On the impossibility of being gay and Catholic

Oh, the life of a gay Catholic! Rosary beads, choir practices, parsing the latest cogitations of slippery Pope "Who Am I to Judge?" Francis (does he love us? hate us? who can tell?), showing up for pot luck dinners and May Crownings while trying very hard not to think about what The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches about us -- that "homosexual acts are always intrinsically disordered." That the Catholic Church cannot even "bless" our unions much less marry us. That the love and affection we might feel for a romantic partner is always morally reprehensible and sinful. 

And oh, that phrase: intrinsically disordered! 

Leave it to a theologian to devise such a nice way of saying that homosexuals are disgusting perverts, that we can be tolerated, but no more, and that our supposed "sexuality" is an abomination in the sight of God.

As homosexuals, we occupy a special place in the realms of moral failure. After all, it's not just any sinner that can earn the title of "intrinsically disordered." The Catholic Church doesn't describe alcoholics that way. Or meth heads. Or murderers. Or the multitude of fornicators and adulterers and masturbators. It reserves that special term for us homosexuals. 

I do my best not to think on such gloomy things, or at least not think too hard about them, but recently I was bitch-slapped by the archbishop of San Francisco who announced that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was no longer welcome to receive holy communion in his diocese because of her stance on the issue of abortion. I was left breathless and heartily agitated by this "sacraments as weapons" approach to pastoral care.  I was also reminded that as a so-called "gay Catholic," I too could easily be singled out by the church hierarchy for a good what for, and that while I could blithely ignore church teaching on homosexuality, archbishops like the one in San Francisco were certainly not ignoring me. 

I used to tell myself that my church-going was a rather radical act, that I knew I was not a sinner and had done nothing wrong, and that if other people wanted to be all judgey and stuff, well, that was their problem and not mine. I told myself that one of the reasons we fought for gay rights was so that we could go and do all the things that "normal" people do -- like going to church, if that was our thing. I told myself there was a certain sort of valor in being true to the Church even though the Church was not true to me. I told myself that I had spiritual needs, just like "normal" people, and that I should not be cast  into the outer darkness as though my soul were nothing more than collateral damage in the Church's eternal war on sinners and losers.

And I believed those things.

But then, on a recent Sunday morning, I woke up and read that news article about the archbishop in San Francisco denying communion to Nancy Pelosi -- and I got mad. Goodness gracious, I got mad! I got so mad I should probably go to confession because there was smoke coming out of my ears and an astonishing array of curse words and colorful bits of vulgarity exploded out of me. I was not simply mad; I was furious. 

But, over and above that, I was hurt. Dismayed. It was like that archbishop had rudely ripped off the Band-aid I had put on my feelings about being both gay and Catholic and had suddenly exposed the ugliness I had tried so hard to hide. 

Some folks told me I shouldn't let any archbishop or anyone else's bad behavior affect my faith. And I readily agreed with them. One's faith should not depend on the good behavior of someone else. Problem was, my faith -- my conscience -- was telling me that to support an organization that teaches such ugly, hurtful things about people like me was not right. That I, as an older gay man who had suffered horribly because of those teachings, ought to know better. That it was wrong of me to support an organization that was teaching entirely new generations of Catholics that gay people like me were less than, second rate, and not as deserving of the same sort of respect accorded to "normal" people. 

I don't like drama, though. I don't like going around with my tail feathers in a huff. And I certainly don't like making mountains out of mole hills. I like to keep my feelings in hand and to listen to my doubts, but not be pushed around by them. But try as I might to dust myself off and move on -- to "shake it off," to quote Taylor Swift -- I could not. A feeling of uneasiness had settled into my bones. Something was not right.

One of my first reactions to that story about the archbishop was to wonder aloud how I could support a Church that does not support me -- and that was the crux of the problem. It took me a few weeks of anguished hand-wringing, but I finally figured out what was bothering me, which was the fact that the church, because of its teachings on homosexuality, literally could not support me. Folks could be tolerant, but being tolerated is not the same as being respected. One only tolerates something when one feels superior to it and decides to have compassion and patience and put up with it. I don't want to be tolerated. If I'm going to sit down to dinner, I want the same thing that everyone else is eating, not  crumbs thrown from the table.

Here's the problem: The Church teaches that the sexuality of a young gay man or woman is "intrinsically disordered" and sinful, and that if such a young person meets and falls in love with another young person of similar persuasion, their budding relationship cannot be supported, their feelings are disordered and dreadfully sinful, and they will go to hell if they "give in" to such disordered passions. 

Try to remember when you were young and fell in love for the first time. What was the reaction of those around you? If you were a boy falling in love with a girl, were you shamed for it? Were you told you would go to hell if you gave in to such feelings? Were you told it was "unnatural" to feel such attractions, that you should pray to God to heal you, that the Devil himself might be tempting you and trying to lure you away from God and the straight and narrow? 

Remember what it was like to be a teenager? To be so painfully self-aware and self-conscious? To be so overwhelmed by so many new feelings? 

The job of a teenager is to push mom and dad away and figure out how to stand on one's own two feet. This is a natural process. To become independent. To figure out who you are, and how you are going to make your way in the world, and who your friends are going to be, and how you're going to survive. Suddenly, the approval of your peers becomes much more important than the approval of mom and dad. This is natural. This is how it works. This is how young people separate from their parents and make their way in the world and eventually create families of their own. 

What the Church does to its LGBT kids at this crucial juncture in their lives is to introduce the most dreadful sort of slut-shaming and fear-mongering about their sexuality. The consequences can be devastating. Just ask the parents of all the many young people who committed suicide because they felt so ashamed of themselves because they were gay.  Hell, ask me, because I tried to commit suicide many times in my younger years because I was so completely ashamed of myself and had prayed so hard and so often to be "cured" -- prayers that were never answered.  

