A Sound of Sheer Silence

Any honest discussion of sexuality and the Roman Catholic priesthood must start with the elephant in the room--something approaching a majority of priests are closeted gay men of one form or another.  That seems impossible to believe for many people, but no one speaking honestly has ever seriously challenged this premise, at least not to me.  And my own experience confirms this assessment. If you think it through, though, it's not really surprising.  In a pervasively homophobic culture, a priesthood in which you were not allowed, and thus not expected, to enter into a (opposite sex) marriage would be logically attractive to men who understood that such a marriage was not an option for them.  It doesn't even have to work on a conscious level.  I remember asking an elderly priest how he knew he had a vocation to the priesthood, and his response was, "I remember being 14 and seeing all my friends starting to get really into girls, and I was never particularly int...

In the previous post , I framed question #2 of "how did this sex abuse crisis happen?" as "how did it come to pass that the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church covered up the fact that some number of Roman Catholic priests had and were sexually abusing children, either actively or passively, thus facilitating the abuse?"  The answer to that question, in my view, can be answered in a one sentence response--"because the culture of the Roman Catholic priesthood is sick and broken, and the sex abuse crisis is the most visible manifestation of that pathology." It is extremely important here to emphasize the word "culture."  While people contribute to cultures in which they are a part, a culture is a conceptually distinct entity from any particular member of that culture.  There are deeply decent and honorable men who are Roman Catholic priests.  But the culture in which they swim is not decent and not honorable in the main.  And, in what is perh...

As I write this post, Pope Francis is here in these United States, tooling around in a Fiat .  Commentators have offered a number of angles to explain his choice of vehicle, such as the Italian connection, its fuel efficient characteristics, its small size, etc.  All of those likely have something to do with it, but I think one dimension is that Pope Francis, in a gentle way, is trolling his critics.  "Oh yeah?  You don't like the fact that I don't fit into your preferred image of the Pope as the Great and Powerful Oz?  Well, here's some more of what you don't like, courtesy of a cute Italian compact car and my smiling face inside." If Francis is trolling his critics, it appears to be working.  About six months ago, Ross Douthat predicted in the New York Times that Pope Francis's embrace of distributive justice-oriented positions and environmental concern would be taken in stride by the economic conservatives among the Catholic commentariat.  "[T...

Elizabeth Scalia called for submissions among the blogosphere on the question of why people stay Catholic .  I figured I would chime in, despite the fact that I am perhaps not the sort of person she had in mind to answer the question. The single sentence answer to the question for me is that I remain a Catholic because of its visceral catholicity.  James Joyce once famously defined Catholicism as "here comes everybody," and that remains for me the most salient definition of Catholicism.  To be "catholic," to be universal, is to include the wide variety of people and places that make up the human family, with all of their attendant particularities, baggage, opinions, and nuances. There is a danger of turning catholicity exclusively into an abstract, intellectual construct--a statement about the scope of the intellectual reach of the faith.  That's an important part of the definition of catholicity, but I don't think it is a substitute for actual, visceral...

Yesterday, Notre Dame hosted a conference entitled "Polarization in the U.S. Catholic Church: Naming the Wounds, Beginning to Heal."   A number of folks have been heavily promoting this event, including Professor Camosy of "Beyond the Abortion Wars" fame (who appears to be one of the main organizers of the event).  [Personal Note: Fr. Ken Simpson, who was the priest in-charge of the Newman Center at Northwestern when I was there, and who is a wonderful, wonderful priest and person, is also on the panel].   I missed the live-stream, but hopefully the recorded version will be available soon.    [Edit:   Here it is ].   As I haven't seen it, I can't comment yet on the specific content of talks, but here are a few general thoughts on the topic of polarization. First, the reaction to the conference from certain folks on the left-hand side of the Catholic aisle has been cynical and dismissive.  I understand the sentiment behind it ("where was the conc...

