There are good and decent gay-friendly folk from both points of view. Allowing people to choose their life and to respect their choice of belief or disbelief is true democracy.

Can we please have this person removed again. Reading this vile creatures views on anything makes me ill.
Nothing that this homophobe writes is anywhere even near correct. Could someone please put it back in the trash where it belongs. Thanks…

666, you got nothin’. Nothing to say, nothing to add, nothing to contribute. You need to return to the pages of the fairy-tale book, underneath the bridge, and skip any ideas of coming up to collect a toll from anybody. Shrek was a good troll; you’re a bad one. Bad troll, 666.

First is the fact that outing someone is repugnant to me unless they are being public hypocrites and thereby harming others. Do all gay priests fit this definition? To paraphrase Clinton, that all depends on the definition of “gay.” Very few priests would self-identify as “gay.” In catholic parlance, being gay means to be publically living an openly homosexual lifestyle. The church strongly discourages the use of the word. Officially the RC church does not even believe in homosexuality, though they use the term in certain documents. They believe that everyone is heterosexual, but that some people are afflicted with “same-sex attraction.”

Same-sex attraction is believed to be a particular effect of original sin for which an individual is not culpable as long as he tries to repress it and never act on it or publically disclose it. That is, he is encouraged to become a masterful liar.

This causes my concern with homosexual priests. Most of them are psycho-sexually immature and repressed to the point where it is almost pathological. Those who are attracted to the priesthood as a means of helping them repress their sexuality become so inculcated in a twisted view of human sexuality that they would almost have to be deprogrammed in order to be considered responsible for their actions.

The Roman episcopacy and papacy are so much more despicable than the presbyterite (the priests and deacons) in perpetuating this evil.

The RC church uses the term “magisterium” to refer to the teaching authority of the church. In modern terms the magisterium simply means the consensus teaching of the world’s bishops (the episcopacy) in consultation with the pope (the papacy). The RC church is not the top-down dictatorship that many believe. If the Bishop of Rome makes a declaration on his own without consultation of his brother bishops, it cannot be said to carry the authority of the magisterium.

Now, the problem is that the bishops often act in their own self-interest rather than with magnanimity. When they do so as a group and their self-interest is confirmed by the pope, it becomes the official teaching of the church with all the weight and authority of the magisterium. Thus infantilized sexuality and misogyny become the law of the church.

Time and again throughout the recent sex abuse scandals, the offending priests were horribly served by their bishops. These priests — criminals to be sure — were often just shuttled from one parish to another without being given any help or guidance. When victims came forward they were almost universally vilified and made to look like they were attacking the “Holy Mother Church.” In a certain way, both the priests and the abuse victims became victims of the bishops.

When the scandals became public and the bishops realized they had to do something, what did they do? They wrote new policies on how to remove priests from their duties and how to shield assets from victims’ claims. But they did not enact a single reform on themselves. Not a single bishop was removed from his cathedra because of his poor administration. A few resigned or retired because of their own personal sexual escapades. Cardinal Law even got promoted to a cushy new job in Rome.

Indeed, the bishops tried to shield themselves from blame by saying that it was caused by “homosexual” priests. Just this past week it was reported that the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice (which was given a $2 million grant to study the causes of the scandals) told the bishops in a preliminary report that there is virtually no correlation between the sexual orientation of the priest and the propensity to become a sexual abuser. We all have known that for years, but the bishops had to hear it from their own researchers.

Now the bishops are stuck trying to explain the pogrom against homosexuals in the seminary. The AP reported that one bishop asked the lead researcher point-blank whether homosexuality should be considered in evaluating candidates for the priesthood. She told him no, if they thought that would lead to less abuse.

So, in the end, what good comes from outing priests? If it leads to a recognition of the fact that, by the church’s own estimates, 25%-35% of their priests are “same-sex attracted” and they couldn’t function without them, then fine. But if it simply causes more pain for already tortured souls, then why bother?

If a website was opened to expose every hypocrisy in the world, everybody would find their name on that site sooner or later. You can’t use hypocrisy to justify violating a person’s privacy, even in this situation.

No person should ever be forcibly outed, no matter the situation. Either sexuality is a private matter, and each person has a choice whether or not to discuss it, or it’s not. You can’t, or at least shouldn’t, have it both ways.

If gays don’t wish to be judged, why put up a site to judge other gays.

You say, “for good reason”. Well, straights and Christians, say “for good reason”.

It is clear that the gay proponents of this site,are acting on hate, bigotry, and judgmentalism.

You are wrong. You are tarring a group of people with the same brush, just as all gay men were tarred as pedophiles a very short time ago.

There are good priests; there are bad priests. You may not want to believe that, but the church is more than the sum of its clerics.

As for shamefully defending my friends, if you had read my post you would see that that I publicly debated their Bishop, and in so doing said things they could not say.

At this time, the people in the pews do not place a lot of stock in the Bishops Conferences. Start attacking priests that they love, and whom are in the front line of many other causes, may do more harm than good, and may not be the best strategy.

DaveW, this is a forum for debate and discussion, not judgment and derision. You devalue your opinion when you deride others. You know nothing of my friends, and where they are at in their own journey in life. They are not necessarily the cause of all of our problems, but they hold potential to be part of the solution. I for one will not isolate them completely.