The question, for me, is this: How can I continue to be Catholic? How can I, in good conscience, support an organization doing such horrendous damage to young LGBT folks? 

My faith tells me I cannot. 

As a lifelong Catholic, this was not the answer I wanted. In fact, this answer breaks my heart. I love going to Mass. I love being in the choir. I love my statues and devotions -- they give me a sense of continuity with the past. I love going to Holy Communion. I love my Catholic friends. I love my local parish. I love all the good things they do for people. I love the nuns who run the parish. I love being part of it. 

But ... 

I have come to a place where I cannot ignore the contradictions anymore. I cannot turn a blind eye to the harm being caused by an institution that has trampled on gay people for thousands of years and will keep right on doing so. 

When respect is not being served, one needs to get up from the table -- and leave. 

I have not been to Mass since that Sunday morning when I read that article. I don't know if I will ever go to Mass again. I don't know if I can. 

What I do know is that the damage done by the Church to LGBT folks for so many centuries is not trivial -- and should not be trivialized. What I do know is that God loves and respects all His children, not just the heterosexual ones, and wants all of them to love and be loved. 

If you ask me, what's "intrinsically disordered" is the ugly, hurtful things that the Church teaches about gay people. It's an archbishop using Holy Communion as a weapon. It's a whole slew of bishops and cardinals covering up sexual crimes against children. It's a Church that once believed it had the moral right -- and duty -- to torture and kill those considered heretics or "witches." But it's not two people who want to love each other in a way that's natural, comforting, and healing. 

When the Allied forces liberated the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, they freed not just the Jews but others, a large group of whom were homosexuals. While the Jews and other nationalities were returned to their homes, the homosexuals were sent back to various prisons since being gay was considered a crime.  

Gay people have a long history of being "criminals," and the Catholic Church has been a major player in that history. Now safely into the 21st century, the Church has toned down its rhetoric to the ridiculous "intrinsically disordered" line, but it's the same message. 

And it still hurts. 

And it leaves people like me with a painful choice to make. 

A Letter to a Parish Priest: Obviously, You Don't Get It

Dear Father,

We need to talk.

You don't know me, and there's a reason for that: As a 50+ older gentleman who grew up in the Church, I learned long ago to steer clear of you. And I do. I don't attend the pot luck dinners. I don't hang around for coffee and donuts. I don't volunteer. I don't even shake your hand at the end of the infrequent masses I attend. I steer clear. In fact, I usually attend a different church denomination entirely.

I don't want to know you, and I don't want you to know me. Had you any clue what happened to me at the hands of people like you so many years ago when I was a child, you would understand.

I told my story once. I was dismissed as a liar. I was told that "men of God" could not possibly do the sorts of things that were done to me. I was told it would be gravely sinful to embarrass the Church by talking about what happened, that I should keep such things to myself "for the good of the Church." I was told to get over it, that I had brought it on myself. that it was a sin to besmirch the "good" reputations of priests and religious brothers, and that my pain was such a trivial matter I should be embarrassed to even mention it. I was laughed at, ridiculed, shunned.

So I will not repeat my story here. First of all, you've heard it before. A hundred times. A thousand times. Secondly, it has become increasingly obvious to me that you do not understand. That you - and your bishop and your cardinals and even the pope himself - have no clue what has happened to so many of us, your children. Perhaps you have an intellectual understanding of what sexual abuse does to a child. Perhaps you've counseled a lot of victims. Perhaps you have a heart of gold and really, really want to help. But .... you don't understand what's been done.

As the recently-released massive report on predator priests in Pennsylvania has made clear to me, the only people who actually DO understand are those of us who got hurt. In this report, I have read story after story of the difficulties victims face later in life, how the wounds don't heal, how the hurt goes on and on, how the shame endures, and how difficult the healing process is.

When victims talk about how their lives were destroyed, I get it. When they talk about how much it would mean to just get an apology or any sort of acknowledgement, I get it. When they talk about how they can't believe that something like this could happen to them at the hands of a priest they trusted and loved, I get it. When they talk about years of fractured relationships, addictions, a general failure to thrive, how their lives have been diminished, the deep shame they feel, the rage, the hurt, the inability to trust, the problems with authority figures, the sheer incomprehensibility of the whole thing -- I get it.

Years wasted. Years gone. Years spent in counseling. Relationships that failed. How they can't pray. How they can't believe God loves them. How they can't even believe God exists. I get it.

Do you?

The Church has inflicted a demonic horror on so many of its most vulnerable members. It has introduced a darkness into our lives, a sorrow in our souls, a cancer that rots in our bones. The price we've paid to be your victims has been tremendous. We carried your shame. We bore the weight of your sins. We paid the price for your iniquities. The most you have to worry about is being embarrassed while trying to figure out a way to keep your fellow priests from raping little kids. What we worry about is how to get through the day and how to have a relationship with a God who let this horror loose in our lives.

One of the things that most infuriates me about this report is the care and solicitude -- for the offending priests! How they continued to receive their medical insurance, their dental insurance, their vision insurance, their car insurance, their living stipends, how they spent months on end at "treatment centers," and never once had to worry about where their next meal would come from.

What did their victims get? In a few cases, there were settlements and some had their counseling paid for, but for the vast majority of us, we got the shaft. We were left to deal with the aftermath on our own.

This report has ripped open gaping wounds -- and perhaps that's a good thing. And perhaps we need to keep ripping open these wounds until you get it. Until you understand. That this must not be allowed to continue. That no church should ever be allowed to destroy so many lives.

Perhaps someday you will see me in the back of your church. I think you know who I am. I think you can see it in my eyes. Perhaps someday you will come up to me and say you're sorry about what happened. Perhaps you will realize that abuse not only destroys lives and potential and happiness, it destroys our faith. Our ability to believe that God loves us.

