Alarmed by the possibility that divorced and remarried people might be welcomed as well as gays, traditionalists launched a fierce rearguard campaign against the new papacy, with a focus on what some called a “Lavender Mafia” running the church, and broke new ground in connecting this directly to the horrifying revelations of sex abuse that came to light in 2002. They also triggered near panic on the Catholic right. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being.” In the final draft of the 2014 Synod on the Family, Francis included explicit mention of the “gifts and qualities” of homosexuals, asking, “Are we capable of welcoming ?” These sentiments won 62 percent of the votes of the synod bishops - just shy of what was necessary to pass, but still evidence of a sharp shift in tone in official Catholic teaching. “I replied with another question: ‘Tell me, when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality,” Francis went on. This cultural and moral shift has not only changed the consciousness of most American Catholics (67 percent of whom support civil marriage for gay couples) and gay priests (many of whom are close to quitting) but also broken the silence that long shrouded the subject.įive years ago, Pope Francis made his watershed “Who am I to judge?” remark after being asked about a flawed gay priest. The collapse of the closet in public and private life in the past three decades has made the disproportionate homosexuality of the Catholic priesthood much less easy to hide, ignore, or deny. The massive cognitive dissonance this requires is becoming harder to sustain.
A church that, since 2005, bans priests with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” and officially teaches that gay men are “objectively disordered” and inherently disposed toward “intrinsic moral evil” is actually composed, in ways very few other institutions are, of gay men. This fact hangs in the air as a giant, unsustainable paradox. The consensus in my own research over the past few months converged on around 30 to 40 percent among parish priests and considerably more than that - as many as 60 percent or higher - among religious orders like the Franciscans or the Jesuits. In the United States, however, where there are 37,000 priests, no independent study has found fewer than 15 percent to be gay, and some have found as many as 60 percent. The Vatican has conducted many studies on its own clergy but never on this subject. We have no reliable figures on just how many priests in the Catholic Church are gay.
There was also a fair share of the more NSFW responses from “straight” men who told their stories of having sex with men, but we’ll let you explore those for yourself.Photo: Governatorato S.C.V., Direzione dei Musei, All Rights Reserved
I have to say the big difference was the feel of stubble, and the more aggressive tongue action.” Meanwhile, one man wrote: “I frenched a guy in a very drunken game of truth or dare.
“While selling Jell-O shots at the door during a holiday party, I let a big bear man kiss me on the cheek because he asked nicely, after I gave him a free Jell-O shot for buying like 10 of em.” “So I obliged and he slept well for the first time since the funeral.”Īnother straight man opened up about the time he worked as a security guard at a gay bar. His love life is in shambles so he didn’t want another gay man because he knew they would just ty to f**k him as part of the deal.
Said he just needed someone to cuddle with for comfort so he could get a good night’s sleep. “Reason being – his dad had recently died and he had been sleeping poorly since (lives alone).