Over fifty years ago, when the majority of bishops and priests were heterosexual, the main reason priests left was to marry. The teaching that the Holy Spirit would come down upon the ordinand who, through the power of the Holy Spirit, would then be able to live happily without human affection and love, did not prove true for many straight priests. Unfortunately, they were never informed in the seminary about studies showing that not more than half of all priests are practicing celibacy at any given moment in time, and no more than 2% of priests admit to having observed celibacy throughout their entire lives. If seminarians were informed of these studies, might some decide to pursue another career in life, just like a woman might decide not to marry someone if she knew he suffered from an injury that caused him to be sterile?
After I was ordained, when I attended my first priests’ retreat, I went for a walk after lunch with the chancellor of our diocese, who said, “Now that you are no longer a seminarian but a priest, I have just one piece of advice for you. When you fool around, don’t do it with anyone in your own parish.” Before that encounter, I was under the impression that most priests were heterosexually oriented and lived celibate lives. I never knew that the two young priests with whom I served during my first parish assignment were both preying on our altar boys like they were groomed when they were in high school seminaries. It was only decades later, when victims from various parishes came forward, that they were removed from ministry.
Unlike many lay Catholics, and a small number of seminarians and young priests, most ordained Catholic clergy know that the vast majority of American-born bishops, priests, and seminarians today are homosexuals. Now that even seminaries in Africa are being populated with homosexuals – most of whom are sexually active – fewer straight priests are being ordained. One priest who followed me and the two predator priests at my first parish assignment was a homosexual who entered the seminary in his early thirties after leading a closeted gay lifestyle. This homosexual priest never posed a threat to young men and boys because all of his prior sexual encounters were consensual with other adult gay men. Just like San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn, who ordained Robert McElroy and then made him his live-in secretary before making him the vicar general, so too was this gay priest made the live-in secretary of the bishop and later appointed the chancellor of the diocese. A few years after being named the pastor of one of the largest parishes in the diocese – passing over many older and more qualified heterosexual priests – the gay priest left to marry a Protestant minister friend. With “gay marriages” being performed today, one can no longer assume that a priest is voluntarily leaving to marry a woman.
Continue reading at John Eighteen Thirty Seven