I have no idea if Juan Barros Madrid, the newly installed bishop of Osorno, Chile, is a good priest or not.  I have no idea if Bishop Barros has been a good bishop in his previous job as the bishop for the Chilean military.  Most importantly, I have no idea whether Bishop Barros knew about the sexual abuse of minors by Father Fernando Karadima.  The Vatican says that he did not, that there are no "objective reasons" to keep him from being named Bishop of Osorno .  Maybe he truly didn't know anything about the abuse.  Maybe, like many, he chose not to ask questions where we was unprepared for the answers.  Maybe he knew everything.  I truly have no idea. Here is what I know.  The people in Chile, at least a big swath of them, believe that Bishop Barros should not be their bishop.  So much so that they tried to physically prevent him from entering the cathedral to assume his new job. Whether or not there is any "objective" evidence of Bi...

Pope Francis memorably called upon people to "make a mess" in the Catholic Church.  If you would like to see what a "mess" looks like, San Francisco would be a good place to start. As most people know, San Francisco is maybe the most progressive city in the United States.  What few know is that San Francisco has a strong and diverse Catholic presence and Catholic identity.  Now, because of the first part the Catholic identity tends to be on the progressive side, but nevertheless the Catholic Church is a significant, visible presence in the city.  The current Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, is a serious culture warrior-- in fact, he is the point man for the efforts of the U.S. bishops to oppose gay marriage .  His selection by then Pope Benedict was seen, and it is hard to argue with this, as a bit of stick in the eye of the city that has always been at the forefront of gay rights issues since the 1970s.  It was basically inevitable that...

I saw  this story yesterday morning .  I know people who go to Star of the Sea in the Richmond (or, perhaps, know people who used to attend Star of the Sea).  It's a pretty normal parish, in a diverse, residential, middle class (by SF standards) area of the city.  Star of the Sea is no different from a thousand parishes all over the country. In and of itself, this story about whether altar girls will be allowed at Star of the Sea Parish is not of tremendous significance.  Most Catholic parishes do allow altar girls.  Most people don't care much one way or the other. No, I would submit that people who see this story, who have a reaction to this story, are not reacting to the story itself.  They are reacting to the discussion that we are not having, and so they are using this story as a proxy to fight the real battle. Here is the real battle.  For all but a few isolated periods of recorded history, the following things are essentially undeniab...

I am the oldest of four.  Four kids is an interesting number in many respects.  In a "modern" sense, it is a large family--it is a full two children above the Total Fertility Rate for the United States, and even significantly above the average for US Catholics.  My own sense is that four is considered by many to be a quantum jump in size over three; two is "normal," three is "kinda big," while four is "definitely big." On the other hand, in comparison to families of the past, especially Catholic families of the past, it is a modest number.  Indeed, both of my parents come from larger families--six kids for Dad, ten kids for Mom.  People are amazed when I say it, but it is true--I have 22 first cousins on Mom's side alone.  So, even though I am sure others would view my family as very large, my parents, and by extension, us, don't really perceive it that way--"medium" is probably closer to the mark. I say all of this to sugge...

I would encourage everyone to read this piece in yesterday's National Catholic Reporter .  Every single thing about it is interesting and worth thinking about. The author, Fr. Peter Daly, is a pastor in a church in the what is basically now the ex-urbs of Washington, D.C.  He wanted to know why more young people (defined as 18-40) didn't come to Mass.  So, he decided to ask them. Everything about Fr. Daly's efforts here should be commended, but I want to pick a few nits before I get into the good stuff.  First, Fr. Daly seems to assume that these young folks all stay in one place.  To set up his in-person survey, he reached out the 500 people that have been confirmed in the parish in the last 25 years that no longer attend.  He seems to assume that if these folks are not attending his church, then they are not attending a Catholic Church at all.  Certainly some of those folks are not attending at all, but many are not attending his Church because t...

