Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

7. Homosexuality: Secreted and Scapegoated

109 Chapter 7 Homosexuality Secreted and Scapegoated Homosexuality* within the priesthood was until recently an even more secreted phenomenon than sexual abuse of minors or the sexual acting out of heterosexual priests with adult women. While many priests are homosexual , the Church’s official position devalues homosexual orientation and outlaws homosexual activity. It is once again the paradox between homosexuality as taught and homosexuality as lived within the Catholic Church that contributed to the cover-up of the sexual abuse of minors. The Theology of Sexual Orientation If desire is what you yearn to do and sex is what you do, sexual orientation determines with whom you do what you desire to do when you decide to do it. The Church teaches that homosexuality is an intrinsic disorder, and Catholic gays and lesbians are instructed never to act on their desires for sexual intimacy with same-gendered individuals. This position is an internally logical outgrowth of the requirement that every sexual act must be open to biological procreation. Since same-gendered sexual unions cannot lead to conception, Catholic teachings, in turn, refuse to legitimate enacted homosexuality. Thomas Fox summarizes the vicissitudes of late twentieth-century attitudes about homosexuality within the Church.1 As in the non-Catholic contemporary culture, voices within the Church were raised suggesting that homosexuality is a God-given gift rather than a biological error or *Homosexuality is no more monolithic than heterosexuality and can be defined in a number of ways (Mark D. Jordan, Silence of Sodom Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000], 108). Here, it refers to a male priest whose primary sexual attraction is to other adult men. 110 Perversion of Power moral evil rooted in sin.2 Jesuit John McNeill, for example, was permitted to publish a 1976 book challenging the church’s theology of homosexuality . McNeill believed then that the Church was ready to acknowledge that “the new evidence coming from the fields of scriptural studies, history , psychology, sociology, and moral theology seriously challenged every premise on which the traditional teaching was based.”3 McNeill was overly optimistic, and, in 1977, the Vatican ordered him into silence on the topic of homosexuality, an order he followed for almost a decade. Under Pope John Paul II, the institutional Church employed an increasingly strident voice in addressing homosexuality. In 1986 and again in 1992, the Vatican issued letters to bishops instructing them about “pastoral ” approaches to Catholic homosexuals.4 A 1986 Halloween letter, issued by Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reiterated the definition of homosexuality as objectively disordered and oriented toward evil. It suggested that homosexuals seeking the same civil rights afforded to heterosexuals invited violence against themselves. When Rev. John J. McNeill broke his Vatican-imposed silence to protest the 1986 letter, he was dismissed from the priesthood. The 1992 Vatican letter asserted that it was neither unjust nor undesirable to discriminate against homosexuals in certain employment situations like teaching, housing, adoption, and service in the military. The United States Conference of Major Superiors of Men and a few American bishops took exception to the Vatican’s instructions. The CMSM wrote: “We are shocked that the statement calls for discrimination against gay men and lesbian women. . . . Moreover, we find the arguments used to justify discrimination based on stereotypes and falsehoods that are out of touch with modern psychological and sociological understandings of human sexuality.”5 Thomas Gumbleton, auxiliary bishop of Detroit, publicly responded: “This [the Vatican letter] is clearly based on an ignorance of the nature of homosexuality. . . . The church should affirm and bless the gay community for teaching what it means to love.”6 That has not yet occurred . Rather, beginning in 2003, the Vatican and many Catholic bishops led vigorous attacks on the same-sex marriages and civil unions allowed in several American states.7 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) stated in a 2003 letter that allowing gays to adopt children would “actually mean doing violence to these children” since they would be raised “in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.”8 Similarly, Sean Cardinal O’Malley, archbishop of Boston, testified before the Massachusetts legislature that adoption by gays could lead to polygamy and incest and would be dangerous to society.9 The irony of Church officials apparently unselfconsciously advising society about how best to Homosexuality: Secreted and Scapegoated...