And Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and followed You.” And He said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.”—Lk 18:28-30.
Notice the title of this article is slightly different from this question: “Should non-chaste gay men be priests?” To the latter question, leftists would reply “yes.” Of course, both neo-con non-trad Catholics as well as traditional Catholics would reply “no” to that question. But now we get to the title of this article: “Should chaste gay men be priests?” Some neo-con non-trads would actually answer “yes” to that question. Because conservatives are divided on that answer, I decided it was worth writing about it, even if the answer seems obvious to most of you. Still, the reasons as to why I give a “no” to that question might even surprise some traditional Catholic readers.
Before getting into it, a few definitions are in order. Chastity means being sexually pure. Every person is called to chastity, even married people. Celibacy is to refrain from marriage. Continence means no sexual-contact with anyone. Even the married Apostles were eventually called by Jesus Christ to refrain from touching their wives for the mission. (See the opening Scripture quote at the top of this article from Lk 18 if you doubt this.)
Also, before we get started, I know people will be bitter about some of the conclusions in this article. They will want to ask me: “What then are chaste men with same-sex attraction supposed to do in the Church?” The answer to this is found in the last few paragraphs.
All of this is newsworthy because the Italian Bishops’ Conference just quietly encouraged men with same-sex attraction to apply to seminaries in order to be Catholic priests. The Italian Bishops’ Conference stated the following: “In the formative process, when referring to homosexual tendencies, it’s also appropriate not to reduce discernment only to this aspect, but, as for every candidate, to grasp its meaning in the global framework of the young person’s personality…” Of course, this was a change from the 2005 Vatican guidelines which read: “If a candidate practises homosexuality or presents deep-seated homosexual tendencies, his spiritual director as well as his confessor have the duty to dissuade him in conscience from proceeding towards ordination.”
Let’s switch gears for a minute. Political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was molested by a Catholic priest in the UK as a minor over twenty years ago. Milo took years to return to Christ and Catholicism (after living a disordered life himself) but thanks be to God, he came back to the Catholic Church. (Milo is now in his 40s.) Upon returning to the Church, he wrote a New York Times Best Seller in 2018 called Diabolical: How Pope Francis Has Betrayed Clerical Abuse Victims Like Me—and Why He Has To Go. In that book, Milo quoted an article I wrote that same year, titled Why Did So Many Gay Men Enter the Priesthood in the 20th Century? In it, I explained how the toughest Catholic men used to be the main applicants to religious life:
Up until the 20th century, the priesthood was known as the most difficult life that a Catholic man could live. We all know of the constant physical pain felt by the first missionaries to the United States, like the Jesuit St. Isaac Jogues or the Franciscan St. Junipero Serra. St. Isaac Jogues had his fingers chewed off by Iriquois in upstate New York. St. Junipero Serra walked from central Mexico to southern California after being stung on his heel by a scorpion…all to establish missions up and down the California coast.
But after two World Wars, all Catholics (of all vocations) here in the United States started to be popular and prosperous. That popularity and comfort caused American diocesan seminaries to attract the softest of men.
A well-known Franciscan who ministered in my home-town of Denver named Fr. Regis Scanlon OFM Cap. wrote an article for the Homiletic and Pastoral Review titled Clergy Sexual Abuse: Questions Remain in 2012 before reposing in the Lord in 2021. Fr. Regis recounts the stats:
In 2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a 1.8 million dollar study, popularly known as the “John Jay study,” to uncover the patterns and causes of the sex abuse crisis since 1950. The National Review Board—the entity designated to implement the study—gave the first John Jay report in 2004. In this report, which describes the “Nature and Scope” of clergy sexual abuse, the board pointed out that more than 80 percent of the victims were teenage boys and young men.
Elsewhere in the John-Jay report we saw that 80% of American priests who admitted to molesting children also admitted to being same-sex attracted. (That used to be on the USCCB website, but they took it down!) Most of the children gay priests molested were post-pubescent boys. This is the first reason why even gay men who intended on a chaste life should not be admitted to seminary: Even if they had “planned” from the start to be chaste (a point I realize is arguable) the above stats clearly reveal that one disorder (consent with other men) often disintegrated into a worse disorder of a predatory nature against children.
Another reason why purportedly-chaste gay men should not apply to Roman Catholic seminaries is the following: There are three munera (duties and gifts) of the priesthood according to classic Catholic dogma: Teach, sanctify and govern. Most modern Catholics have an extremely low-bar for their priests. Sadly, it seems most decent Catholic lay people simply want to say to their lukewarm priests: “Just provide the sacraments to my family and don’t touch my children.” (The sacraments refers to the middle of these three munera, namely, sanctify.) As we will see, only straight men can execute all three of these munera in an Apostolic manner.