I want to close this letter by saying that I don't hate you. I believed in you. I loved you. I did what I was supposed to do, but you repaid my love with an unimaginable horror. If I don't show up for mass, if I don't shake your hand, if I don't have much use for you -- I hope you will understand.

The ball is in your court, not mine. I didn't break this relationship. You did. And I think you -- and every parish priest in the world -- need to understand that. The ball is in your court. This is something you did. This is on all of you. And now you need to find a way to fix it.

• Nick Wilgus is the best-selling author of MINDFULNESS AND MURDER and several other novels.

It's NOT the end of the world as we know it

David Bawden

Meet David Bawden. He lives about 20 miles outside of Topeka, Kansas and calls himself Pope Michael I. He was elected to the papacy by a conclave of six people (one of whom was his father) in the early 1990s.

Bawden is a traditional Catholic who believes the Roman Catholic Church strayed into heresy and error during its Vatican II sessions in the 1960s. Because it has "embraced heresy," it is no longer the Catholic Church, or so the traditional Catholic believes.

You may think all of this is perfectly ridiculous (and it is), but Bawden is not the only "pope in exile" wandering around the planet. There is Pope Linus II in Hertfordshire, England, Pius XIII in Montana (now deceased) (and not to be confused with the new movie starring Jude Law), Pope Krav I in Croatia and Alexander IX in Argentina, among others. This Wikipedia entry is a good place to start your own research.

Since I grew up in the traditional Catholic world, I know about these things.

We believed:

• That the end was near and we lived in the End Times.
• That the Roman Catholic Church had been destroyed from the inside out by heresy and error.
• That the pope, by embracing heresy, was no longer pope. 
• That the mass, because it had been changed and was now said in the vernacular rather than Latin, was no longer valid.
• That all Catholics (from the pope and cardinals on down) who were part of the "New Church" with its "bastard rites and bastard sacraments" were in heresy and would therefore go to hell.
• That we alone - traditional Catholics - were "true Catholics."  

There are many flavors of traditional Catholicism. The brand I followed featured a bishop (Francis Schuckardt) who stockpiled weapons and was extremely anti-Semitic and who had a painting of Adolf Hitler overlooking his bed. We passed around a pamphlet called The Six Million Swindle about how the Holocaust never happened. We attended John Birch Society meetings and waited for society to collapse.

Francis Schuckardt

You can read the official version of Schuckardt's life here, but you might also want to have a look at this article as well as this article.

Glenn Beck

I read an article recently in The Atlantic about Glenn Beck, that perennial purveyor of doom and gloom who found his voice by comparing Obama to Hitler. If you thought Beck would be happy to see Trump become president of the United States, you thought wrong. Beck has now turned his guns on Trump and is convinced, yet again, that the END IS NEAR and that the US Constitution "hangs by a thread" and the Ship of Liberty is about the founder on the rocks and ... you know the drill. Same same but different.

I was reminded that people like Beck - and Pope Michael I and traditional Catholics and all the other doom and gloomers among us - have always been around, and will always be around, and that it's not the issue of the day that concerns them. It's the outrage. The feeling of outrage. The feeling of moral superiority - that they know something the rest of us don't. That they "get it" while the rest of us are clueless.

I could easily populate this post with an endless list of examples of hysteria and fear-mongering going back to Jesus himself, who seemed to believe the end was indeed near.

None of this is new.

It's been more than fifty years since the Second Vatican Council closed in Rome in 1965 and there are still traditional Catholics who are utterly convinced the Roman Catholic Church has been destroyed and is no more, despite the fact that it is still very much alive and actually prospering.

As we head into 2017 and whatever a Trump presidency will bring, there is a sense of doom and gloom among many of my friends, some of whom have been talking in rather apocalyptic language. My message is simple: It's not the end of the world as we know it. There is cause for concern and renewed vigilance, but the world is not about to collapse around us.

I've heard all of this before. In fact, I've heard it over and over and I wasted too many years engaging with the doomsayers, trying to reason with them, trying to comprehend what the fuss was all about. I've come to realize that some people enjoy a sense of impending catastrophe and that if there wasn't something awful on the horizon, they would invent it just so they could have something to rail against.

To each his own.

As for me and my house,  we're going to go about our business and enjoy whatever time we have together in the quiet confidence that this too shall pass and all shall be well.

An Unholy Hatred

I was about twelve years old when I looked up the word "homosexuality" in the dictionary and was given a 1970s definition: Homosexuality, I learned that sad day, was a "sexual perversion" akin to "pedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia, which see."

I looked up those big words--and was horrified. After the feelings of horror and disgust washed off, I was left feeling deeply ashamed.

No child wants to be a pervert, not even a twelve year old boy in love with Barry Manilow.

What I learned that day was reinforced by the overly religious, right-wing environment I grew up in. When the adults sat around at their John Birch Society meetings and talked about "pinko commie bastards" I eventually realized they were talking about me, a revelation that only added to my shame. Just because I had weird, inexplicable crushes on other boys didn't mean I wanted to be a communist (God forbid!), or that I hated my country, or that I was the scum of the earth.

Or did it?

My response to this shame was to become extremely religious, to prove, by a life of prayer and piety, that I was a good person. I can't count the number of rosaries I said, the candles I lit, the prayers I offered, the endless hours I spent begging God to "forgive" me, to "heal" me, to "take this cross away."

It didn't work, and it didn't last.

I look back on a life lived in shame, and, ironically, I feel ashamed I spent so many years feeling ashamed when there was nothing wrong with me, when I had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to feel ashamed about.

My life is bound up with shame. The shame of being something I didn't want or ask to be. The shame of being different in a world that is merciless toward those who don't measure up. The shame of being slender, soft spoken, a sissy, effeminate, faggy, girly, limp wristed, a "lady boy," a pervert, what my church calls "intrinsically disordered."