One of the things that I have noticed since starting this blog is that I am conscious of whether or not I am producing "content."  On some level, this is stupid--I have no obligation to write anything, no one is paying me to do any of this, so there is really no reason to feel that I have to write something.  Still, enough people read this blog that I want to give them something.  As a result, sometimes I sit around and try to come up with things to write about. Sometimes, however, the content comes to you.  Witness this interview with Cardinal Burke, which was brought to my attention reading Deacon Greg Kandra's blog .  Hoo boy, it's a doozy-- the full text is here , on a blog entitled the "New Emangelization" ("Get it?  It's like the New Evangelization, except for men!").  If I could summarize Cardinal Burke's position in one sentence, it would be that the Catholic Church has become pussified and needs to recover its "manliness....

Salvatore Cordileone, shown right, is the Archbishop of San Francisco.  He is also the head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) effort to oppose gay marriage.  Cordileone has been on the barricades of the gay marriage issue for a while now.  In fact, it is hard not to see his appointment to San Francisco a couple of years ago as a poke in the eye to the city and its famous gay community, but that's really neither here nor there. As part of his effort to oppose gay marriage, Archbishop Cordileone will be attending the "March for Marriage" tomorrow in Washington, D.C.  This event is sponsored by the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage, both prominent anti-SSM organizations.  Both organizations are, as well, classified as "Hate Groups" by the Southern Poverty Law Center .  Given the status of the sponsors, a number of civil and religious leaders in San Francisco--most notably Rep. Nancy Pelosi--called o...

This Sunday, the Irish Sunday Mail published a horrifying story.  A couple of kids were playing around on a property formerly known as "The Home" in County Galway, on the west coast of Ireland.  From 1925 to 1961, "The Home" was a facility for unmarried, pregnant girls and their children, much like the Magdalene Laundries that were shown in the recent movie Philomena .  The boys accidentally broke through an old septic tank and discovered the bones of what might be as many as 800 infants and children .  They were buried together in a mass grave, with no identifying markers.  A Galway historian discovered contemporary health inspector reports that described the children in this facility as "emaciated," "with flesh hanging loosely from their limbs."  The children, who did nothing other than being born to an unmarried mother, were referred to as "inmates."  Clearly, these children were neglected, and then almost literally flushed down the ...

Projection is Not the Same Thing as Analysis The story of Emily Letts is making its way through the Interwebz this week.  She is a 25-year old woman who filmed a video of her abortion and the immediate aftermath.  Letts says she released the video as a counter to the notion that abortion is a shameful act that leaves the women that seek one damaged in its wake.  Unsurprisingly, there has been commentary from the Catholic blogosphere, notably from Elizabeth Scalia .  Scalia purports, based on a study of her facial expressions in one segment of the video, to see the truth of the video: If you let yourself become distracted by what is coming from her mouth, you miss all that is revealed in her face, which tells the whole, and very different story. A month after the abortion — with the dramatic change in hairstyle that so many women effect when emotions are high and they need to feel in control of something — watch Emily, then. The light is gone from her eyes. The s...

Pope John Paul II will be officially made a saint on Sunday, along with Pope John XXIII.   As I mentioned in my last post , I have reservations about the legacy of John Paul II.  I think he drove a stake into the Catholic intellectual Golden Age of the middle 20th Century (which, in turn, came after a 200 year or so period of intellectual stasis and fossilization) when he and Benedict XVI nee Josef Ratzinger cracked down on "dissident" Catholic thinkers like Hans Kung and the Liberation Theology crowd.  I think he failed to understand (or really try to understand) many of his flock in the West were coming from, and so set the institutional Church against its own members, such as women and gays and lesbians.  He also failed totally to properly address the priest sex abuse crisis, leaving a horrible mess for Benedict (and Francis, and probably Francis's successor) to attempt to clean up. As I think about these problems, I think there is a more fundamental problem w...

