Grinder priest
It is almost laughable to watch the Catholic press telling us to "move along, nothing to see here".
Someone not Catholic might think ... oh no, a celibate priest, one high up in the political infrastructure, has been revealed to be gay and sexually active.
But those Catholics who are reporting on this are carefully *not* going there. Instead, they are (1) attacking the source of the reporting, (2) attacking what they see as a homophobic reaction to the news, or (3) saying that the "liberal" viwepoint should be to protect the priest's privacy and to shrug off the sex (Peter Steinfels actually wants us to believe he is a liberal - ask him how he feels about a womsn's right to choose).
I, however, *am* a liberal, and I will tell you what a liberal would think about this news of Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill and his Grinder account.
(1) It doessn't matter who reported the news if the facts are accurate.
(2) It is not homophobic to note that a gay priest is lying to the faithful about being sexually active.
(3) This news is indeed a big deal, though church people like Steinfels say it's inconsequential. Why does it matter? Because ...
- The Catholic church and the pope are always and constantly telling not just Catholics but everyone how to live their lives, telling us what is good and what is bad, telling us that only they know what God really wants.
- The church and the pope have spent a lot of time telling us that sex outside of marrigae is bad for straight people, telling us that any sex is bad for gay people.
- The church tells us that the Catholic priesthhod is celibate, though reporting for decades has shown that about 50% of priests are sexually active with other adults (both straight and gay), and that many priests are pedophiles.
So why is a sexually active priest high up in leadership not an issue for Catholic pundits?
If it's ok for priests to have sex, and I think it should be, then officially do away with the "celibate" priesthood. If being LGBTQ is ok, and I think it is, then stop teaching that gay people are "intrinsically disordered",and stop lobbying against marriage for LGBTQ people.
Despite what Steinfels says, liberals actually care about facts, they care about honesty, they care about trust. Liberals are repelled by a churcch that so casually lies to us, that tells us to live one way while they live another, and that tells gay men that the only real family they can ever find is in the priesthood.
And this explains why there are very few liberals left in the Catholic church. Those who call themselves liberals are mostly Republican apologists for a religious/political institution that still benefits them, despite its hypocrisy and corruption.
posted by crystal | 2:13 PM
2 Comments:
Crystal, I agree with you that "It doesn't matter who reported the news if the facts are accurate. And "It is not homophobic to note that a gay priest is lying to the faithful about being sexually active."
I did read the Steinfels article in Atlantic and I'm not getting where he said that the sex was inconsequential. It seems to me that he agrees with most of your points. But if someone (or someones) paid Pillar for the information that part does matter.
The issues, I think, is that the church teaches one thing, but itself does another. The church leaders, including the pope, know .... know this because it has been reported on so often by so many .... that the "celibate" priesthood is a bad joke, that the Vatican itself is rife with priests who are sexually active all around town. Church leaders don't care, and they won't do what it would take to change that because it still works for them .... most Catholic don't care either.
Steinfels made his article about privacy issues, journalistic issues, and the homophobia of reactionaries. But the whole point of the news story is that the church's teachings of celibacy for priests and the "badness" of gay sex really mean nothing to the church leaders themselves.
And Steinfels tries to cast the news as conservatives vs liberals. He thinks he counts as a liberal - Commonweal is conservative. For actual liberals in the church, think Catholics for Choice, Roman Catholic Womenpriests-USA, Dignity, etc.
This battle is actually between conservatives (fans of Pope Francis) and far right Catholic reactionaries. Steinfels' real concern is that the reactionaries won't just accept the dichotomy between church teaching and church behavior, and are now washing the church's dirty laundry in public. This makes the conservatives look bad to the non-Catholic public, which still has the capacity to be shocked by the church's hypocrisy.
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