Shame is a very damaging emotion and a deadly dynamic.

Shame leads to silence; silence leads to isolation; isolation leads to depression and, for too many LGBT folks, thoughts of suicide--or worse.

I look back on this life of shame and I wonder: what purpose did it serve?

I am well aware that my life of shame was not an accident. The shaming I experienced was put into place by other people for a reason. What was that reason? What was the point of shaming children like me? Why do we continue to do it? Whose needs are being met by this shaming? Where's the pay off? Who benefits?

The answer is obvious: by and large, it is the churches and religious folk who benefit. And it is the churches and religious people who, by and large, perpetuate this shaming of LGBT individuals.

There are two immediate benefits that come to mind:

1) It serves the needs of heterosexism, which is the attitude that heterosexuality is "normal" and that everyone should be heterosexual. Since heterosexuality is the most common form of sexuality, it is thought to be "normal," or what God intends and wants of us, and any other form of sexuality is a perversion to be discouraged if not eradicated.

2) It is a useful form of social control. The churches, indeed all religions, use shame as a form of social control, the "just ordering of society." While this "just ordering" is supposed to be Biblically based, it is not always so, and shame is used by the dominant group in society as a way to impose its values, whether those values are based on the Bible or not.

There is a great deal that could be said about these two benefits, and a great many arguments could be made for or against them, but that is not my intention. I'm trying to get at the narrative, the structure behind the shaming I experienced (and continue to experience) as an LGBT individual. I'm trying to answer questions like this: Why do people like Pat Robertson and Bryan Fischer continue, on a sometimes daily basis, to shame gay people? Why does the Catholic Church refer to its LGBT sons and daughters as "intrinsically disordered?" Why do so many evangelicals threaten that the wrath of God will fall upon us now that gay marriage has been legalized? What is the point of this? What is the purpose? Whose needs are being met by this constant "culture war"?

Yet there are other questions that are equally important. What has been the effect of this shaming on LGBT people? Has it helped them? Has it brought them closer to God? Has it helped them to live dignified, meaningful lives? Has it contributed to our understanding of the human person? Are we better off because of this relentless culture war? Are families made better and stronger by shaming their gay and lesbian sons and daughters?

Or has all of this fuss and bother, which has caused enormous hurt to so many people, been nothing more than an exercise in bigotry, the bigotry behind the idea that we should all be heterosexual, that it's not okay to be different, that God wants us all to wear our pants the same way?

Or has it been a sort of mass hysteria, a sort of heterosexual panic, that there could exist, among us, people who are profoundly different in their sexuality?

Or have LGBT people been nothing more than scapegoats, the "village idiot," the one group of people in a community that it's safe to pick on and feel superior to as a way to boost one's self-esteem? This is a very traditional role, mind you. You will see it on every play ground at every school. There is always that one child who is picked on, excluded, ridiculed, who simply cannot measure up. By picking on that one child, we feel superior. We also feel part of the "in group." It heightens our sense that we're okay, we're acceptable, we're "good enough." So ... is that the purpose gay people serve? To give society a convenient punching bag?





The shaming I've experienced has hurt me in deep, profound ways that I will never be able to explain to those who have not experienced it.

I spent many years feeling as though my soul had been murdered, that I was a dead person inside a living body, that I was not a good person and could never be a good person because there was something about me that was fundamentally wrong--if not bad, if not evil, if not perverted.

Shame led me into about a dozen serious attempts at suicide, a couple of which really ought to have been fatal.

Shame has left me unable to believe that an entity like "God" could actually love me, or care one way or the other about what happens to people like me.

Shame has made relationships difficult. It's hard to love someone else when you can't love yourself.

Shame has affected me in so many ways for so many years that I will never truly be free of it. It will always lie like a shadow on the past and the future, coloring my choices, poisoning my mind against itself.





I am working my way out of shame.

When I turned fifty a couple of years ago, I decided it was time to come out of the closet-completely and for good. It was a tentative, hesitant step, but much good has come from it.

I continue to process my own shame by trying to understand it, by talking about it, by challenging it, and taking the risk of doing new things and developing new attitudes. It's a lot of work, but it's worthwhile.

What I have come to learn from my experience with shame is that it is a structure. A man-made structure. Someone put it there because it serves their needs. It didn't just happen. It's no accident. Like racism, and all the other -isms, it's serves a purpose. Someone, somewhere, benefits.

I am left with many questions, but the most overriding question for me is this: If you're the one benefiting from the shaming of LGBT people, shouldn't you take responsibility for the harm you've caused, harm that is sometimes so extreme that victims take their own lives? Are you not responsible for your behavior? If your church participates in the shaming of gay people, are you not complicit in the harm this causes? Can you, in good conscience, look the other way and pretend this unholy hatred has nothing to do with you?

Someday churches will have to come to terms with the harm they've caused.

Someday churches will have to recognize their gay and lesbians sons and daughters do not deserve the contempt heaped upon them, that while our mating habits may be slightly different, we are good people, decent people, kind people.

Someday churches will have to understand that you cannot harm others without harming yourself. You cannot demean others without demeaning yourself. You cannot murder the souls of innocent people without murdering your own.

If there is such a thing as Judgment Day, I suspect a lot of believers are in for a hell of a surprise.

"As you have done unto the least of these, you have done unto me" - Jesus either meant these words, or he did not. And if gay people are not the "least of these," then who is?

Sleeping with the enemy

Lately, I've been thinking about leaving the church I've belonged to since I was a teenager, the church where I became a religious brother (until I was asked to leave when I admitted to being gay), the church whose rituals, whose smells and bells, have been the one constant over the course of an often difficult life.

