Rite and Reason: Questions of homosexuality and homosexual relationships are becoming major issues both in church and society, writes Tony Flannery.
Some commentators believe that fear of gay marriage securing legal recognition was one of the factors which influenced people in America to vote for George Bush.
In this country a gay couple, married in Canada, is pursuing a case through the courts for the recognition of their union, with the privileges and tax concessions that go with it. Irish politicians who have spoken on the issue seem to be adopting a position that gay relationships deserve recognition, but that classifying them as marriages is a bridge too far for the Irish voter.
In my work as a priest I do not find it easy to uphold the church's teaching on homosexuality. My experience of homosexuals, particularly men, would suggest that many of them have a deep spiritual life, and long to give this communal expression. They have spoken about their desire to belong to the Catholic Church, but they feel condemned and rejected by us. When the church describes their orientation as an "objective disorder", and condemns all homosexual acts as "intrinsically evil", it is hard to expect them to feel kindly towards the church, or to be at home there.
I honestly do not think it is either fair or realistic to expect all people of a homosexual orientation to remain celibate all their lives, and to refrain from any form of physical sexual expression.
In the present regime, the church has taken an increasingly hard line on this. A good illustration is the case of Sister Jeanine Gramick and Father Bob Nugent, an American nun and priest who worked for many years with the homosexual community, but who were forbidden to continue by the Vatican authorities in 1999 because they were not willing to give total external and internal adherence to the church's teaching.
I imagine that many priests and religious, if we were put through a similar rigorous interrogation, would equally fail the test.
And yet the anomaly of it all is that the Catholic priesthood seems to be a profession chosen by an increasing number of gay men. Statistics on this are hard, indeed impossible, to get. The American writer Donald B. Cozzens, a former rector of a seminary, claimed in the book The Changing Face of the Priesthood (2002) that some seminaries in the United States had a gay population as high as 75 per cent.
Around the same time an American newspaper, the Kansas City Star, suggested that the proportionate AIDS death rate among Catholic priests in the States was at least four times that of the general population. It must be stated that I am not aware of any scientific basis for either of these statements.
What is the situation in the priesthood in Ireland? There are even less statistics available here. But I believe there is a perception that our seminaries have a substantial number of students of homosexual orientation. It is impossible to be sure. As one student explained to me recently, students for the priesthood will do their best to hide their orientation for fear of expulsion.
As I travel the country on mission work, many priests of my age-group raise with me their concern that a great many of the younger priests seem to be homosexual. I am aware that in writing this I could be accused of being homophobic. I hope I am not. But if the priesthood has a considerably higher than average proportion of homosexuals among its ranks, is it a problem?
Since all priests take a vow of celibacy, and are presumed to live their lives without any physical sexual expression, should it make any difference what orientation they are?
At one level it doesn't, and I know that homosexual men are as entitled and as suited to be priests as anyone else. But it does say something about the current state of priesthood in the church. A celibate life was seen in the past as a positive thing, a witness to self-sacrifice, commitment and an unselfish availability to others. Two developments in the recent past have brought about big change in this area.
For a long time Catholic theology barely tolerated sex, and taught that the celibate life was a higher and holier state. It does this no longer.
The revelations of sexual abuse by some priests and religious has led people to look with a much more critical eye on the celibate life, and how it might become warped and destructive.
It would appear that heterosexual men are much less willing now to take on the celibate life involved in becoming a priest. If the priesthood consists of a majority of gay men it will, I believe, be further evidence of a dysfunctional church.
Father Tony Flannery is a Redemptorist priest and preacher of missions and novenas. He lives in Galway. Among his writings is the book From the Inside (Mercier 1999).