• My sexual orientation could be managed with faith

• My sexual orientation could be endured

Lolly Weed also wrote that many of her friends and community expressed to her, upon learning of the divorce, empathized with her and say she deserved the romantic connection, but few felt that empathy for her husband. . . . . I mean, isn’t the same true for LGBT people? Shouldn’t we feel the exact same intuitive injustice at the thought of them deserving to be “loved like that”?

The blog post says the couple and their children will continue to be close and will continue to love each other.  "We can continue to be the family we have always been, and we can add to that family," they wrote.

I wish both of them and their family the best of luck moving forward.  I still have no regrets having children - we are celebrating a granddaughter's birthday later today - but I will always feel sorrow that I harmed my former wife simply because I believed the lies of the Catholic Church until I reached the point where I simply could not go on lying to myself and everyone else. The ones who deserve severe punishment are those who continue to disseminate the lie that gays can "change" and that one's sexual orientation is a "choice." 

The Much Need Message of "Recovering Catholics"

I make no secret that I am a former Catholic and believe that my Catholic upbringing inflicted much pain and self-hatred on me.  Indeed, it took several years of therapy to get over the damage done.  Thus, I found it of interest when on December 17, 2017, the Rev. Gregory Greiten, a Roman Catholic priest, shared a secret with parishioners at the St. Bernadette Catholic Parish: “I am gay.” Greiten was then greeted with a standing ovation, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  Greiten next wrote a column in the National Catholic Reporter that looked at both his own experiences but also on why the Church needs to change and reject its 12th century views on sexuality.  In the Root, another former Catholic reviewed Greitan's actions and made statements that ran all too true with me.  Here are excerpts:

As someone who now uses the descriptor “recovering Catholic” to answer questions about my religious identity, was once approached for the priesthood, struggled with reconciling my faith with my sexual orientation, and just finished writing about these experiences and more in a book called I Can’t Date Jesus, much of what Greiten wrote felt all too familiar.

Like Greiten, I was taught that homosexuality was something “disordered, unspeakable and something to be punished.” I thought I was going to go to hell for every thought I had, every touch I contemplated, each time I gave in to temptation. It’s a haunting, shameful feeling that eats you inside. You become so accustomed to guilt that even if you dare to be truthful about who you are in all settings, you may still find yourself having to learn to shake off old habits, like guilt. Religions in general tend to make their believers feel guilty about their misdeeds, but Catholics are particularly adept when it comes to guilt.

That’s why it matters so much that Greiten has stepped forward and gained national attention. There are many more like him. Just how many is unclear, but none of them should feel compelled to linger in the shadows. . . . The church continues to collectively hold archaic, bigoted views about transgender people. Moreover, the Vatican relentlessly clings to needless positions about women on issues like contraception that contribute to their subjugation around the world.

Everyone should be loved and embraced rather than merely tolerated.

As we launch into 2018, I hope that more Catholics - especially those who are LGBT - will reject the Church's toxic teachings and in the process find self-acceptance and the realization that there is nothing wrong with them.  Happy New Year! 

Nothing Has Really Changed for Gays in the Catholic Church

Pope Francis has made a few statements deemed by a gushing media to indicate a softening of the Roman Catholic Church's centuries old anti-gay jihad (even as the ranks of the clergy remain packed with self-loathing gays) and a majority of everyday Catholics in America are supportive of gay rights and even gay marriage, yet as far as official Church dogma and policy go, we remain more or less untouchables.  If we want any possibility of inclusion, we are demanded to live a lonely, loveless life - in short, to be a miserable as much of the clergy that cannot let go of childhood brainwashing and the Church's "natural law" which in essence is based on ignorance and at best 11th century knowledge.  One Jesuit has written a book to try to usher in much needed changes, but he has been met with a backlash from the bitter old men in dresses within the clergy and among the lunatic far right of Catholicism which much like white supremacists always need some one they can condemn and feel superior to. A piece in the New York Times looks at the situation which underscores to me that the best thing gay Catholics and their families can do is to leave Catholicism.  Here are highlights:

The Rev. James Martin knew his latest book – which urges a dialogue between the Catholic Church and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics who feel estranged from it – would be provocative. Even though the book was approved by his Jesuit superior as being in line with church teachings and was endorsed by several cardinals, he did not expect everyone to agree. That’s fine, he said. That’s why dialogue was needed.

His public position on this hot-button issue – most recently in the book, “Building a Bridge,” but also in speeches, articles and social media – has earned him the gratitude of parents of gay children or adults who feel unwelcome at church because of their sexual orientation. But his stance has also led to “joking” threats of violence and insults against him. Conservative Catholics have called him “effeminate,” a “homosexualist,” “pansified” and guilty of “leading young men to perdition.” In recent weeks, campaigns by people opposed to him have prompted three high-profile Catholic groups to disinvite him from events where he was to be the featured speaker.

On Friday, Theological College, the national seminary at the Catholic University of America in Washington, withdrew its invitation to Father Martin, who was scheduled to deliver a speech on Jesus in early October. The seminary said in a statement that the decision was made after “increasing negative attacks” on social media. And while seminary officials “in no way” agreed with the critics, the college wanted to avoid “distractions” during centennial events, the statement said. Of his critics, Father Martin said that even an invitation to listen to L.G.B.T. people has “unleashed this torrent of hatred.”  “It’s insane. This is about reaching out to people on the margins. But on that issue it tells us that we have a lot to learn. If we can’t even begin a dialogue without a charge of heresy, then we need to take a good look at how we understand the gospel.”. . . . . “It’s reaching people where they are. Jesus went to where the people were and spoke to them in their language. And he was always going to the margins.” He had long received desperate messages and impassioned emails seeking counsel or prayer through life’s difficulties, and the publication of “Building A Bridge” prompted even more. He gets about 50 messages daily, in which people talk about things like how a priest would not anoint a dying man in hospice care because he was gay; or how someone was fired from a job at a Catholic institution because of their sexual orientation.

But he has also been the victim of ad-hominem attacks, even from other Catholics who, he said, do not seem to remember Pope Francis’s remark that “who am I to judge” if a member of the clergy was gay.

Despite the name-calling, innuendo and canceled speeches, Father Martin said he will press on. He has received support from bishops – who request boxes of his book — and from his religious order. He will not step back from social media, saying it is part of his order’s tradition to “find God in all things.” “We are not afraid of going to the margins,” he said. “That is what Pope Benedict and Pope Francis asked us to do. As Francis said to us, go to the peripheries where the church has not been serving people or where people need it the most. There is no one more marginalized in the church than L.G.B.T. Catholics. So, I’m right where I should be.”

As I noted above, the best move for gay Catholics and their families is to walk away.  The Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (I technically remain a member) offer wonderful alternatives.  Meanwhile, as history has shown us time and time again, if enough people walk away and cease their financial support to the Church, the fossilized and bitter hierarchy will suddenly have a revelation and adjust its dogma.  Money is and always has been the real god of the Vatican.