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An advance copy of the Italian version was made available to Reuters. This also applied to women who wanted to enter female religious communities to become nuns. In the Catholic Church, priests, nuns and monks all take vows of celibacy. The Church teaches that homosexual tendencies are not sinful in themselves, but homosexual acts are. He urged homosexuals who are already priests or nuns to be celibate and responsible to avoid creating scandal. The interview was conducted in mid-August. Less than two weeks later, on Aug. He also accused the pope of having ignored alleged sexual misconduct with adult male seminarians by former American cardinal Theodore McCarrick, The Catholic Church has been haunted for more than two decades by evidence of thousands of cases of sexual abuse of minors by clergy around the world, in countries ranging from the United States to Australia, Ireland, Belgium, Germany and Chile.
In July, McCarrick became the first cardinal to resign in nearly years after U. Church officials said allegations made in a separate investigation that he had sexually abused a year-old boy almost 50 years ago were credible and substantiated. McCarrick has said he had no recollection of the alleged abuse of the minor, but has not commented on the allegations of misconduct with the seminarians, which allegedly took place decades ago. I once read a novel about a closeted, celibate gay man named Pawel in Nazi occupied Poland.
He was frequently being tempted to have sex with underage boys but would one day shelter a young Jewish refugee and barely avoid taking him into his own bed which would eventually allow him to escape the Nazis and become a monk who would try to convert the antichrist right before Armageddon destroyed humanity. I remember being terrified of that book.
Not because of the antichrist or the Nazis, but because of Pawel. I was maybe twenty-two when I read it and all I could think about was becoming a lonely old bookstore owner who is tempted to invite teenage boys into his bed to keep warm. Would that be my life? Theoretically heroic but only given some kind of meaning by the most random of impossible plot twists?
I was gay and was doing my best to listen to my church, but did I have any role to play beyond silently hoping someone I wanted to have sex with might go on to save the world? The Catholic Church I grew up in has two foundational principles when it comes to gay people:.
A Celibate Same-Sex Couple? | The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender
I have yet to meet a person who is actually willing or able to live out both of these principles. I came out in stages. Close friends. Less close friends. Anyone else who might care. And it meant different things when I did. Growing up in a religious setting, saying I like boys was different than saying I date boys. To some that might be splitting hairs. The Catholic Church expects celibacy of its members, claiming an intrinsically disordered sexuality is beyond redemption in the form of a romantic relationship.
It was a sentiment I held on to with everything I had. If they could make it real, gripping onto both these principles at the same time, that meant I might have a chance in my church. Of course I had many others who told me they never agreed with our church to begin with, and their joy at knowing what was going on at the heart level of my life was like a cool salve.
of a Traveling Nun
But it was those who represented disapproval mixed with steadfast friendship I was desperate not to lose. My home in North Texas is a land of churches. Some are small, ethnic, strip-mall pop-ups. But most grew with the exploding population and found themselves with a congregation exponentially greater than their foundation.
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Church is more than getting talked at, and nobody should get lost in the masses, they reasoned. You have to be known by those who are capable of knowing you best to become who God wants you to be. Quickly, other denominations like my Catholic one caught on and began implementing this emphasis on community being your pew companions whose life looks like yours. Young adult singles. Young married couples. Older married couples, etc. No one came down and said you had to hang out with this or that group exclusively, but if that was your surest path to holiness, most people I knew saw their emphasis shift that way.
Add in a burgeoning career and toddlers and a new house and all the things life starts giving you in your late twenties and thirties and pretty soon making time for your community group is about the only thing outside of your immediate family you have time, let alone emotional energy for. Their evenings filled up. They stopped responding to my texts. I became just another person in the pew they enjoyed shaking hands with on Sunday.
Churches who ask celibacy of their gay members take on the assumption that while it might be difficult, with God, a celibate life is at least possible. Well, a couple reasons. And they seem happy! After college I got a job teaching at a local Catholic high school. It was the first time I was trying to live out a celibate life alone, and right at the age most Texans start pairing off like exotic birds on a BBC documentary.
Every mom in the church seemed to know of the perfect girl. I was young, good-looking enough, and I even used to be a seminarian. Girls would openly admit to being on the lookout for former seminarians like we were a forbidden fruit put back on the menu. I considered confiding in friends about being gay, but thought better.
It was a small enough community that word would inevitably get back to the school where I worked. I would see news reports about a choir director or an English teacher shown the door after Catholic administrators found out about a boyfriend or students discovered a hidden detail somehow. People from my church would casually share the story on Facebook with a warning about the creeping lack of religious freedom if anyone wanted the teacher reinstated.
But what kept me closeted even more than a fear of getting fired was a fear of losing my community as well. Texas has its progressive pockets, but they felt lifetimes away from my town. At least like this I had a happy life on the surface. I was in my early twenties so there were plenty to attend, but I always knew they would be followed by a depressive funk. Most of my friends were involved in church, so they had been marinating for years in the knowledge that this was a divine act.
Not just a decision, but a vocation. The priest would preach on the heroic and beautiful sacrifice the spouses were making. They would be open to kids. They would live for each other. They would be the very foundation of humanity. I sat through those weddings wondering why I was so unsuited for all those things.
What kind of person I must be to be incapable of such love. As one wedding ended, when we all bowed our heads to pray, I closed my eyes and imagined what it would be like to be standing in front of the altar myself.
What Christians Don’t Want to Admit About Celibacy and Homosexuality
My friends and family would all laugh because the priest was telling us to do something but we were too caught up to notice. I remember staying seated as my friends walked down the aisle, my head in my hands and tears streaming down my cheeks. What I sensed imagining my own wedding was not relief. It was the first time I had ever actually allowed myself to picture it happening to me, and it felt like the dirtiest thing I had ever done.