It's not that I want to. It just feels too much like sleeping with the enemy. Each time I drop a donation in the collection plate, I feel like I'm supporting an organization that treats me abusively, that does not value me the way it does its straight members.

Just today, I stumbled across a story from late 2014 about Cardinal Raymond Burke, who advised parents not to invite gay couples to family gatherings when children are around.

Burke said:

‘If homosexual relationships are intrinsically disordered, which indeed they are … then what would it mean to grandchildren to have present at a family gathering a family member who is living [in] a disordered relationship with another person?

‘If it were another kind of relationship – something that was profoundly disordered and harmful – we wouldn’t expose our children to that relationship, to the direct experience of it.

‘And neither should we do it in the context of a family member who not only suffers from same-sex attraction, but who has chosen to live out that attraction, to act upon it, committing acts which are always and everywhere wrong, evil.’

Burke has put his finger on the pulse of my problem: Many members of my church feel that "practicing homosexuals" are committing acts that are "always and everywhere wrong, evil." 

Yet he has nothing to say about young couples "living together in sin" (once upon a time this was known as fornication and is mentioned in the Bible rather frequently), or couples who have been divorced and remarried. He does not warn parents to keep their children away from masturbators and pursuers of pornogtraphy. No, his scorn, his contempt, is reserved only for homosexuals. 

He is careful to distinguish between "practicing homosexuals" and those not involved in sexual relationships, but few make this distinction. The effect of his words is to tar all gay folks with the same brush. So when Mom and Dad sit down to plan Christmas dinner, they are advised by the cardinal to make sure to exclude a son or daughter who might be homosexual because ... well, that is the question, isn't it?

Recently there was a story about a Catholic priest who was fired from his ministry at a college in New Jersey for supporting the No H8 Campaign. Is that the message my church wants to send, that a priest who stands shoulder to shoulder with the "least of these" will lose his job? 

These are not isolated events. Such stories appear every day.

While there are indeed many Catholics in the church who support its LGBT sons and daughters, sadly, there are many in the hierarchy who do not. 

Consequently, like many LGBT Catholics, I find myself thinking it's time to leave, that, for my own spiritual well being, I really ought to leave. 

I attend Sunday mass at a small church in a rural town. Never once have I been made to feel uncomfortable. No one has ever said a word about my sexuality. I am treated decently and compassionately.  

And yet, there is something wrong. 

Some folks go to church to have their "batteries" recharged; I come away feeling that mine have been drained. I do not feel lifted up, or spiritually refreshed. Rather, I am left with the curious feeling that the "good news" of the Gospel was meant for others - parents with their kids, older couples, grandfathers and grandmothers, not people like me. Not people who are "intrinsically disordered" as I am. Not people of questionable morals. 

Some folks enjoy the social aspect, the meet and greet; I avoid these occasions because I've learned the hard way that there is something about me that is deeply troubling, perhaps even distasteful to some people. So I keep to myself and always feel like I've crashed a party that I wasn't invited to. 

I am very much aware that the folks in the pews around me are there to further their own spiritual lives. But what about my spiritual life? Am I not entitled to one? Are the "same-sex attractions" I experience the only thing about me worth noting? Do I not have a soul too? Do I not deserve the spiritual encouragement and uplifting that is offered so freely to parents, to children, to the elderly? 

I often wonder what it would be like to have a church family that welcomed me, that was not afraid of me, not afraid to acknowledge me from the pulpit, not afraid to discuss the issues that have such a deep impact on my life. Seems to me it would be an amazing experience -- to go to church and be surrounded by supportive people, to worship together, to contribute my talents and gifts just like anyone else and not always be singled out as someone of questionable morals. 

How is it that I am now 51 years old, and have never experienced this? 

When St. Peter was given charge of the church, he was told -- three times -- by Jesus to "Feed my sheep." Why is it that I am always left with the feeling that I have not been fed, that the church has nothing to offer me except condemnation and perhaps pity, that it sees nothing about me except a "disordered" sexuality? 

An abusive relationship is one in which your needs are not being met, where you're not free to state your needs, where you're not free to speak for fear of the consequences, where you live in fear of what might happen, what might be done to you if you don't measure up, or keep quiet, or toe the party line. In an abusive relationship, one does not feel properly valued and acknowledged. There is no mutual exchange of respect, love and encouragement. One person always lives in fear of the other, lives in the fear of love being withdrawn, or the fear of being punished, the fear of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing, and bringing down the wrath of the abuser on one's head.  

How can genuine spiritual work be done in such an atmosphere? 

How can the "love of God" be authentically experienced when it comes from the hands of people who are simultaneously abusing you?

A private spirituality is fine and dandy, but a genuine spirituality must be communal, must involve the give and take of others, of a community. Within the framework of community, one discovers who one really is. 

The church's LGBT sons and daughters are handicapped in this regard because they are not free to be themselves. To admit to being what they are is to admit to some moral, irresolvable failing. A cloud will always hang over their heads. How can they live authentic lives and experience an authentic spirituality when they are not allowed to be authentic? 

Hence, my dilemma.

I don't want to leave the church, but there are times when I think my spiritual sanity and well being depend on it. 

The church has been a wonderful place for so many groups of people. It could be a wonderful, uplifting place for gay people too -- but it does not want to be. 

How can I continue to support a church that does not support me, that does not feed me, that has no answers for people like me, that condemns me for a reality that I did not choose, that I find just as bewildering as it does?

Where is all this "good news" that the Gospel was supposed to bring -- and when will the church get around to sharing it with its LGBT sons and daughters? Or must we stand on the sidelines and forever remain second class citizens who need to be content with whatever crumbs from the table that might get thrown?

What Homosexuality Taught Me About the Catholic Church

I can safely be accused of a great many things, including taking things too seriously, which is exactly and precisely what I did - and for many, many years - with regard to the teachings of the Catholic Church on homosexuality.

