“Gay and Catholic” Book Extras: A Tiny Post About Marriage and Priesthood

Last updated on: September 20, 2014 at 4:05 pm by Eve Tushnet

“Gay and Catholic” Book Extras: A Tiny Post About Marriage and Priesthood 2014-09-20T16:05:50-04:00 Eve Tushnet

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

These are topics I left out of the book partly because I wanted to focus on all the less-visible vocations available to lgbt/same-sex attracted Christians–and partly because I just don’t have very much to say here. Never let it be said that I let that stop me! And ETA wow, this got longer than it should have. So, not so tiny after all….

Gay/queer/ssa people do get married, to members of the opposite sex, in ways which don’t fit the stereotype of the terrified closet case or self-deceived “ex-gay.” People are complex and sexuality is weird. My sense is that the “mixed-orientation marriages” (in quotes just because this term was new to me and might be new to you) which are most solid are the ones in which the couple agrees that people are complex and sexuality is weird. They’re honest with one another, and they don’t expect the other person to solve the problem of their soul–or “fix” their sexual orientation.

Kyle Keating and Melinda Selmys contribute to Spiritual Friendship with discussion of their mixed-orientation marriages, and you can get a good round-up of SF writing on this subject here. Melinda’s second book also has some really powerful writing on her challenges within marriage and motherhood, which to me were among the strongest parts of the book.

And now I feel like I’m at the limits of what I can say, as an outsider, so I will just point you to others who speak from experience.

When it comes to religious vocations I’m even more circumspect. The biggest point I want to make is that attempts to bar gay men from the priesthood often rely on one-size-fits-all reifications of “homosexuality.” The most common one I hear is that homosexuality is a form of sexual immaturity which distorts men’s relationship to fatherhood and ability to be a father, and so it makes them unfit to be a Father as well. This is weird on a few levels: every man’s ability to be a father is distorted in some ways by his own psyche, background, and temptations; lots of gay men are good-enough fathers to actual children in their care (and “good-enough” is the relevant term here, not “perfect”); lots of straight priests would have a very hard time parenting, and that’s okay, I mean for most priests in the Western Church it isn’t even their calling.

But the biggest problem for me is just the “Homosexuality is…” part. Both “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality” are culturally-created umbrella terms, not theological categories or Aristotelian natural kinds. There are multiple heterosexualities and multiple homosexualities. In order to know what role a man’s homosexuality plays in his psyche, you need to know the actual man, not just the fact that he’s gay or same-sex attracted.

Sexual maturity is about learning to love and serve God and other people with the psyche and body we actually have, not the one we wish we had. Most people have some distortions in our sexuality, caused by some collision of personality and culture, and sexual maturity involves learning to love well whether or not all of these distortions remain or disappear. I bet you plenty of straight priests would agree that their path to sexual maturity did not involve attaining perfect Edenic sexuality, but rather, learning to serve God with honesty about all the ways their sex drives remain weird and distracting and fallen. I bet you plenty of straight married guys would say the same thing.

Sexual immaturity absolutely exists. I’m a lot more confident in talking about immature acts rather than immature people (people can be startlingly immature in some areas and mature in others), but hey, sure: Masturbation is immature. For example. But because we understand that this immature act can spring out of a lot of different urges and lacks in the psyche, rather than coming from one big obvious defect that’s the same for everybody who does it, we don’t make bizarre generalizations about people who masturbate. Ditto sexual fantasy, that creepy Mary Sue-ification of eros. There are plenty of things a candidate for priesthood could say about his experiences of sexual fantasy which would raise red flags, but those things would have to be way more specific than, “I’m sometimes tempted by sexual fantasy.”

The one-size-fits-all model of homosexuality doesn’t even address all the ways homosexuality can distort someone’s psyche and make them not a great candidate for priesthood. By relentlessly sexualizing gay people, this model even misses some of the ways we screw up!

For example, I suspect that some forms or shades of homosexuality are distortions of the longing for friendship. Our culture has made it much easier (especially, but not only, for men) to acknowledge intense, poignant longing for intimacy with another person of the same sex if we construe that longing as sexual rather than non-sexual. Somebody whose homosexuality includes this element may become clingy or overly-dependent on a friend’s approval or attention. The friend himself, or the image of the perfect relationship, may become an idol. (You’ll notice that straight people totally engage in relationship-idolatry too, though it may play out differently in our soulmate-marriage culture.) That’s something which celibate gay people can struggle with, and which could cause a lot of trouble in the hothouse environment of the seminary, monastery, etc.

I know so little about vocations to religious life, really, and I’m aware that I am fumbling around in areas where I am the opposite of an expert. But I will argue that theories of homosexuality don’t help in assessing candidates for priesthood–especially one-size-fits-all, reductive theories. Models of mature sexuality, including people who continue to experience different kinds of temptations but surrender themselves as fully as they can to God, would be more useful in this assessment. Ideally we’d have models of both sublimation and sacrifice of one’s sexual desires, since these are both ways in which celibate priests, monks, nuns etc serve God and others through or with their sexuality rather than in spite of it.

Gay Catholic Whatnot

Mackerel-Snapping

brass monkery that funky monkery

Previous Post

September 20, 2014

"Radio Is a Sound Salvation": I watch "God Help the Girl"

Next Post

September 20, 2014 What Whiskey Goes With Cheese?: I read "The Spectacular Now"

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Art Best-Of Gay Catholic Whatnot Mackerel-Snapping self-obsessed Too much is never enough Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002 January 2002

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How long did it take to rebuild Jerusalem's walls under Nehemiah?

Select your answer to see how you score.

52 days 7 years 40 days 12 months