This is difficult to see for most modern Catholics since the teaching duty has been farmed out to lay people since Vatican II. By “lay people” I mean most religious education directors in parishes are currently lay folks. Many neo-con priests get excited about groups like Augustine Institute and FOCUS, but I believe that is mainly because they are delinquent in their own calling to teach the faithful and unbelievers. Keep in mind it is primarily the job of the bishop and priest to teach the faithful and evangelize infidels. But how many of you expect your priests to teach the orthodox faith better than someone with a degree from the Augustine Institute? Such groups are band-aids on the gun-shot wounds of the sinking priesthood, even though such lay people clearly do their best with the mixed-bag of modernist and traditionalist theology that they receive at such locations.
The third duty of the priest is “to govern” his parish or religious order. That does not mean he has to be heavy-handed or mean. But he is expected to be a father. A father is a leader, teacher, provider and a protector. Honestly, I have never met a man who struggles with same-sex attraction (even if he is very chaste) who is able to lead, teach, provide and protect. Many straight priests fail at these missions too. Why? Probably because many straight Catholic men also wanted an easy life. (See again my article above quoted by Milo on how popularity and success changed the priesthood from the hardest Catholic vocation to the easiest Catholic vocation in the 20th century.) But if these munera are to be executed by an orthodox Catholic priest, 99% of the time he is straight.
Now, keep in mind: I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about gay priests, but when I travel and ask good priests about the state of the priesthood, I always get the same answer: 80% of US Catholic bishops probably struggle with same-sex attraction. I get that answer from even my priest friends who do not offer the Traditional Latin Mass. Are such bishops living continence or are they living filth? I don’t know, and neither do my orthodox priest friends. But most of us think 80% of US bishops are clandestinely homosexual, regardless of their level of chastity.
Another quick switch of gears to set a backdrop. Let me write briefly about what men and women have to overcome when they go from a pagan life to a traditional Catholic life. While admitting it is a sweeping generalization, and while admitting there are some exceptions to this rule, I think most people will admit that men have to overcome sins of sexuality and women have to overcome sins of gossip and manipulation. Of course, both groups have to overcome both sins, and of course there are exceptions to that rule. But anyone who has helped families in spiritual direction knows this is the general and overwhelming pattern of men and women.
But the question at hand is: Can gay bishops be good spiritual fathers even if they are not fooling around? No. My experience after dealing with many gay priests and bishops is that most of them will resort to lying, gossip and manipulation when they end up in a bind with me or another conservative priest. That’s not just me writing it because I’m bitter about the gay team I joined. (That’s certainly part of it.) But after having been on-loan to several dioceses and also after having traveled to hundreds of dioceses, I have much evidence that soft bishops frequently lie to their priests and faithful about important moral issues. This is not spiritual fatherhood.
Thus, gay priests and bishops may occasionally (or even frequently) remain continent (no sexual contact) but they never seem to conquer their womanly vices of gossip and manipulation. That is more than simply my anecdotal experiences. Again, I frequently speak to straight, orthodox priests all over the nation who have the same experiences with flamboyant bishops: Their bishops will lie and manipulate as soon as they don’t want to deal with a conservative priest. Thus, these bishops truly can’t be fathers to their flock, even if they occasionally say something sweet about the Eucharist or unborn children.
Let’s switch gears for the last time in this article: I have a friend who has struggled his whole life with same-sex attraction. He has never been able to fully end that attraction, even though he lives chastity, celibacy and continence. But he was always smart enough not to enter a Catholic seminary. Why do I write “smart enough”? Precisely because he lives a chaste life, he realized he could never go live in a building with 100 young men for six years of education without that temptation increasing.
Why would a gay man put upon his already-burdened shoulders the heavy weight of the priesthood? Contrary to modernist belief, spiritual attack and temptation actually heightens (not reduces) upon ordination. I think my friend is very glad he never became a priest. I know my friend is very happy he found a healthy, and fruitful single vocation. Yet this friend of mine with same-sex attraction (again, who never entered seminary) has brought hundreds of people into the Catholic Church. Thus, there is certainly a place in the Catholic Church for men who have struggled their whole life with same-sex attraction. This friend of mine wrote a guest article for me in 2016 titled Same Sex Attraction: Bearing the Beams of Love.
If you are struggling with same-sex attraction, please don’t apply to a seminary to be a Catholic priest. Rather, you should research the single-celibate life which I recently described in articles here and here. There is a fruitful and holy life for you there, where you don’t have to pretend like you’re a father.