Sir, – So the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin is to send his trainee priests to Rome. (News, August 2nd). As for Maynooth seminary, he says, "There seems to be an atmosphere of strange goings-on there, it seems like a quarrelsome place with anonymous letters being sent around. I don't think this is a good place for students".
Surely these “strange goings-on” are an excellent opportunity for Dr Martin to discuss sexuality with his seminarians? Instead, he is like a father who is afraid to discuss the facts of life with his children, sending them off to the imagined safety of a Roman seminary.
It is a fact of life that a proportion of clerical students are gay. Not only that, but they are happy being gay.
Does Dr Martin really believe that by sending future trainees to Rome they will not have to face these issues? They may dodge them for a few years, but ultimately, when they are ordained and enter real life, their priesthood will not protect them from an unexplored, and possibly repressed, human nature. We have ample evidence of the damage done by sexually-frustrated clergy in recent decades.
Maynooth sounds like a very healthy place where young men are asking serious questions about their identity – before ordination rather than after.
– Yours, etc,
DECLAN KELLY
Dingle,
Co Kerry.
Sir, – The use of the term “gay subculture” is laced with innuendo of seediness and wrongness that needs to be challenged.
If the seminarians were using Tinder or a heterosexual app to make contact with women, would there be a furore about a “heterosexual subculture” among seminarians? Do people really think that heterosexual seminarians are not using dating apps?
The underlying issue has been begging to be addressed for a long time and once again has got eclipsed by threads of judgement and reactivity.
What are we doing to create a new paradigm of spirituality that supports seminarians (and young people in the general population) to integrate their sexuality as part of their spirituality? What message do they get when they here that “action” can only be taken if allegations are substantiated.
Probably the same message that I got when I was in Maynooth – that there is something intrinsically wrong in me. Same old story. Same damage.
– Yours, etc,
ANTHONY BOLAND
Co Waterford.
Sir, – Yet again the Catholic Church handles a crisis in the usual way. Pass it on to someone else.
Are these the kind of men we want to lead us for the future? I don’t think so.
– Yours, etc,
GABRIELLE WHITTY
Dundrum,
Dublin 16.
Sir, – For Irish seminarians, there’s really nothing to lose in moving from Maynooth to Rome. Wider choice of pizza, education, dating apps, dates – not to mention the elegant, institutionalised cover-up of the inhumanity of celibacy that only centuries of Roman experience can provide.
In this latter regard, we must accept the unhappy truth: Maynooth is for amateurs.
– Yours, etc,
BRIAN McINTYRE
Howth,
Co Dublin.