Interesting piece. Fascinating history.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer...catholic-church.html

Wow.

I assume that men that are clergy are gay until I see evidence to the contrary.
Have reached that point after experiences including a 2 1/2 year relationship with a member of the clergy. Through him I met many other clergy and listened to them laughing at what parishioners believed.
Non-Catholic clergy are usually married to a woman because the job requires it. They are having sex with men.

Hope the Roman Catholics expel the homosexuals. That would be a great number of nails in the coffin of that church.
The Vatican would make a great museum.

I often have difficulties with Sullivan's articles, this one is no exception. I have not read the whole thing yet (I didn't realize how long it was and I don't have time to read it all right now), only about half way through. But his opening paragraph. Geez already. If you're going to write such a lengthy piece how can start with such a flimsy opening!?

quote:

In the United States, however, where there are 37,000 priests, no independent study has found fewer than 15 percent to be gay, and some have found as many as 60 percent. The consensus in my own research over the past few months converged on around 30 to 40 percent among parish priests and considerably more than that — as many as 60 percent or higher — among religious orders like the Franciscans or the Jesuits.

So independent study has found somewhere between 14 - 60%. Yeah, that's quite a range. Sullivans "own research" (over a few months!)--whatever that means (are we to assume he conducted valid studies, or is he inferring from a few conversations he's held with clergy?), finds 30 - 40%.

This just does not work as a premise for an article whose main point is the preponderance of homosexuals in the priesthood, whether there are that many or not.

I'll read the rest later.

Well I was judging the length of the article based on where my scroll bar was located. Turns out the article wasn't that much longer so I finished it.

Too many words, trying to cover so many bases. And he should have simply chopped off the first 3 paragraphs.

Finally, near the end of the piece is he crux of the matter:

quote:

At some point you realize that this is, in the end, the bottom line. There is a deep and un-Christian cruelty at the heart of the church’s teaching, a bigotry profoundly at odds with the church’s own commitment to seeing every person as worthy of respect, deserving of protection, and made in the image of God. It’s based on a lie — a lie that the hierarchy knows is untrue, and a lie proven untrue by science and history and the church’s own experience. “The hierarchy is tying itself in knots in public over something it has already conceded in private,” Father Leo explained to me. The task, it seems to me, is not to rid the church of homosexuality, which is an integral part of the human mystery, but of hypocrisy, dishonesty, and dysfunction.

quote:

Originally posted by CHAS:
I assume that men that are clergy are gay until I see evidence to the contrary. ...Non-Catholic clergy are usually married to a woman because the job requires it. They are having sex with men.

Having trouble following/agreeing with this contention about non-Catholic clergy. With appreciation for your vastly greater experience, I can't fathom why non-Catholic (male?) religious would tend to be gay any more than any other believers given that their calling doesn't require or even encourage celibacy.

Or did I misunderstand you?

PS This is certainly not true of Judaism, where marriage and being fruitful etc is pretty much a mandate.

Gandhi is quoted as saying:
I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

There is an entity called: "The Gay Church"?

I'll be the judge of that.

Ack.