Catholicism, Homosexuality, and Pedophilia
Published at 15:44 on 29 September 2024
I have, to my knowledge, never written about this, despite my having grown up Roman Catholic.
The above means that this in a sense affects me personally; however, it really doesn’t affect me personally, since neither I nor (so far as I know) anyone close to me was ever directly affected by child sexual abuse in the Church. The closest it got to me was one parish I was a member of as a child of age six having one of its priests (this was long enough ago that it was common for multiple priests to be assigned to a single parish) suddenly depart the parish under a cloud. That particular priest, Fr. Mark, was responsible for ministering to children.
The Church has historically had no role whatsoever for openly queer Catholics. Sexual orientations other than heterosexual and cisgendered have been considered evil and sinful, period. This has changed some in recent decades, but there is still very little role for queers in the Church.
Approved life paths in the Church have historically been limited to heterosexual marriage and family life, or if “called,” to pursue a vocation in the Church. Given that, it is pretty obvious where queer Catholics, uninterested in heterosexual marriage, have traditionally tended to end up. The lack of interest in heterosexual family life gets interpreted as the “calling.”
A friend of mine who dropped out of seminary reports that a large majority (I believe he said 70% or more) of his fellow seminarians were gay. Those who don’t drop out (nowadays a distinct minority) end up becoming clergy.
I have written before of why I do not personally consider myself gay, and my incompatibility with gay male subculture. But that’s just me. Most queer men are gay, and have the typical (i.e. irrepressibly strong) male sex drive. Put it all together and you have a real problem: men with strong sex drives and no acceptable official outlet for them.
Parish priests do, of course, have some unofficial outlets available for them. They can visit gay sex clubs or cruisy parks, public washrooms, and/or highway rest areas. They can masturbate. Or they can take advantage of their ready access to underage boys, priests having traditionally being trusted to work unattended with children.
To reiterate, that’s a real problem.
It is made all the worse by there being a shortage of priests. Because of course there is. The sexual revolution gave queer Catholics other more honest options for living, and most of us have availed ourselves of such options. What’s left is the worst of the closet cases… and a persistent and growing shortage of priests.
So when the Church hierarchy learns of yet another pedophile priest in their midst, they have every incentive to cover it up, because reporting the priest’s crimes to the authorities would exacerbate the already severe shortage. So of course there are recurring sex scandals in the Roman Catholic Church. It would be a surprise if, given the general parameters outlined above, it was any other way.