The polite version of church teaching on homosexuality is that homosexuals are "intrinsically disordered" because a sexual relationship between two people of the same gender does not offer the possibility of procreation. While the church urges its pastors and followers to be "compassionate" with the poor, sad gays, in no way does it condone homosexual activity, even within the confines of a committed, monogamous, long-term relationship. Any homosexual act is a mortal sin. If not repented and confessed, the homosexual guilty of such act(s) will go to hell.

The impolite version is rather more extreme, and too well known to repeat here.

Catholics are to "love the sinner but hate the sin." Any gay man or woman who falls in love with another gay man or woman is only deceiving themselves because their affections are intrinsically disordered and gravely sinful.

From LETTER TO BISHOPS ON THE PASTORAL CARE OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS by then- Cardinal Ratzinger: "Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder." Now former Pope Benedict, he said during his recent Christmas message that gay marriage is a "threat to justice."

As a Catholic teenager drowning in hormones, I was faced with a choice: Either believe what the church teaches about homosexuality, or take my chances and risk almost certain eternal hell fire.

Now pushing 50, my life to date has been a long string of phases involving one or the other of these choices.

I don't know that I'm capable of explaining the agonies of conscience and self-recrimination I've put myself through, the years of tortured self-doubt and self-loathing that always and eventually reached the tipping point, at which time I would throw all of it to the wind and sow some wild oats, often losing myself for years at a time in the "gay community."

During my teens and twenties, I was repulsed by my own sexuality, which was like some alien lifeform inside my body that I could not control, could not "pray away," could not escape. I could only laugh bitterly when well-intentioned friends opined that all I had to do was choose not to be gay and it would go away. It was, after all, a choice. I could un-choose it. If I refused to do that, well, they weren't about to feel sorry for me.

The agony I experienced led often to half-assed attempts at suicide, but also a few very serious attempts that fortunately did not succeed. I hated myself with a frightful intensity. I hated myself far more than the folks at the God Hates Fags Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.

When this hatred became overwhelming, I went completely in the opposite direction, fully embracing the "gay lifestyle." After thoroughly dousing myself in this moral decay, I eventually wound up feeling shamed, morally compromised, sinful, in need of redemption. I would inevitably find my way back to a confessional when the whole sordid tale would be spilled in the hopes that God would forgive me. I would then try again very hard to be a good Catholic, to be faithful to the teachings of the church.

IT'S A CROSS

I used to believe that homosexuality was a cross that God had given me as a test to see whether I really did love Him with my whole heart and soul and mind and body. If I did, I would resist the temptation to get involved with my gay peers. I would accept the loneliness, the sacrifice of my youth and affections, my need to be held, loved, comforted, talked to. I would accept these sufferings in exchange for a crown of glory in heaven, at which time I would be amply rewarded.

As the PASTORAL LETTER says:

"What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross. That Cross, for the believer, is a fruitful sacrifice since from that death come life and redemption. While any call to carry the cross or to understand a Christian's suffering in this way will predictably be met with bitter ridicule by some, it should be remembered that this is the way to eternal life for all who follow Christ."

At some point in my early thirties I came to a strange realization: The Catholic Church could very well be wrong about the matter. That's an astonishing thought for a Catholic. That's heresy. That's playing with fire. It was far more likely that I was a lusty sinner looking for a loophole. Wasn't it? But of course it was.

How could the Catholic Church be wrong about something it had taught for many centuries, going (supposedly) all the way back to St. Paul in the New Testament and his "man working with man that which is unseemly"? Isn't the pope infallible? Doesn't the Holy Spirit guide the church and preserve it from error in faith and morals?

As a Catholic, I was often told that God cannot deceive or be deceived, that the church guards the deposit of faith and cannot err in matters of faith and morals. Protestants can err, and often do. Muslims, Jews, Hindus -- they don't have the divine promise of infallibility and immutability that the Catholic Church has. Everything the church teaches is absolutely and utterly true; to question or suggest otherwise is tantamount to heresy.

But ...

I knew from my own painful experience that homosexuality is not a choice. Teenagers don't wake up one day and decide to be straight, or gay, or transgendered. It just doesn't happen that way. At no point in my life did I decide that I wanted to be attracted to members of the same sex. It just was. It just happened. While other guys were talking about Farah Fawcett, I was thinking about Freddie Mercury. I could no more fathom their interest in female breasts than they could my interest in penises. And because it was so shameful and sinful and shrouded in such disgust, I could never tell anyone what I was thinking or feeling, what was passing through my mind. I could not ask anyone for an explanation.

From a small town, I was alone. There was no Google search engine to turn to, no gay book store on the corner, no Amazon.com from which to discreetly order gay books, no possibility of making gay friends. It was just me and inexplicable feelings that would not go away.

Why would anyone in my position choose such a confused, painful path in life?

FALLING IN LOVE

In my early twenties, I fell in love for the first time with a man named Bobby. It was a mad, crazy thing. When I was away from him, I felt like I couldn't breathe. When I was with him, I had to be touching him, sitting with him, talking to him -- he was like a drug. The feelings of happiness and intimacy I experienced were quite beyond anything I had ever hoped for.

How could those feelings be "sinful"? What did it mean when something was "sinful?" These questions led me to ponder for many years the question of sin. What, exactly, was sin? Of course, I knew the definition given in the catechism, taught by the church. I also knew the definitions to be found in the dictionary. But what, I wondered, was "sin?"

To hurt someone, to stab them, to steal their property, to kill them, to cheat people, a man beating his wife or kids, a man drinking up his pay and letting his family starve -- that was sin. It was sin whether or not the church said so. In fact, to my mind, it made no difference what the church said about such matters. To hurt others was sinful. Didn't matter what your religion was, what your beliefs were, what god you worshipped. If you were hurting other people, you were sinning.

