Male Homosexuality and Priestly Formation
by Adam Reimers, Crisis Magazine:
There is no homosexuality. Of course, there are homosexuals, but there is no one thing, no one condition or syndrome that is homosexuality. If we are to address the “homosexual problem” in the Church, then we must first understand what we are talking about, and whatever that is, it is not a thing called homosexuality.
We know that many homosexuals come from dysfunctional families marked by a dominant mother and weak or absent father. Some others have experienced some sort of sexual trauma while growing up. And there are others who are simply attracted to men and not to women. Beyond this, there is little or no evidence of some kind of “gay gene” or genetic cause for homosexuality. God made each one of us, but he did not make anyone to be gay—or lesbian or trans, for that matter. There is more, however, to the issue of homosexuality, much more. And two instances are especially important to our story.
The first is situational homosexuality. In some exclusively male settings—we may think of English boarding schools in another era (so it is said) and certainly of contemporary prisons—a man’s only sexual outlet is another man. Characteristically this involves the older or the more powerful preying sexually upon the weaker or younger. The second instance, less notorious perhaps but also more important, is cultural homosexuality, the most noteworthy instance of which is ancient Athens. Read Plato’s Charmides, Republic, or Symposium. In the homosexualized culture, sexual encounters between men are not only common but even normal. In ancient Greece, the status of women was so degraded as to constitute an inducement for educated men to seek intimacy with bright, attractive boys. In such a culture the pattern of stronger-over-weaker also appears. Neither of these forms of homosexuality is about individual men having certain sexual desires or inclinations. Once out of prison, a man will go back to his wife or girlfriend. Contemporary Athenian men are no more inclined than others to adopt a homosexual lifestyle.
Let us now turn to consider the situation in the Church in the United States and the rest of the West. We know the statistics that although about two-thirds of abuse minors are female, four-fifths of victims of priests are male. Clearly homosexuality is at work here in a way that it is not in families, schools, youth organizations, and even other churches. And from this there arises the debate. Some say or imply that gays ought to be barred from the priesthood, while others worry about a “witch hunt” for gays. The argument at work on both sides is whether some contingent of homosexual men have entered or try to enter the Catholic clergy. This is probably—almost certainly—not happening. The principal task at hand is not to detect these gay infiltrators and keep them out. In fact, we are looking at the issue in the wrong way.
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