Bill Keller of the New York Times, who has been something of an agent provocateur with regard to Catholicism, wrote a column in the Sunday Times about priestly celibacy .  In it, he more or less calls for it to go away.  James Martin, S.J., responded strongly in America magazine in defense of celibacy .  Both pieces are very much worth reading, and I won't rehash them here.  Instead, I'll give my take.  The short version---as much as I like and respect Martin, I think Keller is right. I suppose I should say first that I am potentially biased here, as I left the Dominicans in part (though not exclusively) because I realized that I did not want to make a lifetime commitment to celibacy.  If I thought celibacy was awesome (at least for me), I very well might still be there.  Nevertheless, contra Martin's critique of Keller, I lived with and observed closely many celibate people, so I feel like I have some leg to stand on beyond my own, singular experi...

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk and writer who did most of his work in the 1950s and 1960s (he died in 1968 under somewhat mysterious circumstances--he electrocuted himself in a bathtub).  His most famous book is his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain , which talks about his entry into the monastery.  For my money, however, his best work is a short essay that was included in a collection called New Seeds of Contemplation .  The essay is entitled "The Moral Theology of the Devil."  Every word of it is worth reading ( reprinted here ), but I would particularly like to focus on this section: The people who listen to this sort of thing, and absorb it, and enjoy it, develop a notion of the spiritual which is a kind of hypnosis of evil. The concepts of sin, suffering, damnation, punishment, the justice of God, retribution, the end of the world and so on, are things over which they smack their lips with unspeakable pleasure. Perhaps this is why they develop a deep...

First off, here is the best summary of the significance of the Pope's comments that I have found .  I'll just add a couple of additional thoughts. If you look at the reaction from the conservative Catholic blogosphere, the most substantive response is to point out that Pope Francis does not signal in the interview that he is about to change any Church teachings.  That's true (though, one is tempted to add the qualification "yet," at least as to some things like divorce and re-marriage).  Pope Francis is not going to issue a decree that abortion on demand is swell.  Nor, it appears, is he going to say that women can be priests (but deacons?...).  But, that's not the point.  The significance of the interview is not about substantive doctrine, nor is it about the amorphous concept of "tone."  My interpretation of the interview is that Francis's vision of the Church is one that meets people where they are and welcomes them in to the fold as they ar...

Remember how I said that Jesuits like to lob intellectual grenades into the mix to see what happens?  Pope Francis just pulled the pin .  I will probably have a couple of posts about this amazing interview, but I have a couple of immediate reactions.  First, particularly if one reads the entire interview, you see the Jesuit-ness of Pope Francis come right to the forefront.  He has a long discussion of how Ignatian spirituality (the ideas of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits) influences his way of leading and thinking.  So, the take away for me is that he is more or less like all of the Jesuits I've met.  Second, I will be fascinated to see the reaction from the right-wing Catholic blogosphere and conservative Catholic media (EWTN et al. ).  The meme that "Francis is speaking off the cuff and is not serious," seems to be unsupportable by even those in the deepest of denial (Update: or perhaps not ).  It...

I live in Columbus, Ohio, and so the big controversy around here in the Catholic world of late was the firing of Carla Hale.  Hale had been a teacher at Bishop Watterson High School in Columbus for 19 years prior to her termination.  In March of this year, Hale's mother died, and the obituary mentioned that Hale was in a partnered relationship with another woman.  The parent of a Bishop Watterson student saw the obituary in the local paper and wrote and anonymous letter to the Diocese of Columbus informing them that Hale was in a gay relationship.  On March 28, Holy Thursday, Bishop Watterson fired Hale.  The matter has since settled out of court, but a condition of that settlement is that Hale will not be teaching at Bishop Watterson. Consider also the case of Lennon Cihak .   Last November, Cihak, 17, was parishoner at Assumption Catholic Church in Barnesville, Minnesota, along with his parents. Cihak was in parish's Confirmation class, scheduled t...