Who was being hurt by the fact that I had fallen in love with a man? Me? Bobby? The neighbors next door? Society at large? Who, exactly, was being cheated, or robbed, or beaten? What possible sense could it make to say that the love I felt for a man was somehow hurting someone, when clearly it had nothing to do with anyone else except me and the man I loved?

At this juncture, I was introduced to the church's concept of "self-harm." Something is sinful when it hurts others, or ourselves, the church said.

With regard to my love nest situation with Bobby, I was hurting myself because I was sinning and therefore I would lose my immortal soul and spend an eternity in hell. I was choosing temporary, fleeting physical pleasures rather than the good of my own soul.

The same argument is made in regard to masturbation, which Catholics often call self-abuse. It's not that anyone is being physically (or in any other way) hurt by an act of masturbation; it's that we're sinning and risking our eternal salvation.

I was not mature enough to realize this was a circular, self-referencing argument that ultimately made no sense. On the other hand, I was smart enough to know that loving another man -- bringing him breakfast in bed, or cuddling up with him to watch a soap opera -- was not the same as a husband beating his wife. It was not the same as a serial killer beheading his latest victim.

NATIVE AMERICANS AND SLAVES

Like most young Americans, I knew about our history of slavery and I had some vague notions about the Civil War, but at college, I began to study American history with much more seriousness. I stumbled across Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a book that had a tremendous influence on me. This history of the treatment of Native Americans literally broke my heart. From there, I moved on to the Civil War and the issue of slavery, and for the first time I began to get a glimpse of what slavery actually was -- and again, my heart was broke. Not for myself, but for all those people who had gone down these terrible paths at the hands of my ancestors. It was unspeakably evil, I thought, what we had done. It disgusted me.

Study of these matters destroyed my illusions about the founding of my country, those carefully perpetuated bits of nationalistic pap that pass for high school history. I could never again view Columbus Day in the same light.

For years I could not understand why these things distressed me so much. I tried to talk about them to other people only to receive odd looks or rolled eye balls. My interest in such matters was not shared by anyone else I knew.

I identified with Native Americans, with slaves, with the oppression they experienced, the sadness of their lives, their constant struggle for dignity, but I could not understand why.

At some point I came across an odd thought: If the Bible was wrong about slavery -- and it was -- then could it not also be wrong about other things?

This thought was like a thunderbolt. It seemed to me that I had searched my whole life for this thought, this idea, this sentiment, because slavery was clearly a moral matter. And the church had gotten it wrong. The church had changed its mind. The church no longer told slaves to be "subject to their masters," to quote St. Paul. The church had decided that slavery was immoral, was a violation of a very basic human right.

There was more. Jesus himself had never said a word about slavery. How odd. Slaves were common in the old Roman Empire, under whose heel Jesus lived. Did he truly have nothing to say about it? Nothing to say about the idea that people could own other people, could breed them like cattle, could work them until they dropped dead in the fields, could take their babies away, sell of their spouses, their kids, could trample on their dreams, crush their hopes, whip them, abuse them, annihilate their dignity and self-respect?

Nothing to say?

Really?

WHAT I LEARNED

Sketched above, briefly, is the path I followed in my understanding of homosexuality, which led me from long meditations on the nature of sin, to the study of actual sin, such as accounts of the treatment of Native Americans and slaves, but also true crime accounts of serial killers (I spent many years being fascinated by such tales).

I was also fascinated by religion, in general, and began a lifelong study of the various religious traditions. Catholicism and Christianity, of course, but also Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. At one point, I even became a Muslim. Later, I got involved with the Hare Krishnas. These days, I'm basically a Buddhist who is still open to the question of God.

In my sometimes very intense religious wanderings, I inevitably found myself asking what each particular religion had to say about homosexuality. It was all of a piece. Homosexuality was sinful, shameful, to be avoided. It was unmanly, unseemly, selfish. Its presence signified a troubled, disturbed soul. Even the Buddha, as enlightened as he undoubtedly was, did not want homosexuals to follow him in the homeless life as monks.

Yet none of these religions could provide convincing reasons for this almost universal condemnation.

We tell men not to kill each other. No explanation needed for why we do this, or why we call it sin.

We tell married couples to stay away from adultery because our collective experiences have shown that adultery threatens not only the marriage but the children involved - the safety and stability of the family itself. Adultery has real potential to do harm.

We tell people to avoid incest. It's taboo. Any study of the matter will quickly reveal why, and our current understanding of genetics only adds more proof to the table of the harmful effects of incest.

Do not steal. Do not lie. Don't mug old ladies on the street. Yes. Of course. Did God really have to explain such things to the Israelites?

But two men who love each other? Who is being harmed?

If society is being harmed, how and in what fashion, exactly?

Surprisingly there are no answers to these questions.

How can this be?

The only possible arguments left are perceived threats to the community, or to the "sacred institution" of marriage, or the supposed injustice of two people loving each other but not producing babies. These are pretty rarefied arguments, and very tenuous. They are of a similar nature to the pope declaring that gay marriage is a "threat to justice," whatever he might mean by that.

But approaching this question from the other side sheds some illumination. Many Christians are appalled at gay marriage, which they see as something of a mockery of what they consider a holy state. Some, like Rick Santorum, suggest that if we allow gay marriage, then pretty soon people will be marrying their pets.

In other words, these people are worried about what gay marriage might mean for them, for their own marriage, for their own sense of self-esteem as married people. It's all about them. It's not a question about whether two people of the same gender can love each other and make a marriage work. It's about the reaction of others, mostly Christians: How they feel about it. How it threatens their bigotry. How it frightens them. How it calls into question the entire idea that marriage is holy sacrament instituted by God himself and can never be changed or modified.

At this point, we're arguing subtle abstractions which, in the light of history, are going to prove not very satisfactory.

