A Sound of Sheer Silence

@mboyle78 Or you could address the argument... — Dwight Longenecker (@dlongenecker1) May 30, 2017 Challenge accepted. The basic thesis offered by Longenecker is that prevalence of birth control is the reason why there is a lack of vocations to the Catholic priesthood (the focus here appears to be on the guys, as opposed to women's vocations).  First, he says: [I]f a family has ten kids it is more likely that they are going to be happy for a few of them to pursue the priesthood or religious life. Mothers will quite happily send a few off to the seminary or monastery. If she has ten she can spare a few. I have called out before the way that conservative Catholicism instrumentalizes , and thus dehumanizes, children, but I can't recalling seeing it expressed this transparently.  The casual assertion that children are some sort of currency that parents can assign to various roles (with no consideration for the desires of the boy in question) is appalling.  The old...

Just as you don't have to be the actual autocrat to believe in autocracy, or have any capital to believe in capitalism, you don't have to be a cleric in order to fully absorb the norms and values of clericalism.  And no one demonstrates this better than Michael Sean Winters, columnist for the National Catholic Reporter .   His article today in defense of Pope Francis's handling of clerical sex abuses cases shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the folks on the "inside" of the Roman Catholic Church and those that circle around their orbit (i.e. Winters) fundamentally do not understand the origins of the problem or what needs to be done to fix the problem. Let's begin, first, with the one thing Winters gets right--the accusation that Pope Francis is "soft" on sex abuse cases is being used by the anti-Francis faction as a club to smack around the Pope.  Surely true.  But the fact that these stories are being exploited for political purposes doesn...

Summing up what was included in the last three posts ( Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 ), I would say that the Roman Catholic clerical sex abuse crisis was caused by: a completely closed and insular clerical culture which prioritized its own autonomy from judgment by non-clerical institutions, and which developed a culture of "don't ask, don't tell" with regard to sexual indiscretions formed in light of its own internal struggles around the fact that a majority of its members were closeted gay men, and which was also struggling with shrinking numbers, thus was incentivized toward doing whatever possible to keep priests in the fold and on duty, while lacking robust tools to recognize the true harm and danger of the sexual abuse of children. In light of this diagnosis, what can be done to rectify it?  One thing that will certainly not rectify it is creating a culture of paranoia around homosexuality inside the priesthood.  And yet, that seems to be what has happene...

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...

I was home in Florida for Christmas with the entirety of my family.  On Christmas morning, I went to the 10 a.m. Mass with my parents at the the Catholic parish I had grown up in and was confirmed in, San Jose.  San Jose had been through a lot since I left home twenty years ago.  The guy who was the pastor during the end of my time there (and who, parenthetically but importantly, had been the assistant to the bishop prior to his arrival) had stayed on for years and slowly but surely ran the place into the ground.  This culminated in the pastor literally running off with the music director, with whom he had been apparently having an long-term affair. My parents left San Jose several years before the final collapse, in favor of Holy Family, led at the time by Fr. Fay.  Fr. Fay had, and has, the reputation as the "turn around" guy in the diocese; the person who is sent to troubled parishes to fix them up and make them strong.  And he had done that in spade...

Last night, reports surfaced that the shooter in Orlando had patronized the club several times prior to the shooting, and had an account on at least one dating app for gay men .  Some suggested that this represented a long-running "scouting" operation, where the shooter wanted to get intelligence prior to committing his massacre.  However, if the reports are true, I think it is far, far more likely that the shooter was gay or bisexual, deep in the closet, and deeply conflicted about his sexual orientation. It is becoming almost an iron law of history--the most vocally and demonstrably anti-gay zealots often turn out to be closeted gay men who channel their confusion and fear into lashing out against those who are willing to accept who they are.  We have example after example, from George Alan Rekers , to Larry Craig , to Ted Haggard , to dozens more.  We are coming to the point where when we hear some public figure foam at the mouth about the "gay agenda," we can ...

I stumbled upon a old post by Rachel Held Evans entitled "13 Things that Make Me a Lousy Evangelical."   It is a nice mix of theological and cultural issues where she departs from standard conservative Christian talking points.  Along the same lines, here are my 13 things that make me a bad Catholic, at least for certain values of "Catholic." 1.  I find saying the Rosary to be extremely tedious, so I almost never do it. 2.  I've read all of Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body lectures.  I think there are mostly incomprehensible, and the parts that are understandable are cartoonishly misogynistic. 3.  I think priests and bishops who wear the old-fashioned clerical garb, like Cardinal Burke in this picture, look ridiculous.  Plus, and I want to say this delicately, I think Liberace would find an outfit like this to be somewhat over the top. 4.  I think Medjugorje is basically a scam.  I have serious doubts about Fatima and maybe...

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...

Dear Archbishop Myers, I know we have never met, so I think it would be appropriate to introduce myself.  My name is Mike Boyle, and I am a Catholic.  I don't live in your diocese, but I used to live in New Jersey, so I suppose I have some connection to what you are doing.  I also have friends who live in your former see of Peoria, so I have a connection there as well. I came across the letter you wrote to the priests in your current diocese.  Your letter lashes out at unnamed media figures that have criticized you in connection with your handling a claim of sexual abuse involving Father Thomas Maloney.  While you don't name specific names, I suspect you are angry at this coverage in Commonweal magazine , plus likely the coverage in the Newark Star-Ledger . In your letter, you say that some of your statements in your deposition (given in 2010 in connection with a lawsuit against the Peoria diocese stemming from that accusations Father Maloney sexually mo...

I can't remember for sure when I first became aware of the idea of homosexuality.  It may have been in Junior high, in the form of the incredibly archaic "Family Life" textbook we were given in 8th Grade at San Jose Catholic school.  It didn't say much, but it certainly said that it homosexuality was not OK.  And, for whatever reason, I just accepted that on face value.  Which is a little strange, really--I pushed back on a number of other ideas in that pseudo-sex ed textbook, such as abortion and birth control.  But, not this one.  I think, on some level, it was because homosexuality didn't make sense to me.  I couldn't relate.  Because I couldn't relate, it was easy and costless for me to accept the Church's natural law arguments about homosexuality.  Homosexuals are "intrinsically disordered" because our bodies are designed for procreation?  Sure, why not.  It's not like it would ever affect me in any way. There were gay people...

I will disclose my biases up front--I am an unabashed fanboy of Pope Francis.  He has done and said everything I could have reasonably hoped for in the new pope, from his rejection of the over-the-top material trappings of the Papacy to his low-key demeanor to his efforts to reach out to other religions and disaffected groups.  I love all of it.

As I mentioned yesterday, Archbishop Dolan believes the New York Times has an anti-Catholic agenda, seen in its highlighting of the clergy sex-abuse scandals.  You may be surprised to learn that Michael Voris would vehemently disagree.  In fact, Voris believes the media is an instrument of God's will in the world, and that the New York Times reporting can be seen as part of the divine plan.  What is the divine plan, you ask?  Well, let Michael explain. In other words, God is using the media (which, I am sure he would argue, supports The Gay Agenda) to expose and undermine The Gay Agenda!  Very clever, I must say.