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Catholic inverted homophobia

In Why Is the Homophobic Catholic Church Filled With Closeted Gay Prie... Mark Dowd says public homophobia/private homosexuality goes beyond hypocrisy.

We interviewed clerics and ex-seminarians in the UK, US and Rome and uncovered a huge irony: the very institution that teaches that the homosexual orientation is "intrinsically disordered" attracts gay candidates for the priesthood in numbers way in excess of what one would expect, based on numbers in society at large. One seminary rector based on his own experience told me the number was at least 50%. Gay Catholics like me will appreciate another irony with the news of Cardinal Keith O'Brien's resignation: that the very man whose trenchant rhetoric on the subjects of gay adoption and marriage has been brought down by accusations of improper same-sex behaviour from no less than four men who crossed his path in the 1980s, either as a seminary rector or as archbishop of Edinburgh.

The knee-jerk reaction is to scream "hypocrite", but I take a more measured view. The coming to light of these tales is a positive development.

... those who seek to cover their own guilty tracks by the uncharitable nature of their words know that a watching public is getting wiser to some of the unfortunate mind games that have been played out over the decades.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on March 1, 2013 at 2:26am

"... those who seek to cover their own guilty tracks by the uncharitable nature of their words...."

Can it be protection by projection?

I used to precinct-walk (prior to elections) in a neighborhood where I heard from people who'd just worked their way out of the day labor part of the city. Their condemnations of that part of the city and the people who lived there exceeded, in bitterness, anything I'd ever heard. I wondered why, until I realized that their condemnations probably served to keep them from falling from their new status to their former status.

A young gay in Catholic schools hears priests endlessly attack his orientation and perhaps hopes he will escape his homosexuality if he's in a place where he hears more such attacks on it.

And guess what? Instead of escaping, he's got company.

An SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous) chapter where I once lived was well known as a place where repressed gay men could meet other repressed gay men.

My dad, a Catholic, owned a small meat-and-grocery store and while I was away at college a younger brother delivered to the parish rectory. He told us he often saw liquor delivery trucks at the rectory.

When one means of escape fails, were the priests using another?

Their Church teaches that unhappiness in this life doesn't matter, as this life is simply preparation for another life.

They would have been motivated, not to change, but to die.