A new book offers an intimate peek at the gay sex lives of Irish Catholic Priests. Yes, you read that correctly: The gay sex lives of Irish Catholic Priests.
In his book, Thirty-Three Good Men: Celibacy, Obedience and Identity Dr. John Weafer, a former seminarian who is now married with children, interviews more than 30 men of the cloth about life inside the church.
One of the priests he spoke to said he was in a long term gay relationship and that he was “very happy with his life as a priest and a person.”
Another priest, who goes simply by the name “Fr L,” told Weafer that it wasn’t until after he joined the priesthood that he began hooking up with guys.
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“Although we both vowed it would never happen again, it did,” he said, “and I was really very confused.”
After “fumbling around” with another priest, Fr L decided to check out the local gay scene. That’s when he “discovered a strong clerical gay scene in Ireland,” although it wasn’t easy to participate in because of the need for secrecy.
He also told Weafer that there are “quite a lot of gay guys in the priesthood,” recounting a time when he walked into a gay bar in Dublin and saw least nine other priests hanging out in the bar.
“As long as priests don’t go public and don’t flaunt those actions that don’t correspond with being a celibate priest” the hierarchy will turn a blind eye, Fr L claimed.
Weafer writes that most of the men he interviewed lived celibate lives. The issue of mandatory celibacy, he says, has become a hot topic within the church in recent years. Weafer found that the majority of Irish priests were unhappy with the policy. Many of them were also “highly critical” of the fact that sexuality and, more specifically, being gay was still considered taboo in the seminary.
“If a priest was to say in the morning ‘I am gay’, he would be fired,” Weafer writes. “Priests have learned to keep their heads down.”
Since being interviewed, Fr L has abandoned the priesthood, saying he found the double standards too much to handle.
h/t: Irish Independent
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Graham Gremore is a columnist and contributor for Queerty and Life of the Law. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
Trippy
I dated a priest for 6 years, and to this day, still have a problem with my choice to do so. Basically I looked at it this way… I’m not Catholic, and I’m not the one breaking my vows.
The biggest problem I had with him was how he was actually in support of the ban on women in the priesthood and the ban on marriage for clergy. He argued the point from an historical perspective, but he never really caught on to the hypocrisy.
The most enlightening point he made was that having a boyfriend made him a better priest. He said feeling love for another person helped him better understand his role as counselor to his parishioners, especially with respect to couples and families.
I’ll add one more thing: he arranged for my first threeway (with another priest). And yeah, it was just as devilish as you might imagine.
dr_dick
I scooped this guy back in 1981, Gay Catholic Priests; A Study of Cognitive and Affective Dissonance. http://gaycatholicpriests.org/2011/06/published/
john.k
Many years ago an elderly parish priest took ill and died in a gay sauna in Dublin. There were three other priests on hand that night to administer the last rites.
One of the Irish tabloids tried to make a scandal out of it but his parishioners weren’t buying it. There was a huge turnout at his funeral. This happened just around the time the stories of paedophile priest had begun coming out. The parishioners were able to distinguish between a priest who sought his jollies with consenting adults and those who used non-consenting children.
jwtraveler
Is anyone…ANYONE surprised by this? Homosexuality and hypocrisy in the Catholic Church; I’m shocked.
Kathukid
I’m convinced that many gay men become Catholic priests as a safe way to stay hidden in the closet. Glad to hear at least some of them are enjoying a sexual life, but the hypocrisy is what bothers me the most. Hypocrites should all be exposed.
SouthwestSun
I don’t see any reason why a religious leader should be celibate. This is rooted in the antiquated view that sex is nasty or unholy. This creates a negative view toward male sexuality that is pervasive even in supposedly open minded western democracies.
john.k
@Kathukid: I completely agree. This was especially true in the years before gay lib.
@SouthwestSun: I think you might be misunderstanding the Church’s view of celibacy. It is correctly seen as a sacrifice – the giving up of something that is inherently good for the love of God. It is rue that it has sometimes had the effect of causing people to see sex as somehow not good. And of course the historic reason for making it obligatory for priests was to protect church property from predatory wives.