Viewpoint Fear factor operative in bishops policies on gay
priests
FRANCIS DeBERNARDO
Eating live bugs? Scary! Bungee
jumping off a skyscraper? Terrifying! Being buried alive? Horrifying! Expelled
from the priesthood or seminary because of your sexual orientation? Well, now
this one is in a league all its own! Nothing on TV can match this type of
scarifying.
The producers of TVs hit show Fear Factor could take
a lesson in fright from what some bishops have been saying lately about gay
priests and seminarians.
Joaquín Navarro-Valls, a Vatican spokesperson, initiated
the fear festival with his uninformed and bordering-on-heretical comment that
gay priests ordinations may not be valid. Since then we have seen an
explosion of homophobic comments from men who should know better. Bishop John
DArcy of South Bend, Ind., said that gay men and excessively
effeminate men should not be ordained; Belleville, Ill., Bishop Wilton
Gregory, president of the bishops conference, has publicly worried that
seminaries and the priesthood may be dominated by gay men. We have
learned that Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua has not permitted the
Philadelphia seminary to accept gay men.
The current campaign of fear directed toward gay men is designed
to do three things: First, lay the blame for the current crisis on an already
persecuted minority; second, blur the distinction between sexual dysfunction
and sexual orientation; third, send a chilling message to all in the church,
gay and straight, who work for the rights of lesbian/gay people.
Since these strategies are not founded in truth, they will
ultimately fail. However, on the way to failure they will cause an immense
amount of damage.
The first and most important problem with the fear appeal is that
the bishops are doing exactly what caused the sex abuse scandal in the first
place: They avoid the real problem, which is the bishops own lack of
leadership, responsibility and accountability. This behavior repeats the
pattern of lies and subterfuge that got the church into trouble in the first
place. In finding a convenient scapegoat, they avoid having to acknowledge
their own culpability. This strategy virtually guarantees that the church will
be repeating the current crisis some time soon.
Fear will cause an already silent group to become more silent. For
many years, priests have been reluctant to acknowledge a homosexual orientation
because they understood that bishops would penalize them if they did so. Lack
of accurate information has made any intelligent and honest discussion about
gay priests impossible to conduct. The recent statements by church leaders have
increased the fear, making it more likely that gay priests will remain
silent.
This silence will not only make it more difficult for the church
to know about the reality of gay men in the priesthood, but, even worse, it
will be deadening to gay priests in many ways. Studies have shown that silence
and shame about homosexuality are major contributors to depression, addiction
and even suicide. Shame, denial and secrecy conspire to cause repressed gay men
to act out sexually in anonymous ways. By instilling fear, church leaders are
actually encouraging the aberrant behavior they are supposedly trying to
stop.
On a moral level, church leaders, in appealing to fear, show that
they are willing to sacrifice church teaching about prejudice and
discrimination against lesbians and gays. The churchs many challenges to
the faithful and society at large will now simply ring hollow since church
leaders show that they themselves are not willing to follow them. How are
church leaders ever going to speak credibly about human rights abuses when they
wont follow that same teaching as it applies to gay men in the
priesthood?
Worse yet, think about all the loyal gay and lesbian Catholics who
have been alienated by these fearful accusations. For those who work in church
institutions, the issue of fear will be operative. If gay priests are
vulnerable, how long before the jobs of other church workers are no longer
secure? For those who sit in the pews, it will be anger that motivates them.
How many of them, having weathered the scandal of clergy sex abuse, will now
leave the church because of ignorant statements by church leaders? At a time
when church leaders should be more sensitive, we hear the blaring voices of
those who are callous.
The fear factor may work for tabloid television, but it is
certainly not worthy of the leaders of a church whose founder repeatedly told
his disciples, Do not be afraid.
Francis DeBernardo is executive director of New Ways Ministry,
an outreach program for Catholic gays and lesbians.
National Catholic Reporter, May 17,
2002
|