They are not so different from the arguments used to justify our treatment of Native Americans, whom we dismissed as illiterate savages desperately in need of the civilizing influence of white folks.

Did we take away their land, cheat them out of their land, violate our treaties? Well, never mind, because God gave us America as the promised land. It was God's will. A handful of naked savages had to get out of the way. No matter. It was our manifest destiny to colonize America and create a glorious society for the glory of God. Or whatever.

We used the same arguments on African Americans. They needed our civilizing influence, our religion, our culture. They were backward, sinful, savage. They needed Christianizing. Besides, the Bible doesn't condemn slavery. St, Paul even told slaves to be subject to their masters, to obey the lawful authorities placed over them.

In all such arguments, the good of the people being harmed is not considered. They are helpless bits of flotsam caught up in the tidal waves of history. Too bad for them.

It's only when we begin to personalize the matter, to consider slavery from the point of view of the slave, to consider what it was like for Native Americans when the white guys landed on their shores, that we begin to see the injustice being perpetrated. At this point, we leave off from the pretty abstractions and deft rationalizations and begin to confront cold, harsh realities.

Now, it seems to me, the same is being done with homosexuality. We are beginning to tire of the abstract arguments put forward by popes and priests. We see two men loving each other, living together, eating dinner together, even raising kids together, and there does not appear to be any great harm being done to anyone at all. The only people who are suffering are the bigots.

CONCLUSIONS

Slavery was a moral matter, about which the church had nothing to say for many centuries. In fact, it did not really begin to condemn slavery until the 15th Century -- rather late to the party, one might say. Only at Vatican II did the church take a firm stand declare that slavery was a poison to society.

We need to consider this very carefully. I can't think of an all-encompassing evil quite like slavery, the thought that one can own another human being, can exploit them their entire life, can take their babies, can treat them like cattle. If this is not evil, then what is? Are we to understand that such a grave evil, such a serious violation of the human person, did not attract much attention from the Catholic Church until only very recently?

What are we to make of this? The church was willing to kill heretics like the Arians - but it had nothing to say about a genuine evil like slavery? It has been willing, almost from the start, to condemn gay people out of hand, for reasons which are hard to fathom - but it had nothing to say about slavery? It had no problem going after fornicators and adulterers - but somehow owning slaves was okay?

It's not hard to conclude that the church has gotten the moral issue of slavery complete wrong, that it has, in fact, done a massive face plant on the issue.

If it can be wrong on slavery, what else might be it be wrong about? Might it be wrong about homosexuality?

The next conclusion I reached was that an institution like the church, or even the U.S. of A., has an infinite number of ways to justify and rationalize its excesses and the evil it does. If the treatment of Native Americans and slaves could be so easily justified, and rationalized, and excused away, and trivialized on such a massive level, might not its similar rationalizations for its treatment of homosexuals be also called into question? Might we not be able to now pull the curtain back and reveal the wizard behind this particular sad chapter?

Another book that literally changed my life was Foxes Book of Martyrs, stories about the treatment of Protestants at the hands of Catholics. You cannot read such a book and fail to understand the horror of inter-religious squabbling and the massive murder and death it led to. And you cannot read such a book then look at the Catholic Church in quite the same way as you used to.

But this, too, has been rationalized and explained away, and is now nothing more than a footnote in history. Does the church now claim the divine right to kill heretics? But of course not. Is not the killing of heretics a moral matter? So it was once okay to set a Protestant on fire, but now it's frowned upon?

Finally, I realized in a very concrete way that loving another human being was not -- and could not be -- wrong. When I loved, I was the happiest I'd ever been. I felt complete, healed, energized, hopeful, happy, joyful.

To tell another human being that he or she must not love someone else in a way that seems natural and right to them is monstrous, and is, itself, a far greater evil than homosexuality could ever be. I know that because I experienced both love and the absence of love. I know, from experience, what it's like to be lonely, to hurt, to want to be held, to want to share my life with someone. I know what it's like to be denied that possibility, to be forced to consider the crazy-making idea that my "love" is intrinsically disordered when it very clearly is no such thing.

The idea that a church that professes to worship the "God of love" would tell some of its members not to love each other is preposterous.

To tell God's homosexual sons and daughters that they must violate one of the 10 Commandments and bear false witness against their true selves .., what sort of madness is that?

Homosexuality has taught me that the Catholic Church is sometimes wrong about moral matters. It was wrong about slavery and killing heretics and pretending that kings had a divine right to their often despotic reigns. It has, in recent years, quietly shifted gears on divorce and remarriage. It no longer claims that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, which it once used to do, and quite vociferously.

It may, in future years, quietly shift gears on issues like contraception and sexuality as more information becomes available and ignorance on these topics is overcome. It is not the all-knowing completely Divinely-inspired and utterly unerring entity that it claims to be. It can -- and sometimes does -- fall flat on its face.

For my entire life, the church has asked me to deny what I know to be true about myself, and to pretend that there is something wrong with me, when there isn't. It has told me my love is harmful. It ain't. It has told me I'm incapable of genuine love. That's a lot of hooey.

At the same time, it has asked me to not bear false witness, to not lie. It has told me, over and over, that honesty is the best policy.

It has also told me that I must someday stand before God and render an accounting of my life, which I am quite prepared to do.

Homosexuality has forced me to realize that the truth is worth fighting for, no matter how many forces are arrayed against you. The truth is found in one's heart. That is the only truth one can actually know for certain. If the church asks me to turn my back on that truth because that truth makes it uncomfortable, I am not doing either the church or myself any favors by complying. If I were the only one in this position, the only gay man in the world, the possibility of my being in error would be very great. But I am not the only one, not by a long shot. All throughout history there have been people like me, saying the sorts of things that I have been saying.

Instead of frightening us into silence, the church might consider listening.