The double life of the priesthood

I had a conversation the other day with a new friend, a gay man who left the Catholic priesthood a few years ago and who now lives with his partner. I’m pretty sure N. and I don’t agree on much when it comes to politics or theology, we do agree on the intolerable system of lies and denial that now exists regarding gays in the priesthood. He told me that after seeing the double lives that so many gay priests lead, and justify to themselves, and how much denial and enabling of it there is in the chanceries, he had to get out. As I told him, I really respect the integrity of his decision. He’d rather live in truth than in lies, and in his case, that meant leaving the priesthood – even though it cost him professionally and personally (he said there are still family members who won’t talk to him because of it).

I hadn’t posted on this till now, because I wanted his permission to share this, which he has given.

N. shared stories about how rife his seminary was with sexual activity, and how he’d been sexually assaulted there twice by respected priests in his diocese. He said he tried to report it to both his bishop and to a chancery official, neither of whom would listen. He shared a story about how his next bishop, who is now quite prominent nationally, once advised the priests of the diocese that if they’d been surfing on the Internet in places they shouldn’t be, to throw the computer in the river before getting it serviced, because “technicians can always figure out where you’ve been.”

How cynical is that? Said N.: “After the meeting, one of my colleagues said, ‘He sure has us figured out.’ And the truth is, he did have priest culture figured out.”

N. went on to describe a clerical culture in which sexual subterfuge is a lot more normal than people think. The Internet has made this easier. He told of a priest friend no longer in ministry who would set up anonymous dates on the Internet in cities some distance away, fly over for the weekend, have anonymous sex, then fly back. The people of the parish had no clue. That sort of thing. Double lives.

In our conversation, N. spoke of gay priest culture, because that’s what he knew intimately, but it was pretty obvious that none of this would go on without the consent, active or passive, of straight bishops and others. “Bishops are so busy putting out fires from situations that could be legally actionable that they don’t have time to worry about what consenting adults do,” N. said. I mentioned to N. something an orthodox Catholic friend, a layman who taught in a seminary, once told me of his experience. He said seminarians were having sex with each other constantly in his seminary. Did the bishop – a heterosexual with a reputation for orthodoxy – know about this? I asked. Yes, of course, said my orthodox friend.

N. said he thought the whole clerical system was so rotten that he didn’t think it was “salvageable” in its current form. I was reminded of what Fr. Tom Doyle and Richard Sipe once told me about gays and the seminary system. Neither man is a theological conservative, but they said that they wouldn’t advise any gay man to enter into the seminaries right now, because they have become such places of sexual predation and misconduct that a gay seminarian who genuinely intends to live a life of sexual integrity faces tremendous odds. The system is against him, and the system will corrupt him by compromising him if it can. It compromises straight priests in a couple of ways:

+ A straight seminarian I was once in contact with had decided to leave his religious order’s novitiate after constantly being sexually harassed by priests at his seminary; he was going to do an interview with me about the culture of sexual abuse at the seminary, but was talked out of it after confiding to the rector what he was going to do, and being told by the rector that to talk about it publicly would be disloyal and sinful. You see the psychological strategy here: Play on the priest or seminarian’s loyalty to the institution and desire to protect it.

+ A former priest I once interviewed who left to marry said that in his diocese, there were lots of gay priests, and most of them flagrantly violated their vows of celibacy without a twinge of conscience. It was an open secret at the chancery, he said. The gay priests would taunt the straight ones, telling them they should get girlfriends (something the novice told me a priest-professor told him he should do after he repeatedly spurned the priest’s advances). Living out celibacy is difficult in the best of circumstances, but how easy would it be for a priest living in a clerical culture that encouraged this double life to decide that he is entitled to one of his own, with women?

Let me clarify: the problem is not strictly one of gay priests. There are and always have been gay priests who live lives of fidelity and integrity, and straight priests who don't. This is, however, about a clerical culture in which a lot of people -- this includes the laity -- are in denial. An orthodox Catholic priest wrote me yesterday saying that it's pretty clear that the post-scandal apostolic visitation that was supposed to clean out the seminaries was a joke. Which reminded me of something N. e-mailed as a follow-up to our conversation:

The priest who taught me homiletics left the priesthood and the church. The priest who was in charge of spiritual direction left the priesthood to get married. He was replaced by a priest who was later drummed out of the priesthood for sexual misconduct. The priest who taught me moral theology went to prison for having kiddie porn on his computer. The priest who taught me canon law committed suicide. And the priest who is now the seminary rector is someone I had several sexual encounters with when we were both seminarians. I could continue, but you get the point.

I don’t know what the answer here is, but the Mallinson case in Dallas this week puts it very much at the forefront of my mind. What do the bishops think parishioners are entitled to, in terms of pastoral care? Is it the case that a priest has to break the law before he is considered unfit by his bishop for parish ministry (think of N.'s assertion that bishops are so busy dealing with situations that involve lawbreaking that they don't have time to worry about priests who have consensual sex with adults)? How many bishops take the attitude of N.'s former bishop, whose attitude toward priests using Internet pornography was one of risk-management; i.e., don't get caught, and here's how not to?

How many bishops and seminary rectors really understand that the Church doesn't exist for the sake of their pleasures, but for the salvation of souls? (N. said that narcissism is a very big part of the problem he describes.) Historian Barbara Tuchman's verdict on the six Renaissance popes who provoked the Reformation bears repeating here:

"Their view of the interests of the institution they were appointed to govern was so short-sighted as to amount almost to perversity. They possessed no sense of spiritual mission, provided no meaningful religious guidance, performed no moral service for the Christian world."

And this: How many other churches besides the Roman Catholic are dealing with similar problems in its clerical establishment and seminary system? Of those who have managed to avoid these problems, how have they done so? I'd love to hear from you readers, especially pastors and seminary graduates, on this point.

I keep telling my Orthodox friends that one way or another, the bishops of our church has got to stamp out any clericalist nonsense that allows corruption to flourish in the clergy, because it can be devastating for the present and future of the church, and ultimately for the salvation of souls, for people to lose faith in the integrity of their bishops and priests. For me, one of the last things to go before I lost my Catholic faith was the painful realization that I hoped and prayed neither of my sons had a vocation to the priesthood – something that I concluded even though I know good, faithful priests who show that it is possible to live lives of fidelity and integrity despite it all. But these priests succeed very much in spite of the institutional pressures arrayed against them. Once I got the idea in my head that I hoped my boys wouldn’t be called to the priesthood, given what they’d face in seminary and beyond, I couldn’t stop wondering what it meant that I belonged to a church whose clerical culture, including seminaries, was something I feared as a grave danger to my sons’ souls, should they be called to the priesthood.

To be clear, I can’t imagine a greater calling than to serve as a priest … and yet, the corruption and double lives behind a façade of holiness and normalcy not uncommon, with little apparent hope for authentic reform of the system!

“But! But! He seems so harmless!” was the caption under Fr. Art Mallinson’s St. Sebastian’s Angels photo. Yes, exactly.