So they find ways to encourage each other. They share books like Father James Martin’s groundbreaking “Building a Bridge” about the relationship between the Catholic and LGBT communities. Some have signed petitions against church-sponsored conversion therapy programs, or met at private retreats, after figuring out how to hide them in their church calendars. Sometimes a priest may even take off his collar and offer to unofficially bless the marriage of a same-sex couple.
Some may call this rebellion. But “it’s not a cabal,” said a priest. “It’s a support group.”
A little over a year ago, after meeting a group of gay priests, Father Greiten decided it was time to end his silence. At Sunday Mass during Advent, he told his suburban parish that he was gay and celibate. They jumped to their feet to the applause.
Her story has gone viral. A 90-year-old priest called him to tell him he had lived his whole life in the closet and longed for a different future. A woman wrote from Mississippi, asking him to move south to be her priest.
For some church leaders, this outpouring of support might have been even more threatening than his sexuality. Father Greiten had committed the cardinal sin: he opened the door to debate. His archbishop, Jerome E. Listecki of Milwaukee, released a statement saying he wished Father Greiten had not gone public. Letters poured in calling him “satanic”, “gay filth” and a “monster” who sodomized children.
“We have to get it right when it comes to sexuality.”
The idea that gay priests are responsible for child sexual abuse remains a lingering belief, especially in many conservative Catholic circles. For years, church leaders have been deeply confused about the relationship between gay men and sexual abuse. With each new revelation of abuse, the tangled threads of church sexual culture become even more impossible to unravel.
Study after study shows that homosexuality is not a predictor of pedophilia. This is also true for priests, according to a famous to study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice following the 2002 revelations of child sexual abuse in the church. John Jay’s research, commissioned by church leaders, found that having a gay experience did not make priests more likely to abuse minors and that four out of five people who said they were victims were men. Researchers found no single cause for this abuse, but identified that the abusive priests’ extensive access to boys had been critical to their choice of victims.
The idea that a certain sexual identity leads to abusive behavior has demoralized gay priests for decades. Days after a man retired, he still couldn’t shake off what his archbishop in the 1970s told all new priests heading for their first parish assignments. “He said, ‘I never want you to call me about your pastor unless he’s a homo or an alchie’,” he said, referring to an alcoholic. “He didn’t even know what he meant when he said gay, because we were all gay. He meant a predator, like a serial predator.
