The following letter is a response to John Shuster's essay in the Dec. 6 issue of In the Vineyard: 

I'm grateful to John Shuster for daring to say in public what many people have been saying in private for quite some time now in American Catholic theological and ecclesial circles.  This lavender-takeover analysis has been whispered about for several decades among many theologians in the U.S., particularly those on the liberal end of the theological spectrum, many of whom are married priests and nuns.  It's good to bring the discussion into the light.

At the same time, I find Shuster's analysis disquieting and even dangerous.  The most dangerous aspect of the lavender-takeover analysis of the current ills of the priesthood is that, even when it tries to avoid stigmatizing gay men, it still trades in ugly stereotypes about gay men.   It reinforces those stereotypes.

For instance, the observation that many gay priests lack strength to be credible leaders because they are narcissistic, petty, and vindictive, is classic textbook rhetoric rooted in a belief that homosexuality represents arrested psychological development.  As is well known, there have been periods in the past when psychotherapists believed that gay people had simply not matured sufficiently to appreciate "adult" (that is, heterosexual) attraction and relationships.  Because they were arrested in their psychological development, they became narcissistic and vindictive, ready to lash out at a world at which they were angry because it reminded them of their tragic immaturity.

This pseudo-scientific analysis led to social structures that sought to control and marginalize gay people, especially gay men, since gay men were believed to be susceptible to blackmail, to be malicious and weak, and unable to exercise leadership positions in organizations due to these shortcomings.  As a result, so the pseudo-scientific theory used to propose, gay men tended to form secret enclaves, defensive subcultural places in mainstream society in which they could console and protect each other while tragically reinforcing the very characteristics that justified their exclusion from positions of responsibility.

This pseudo-scientific analysis of the etiology of homosexuality and of the crippling psychological traits attendant on arrested psychological development has long ago been discounted by bona fide psychologists.   It was soundly repudiated as long ago as the 1980s when the APA looked at carefully conducted studies of the psychological maturity of comparison groups of gay and straight men, and found no correlation between a homosexual orientation and psychological disturbance.

It is disturbing to find this noxious and widely discredited theory of arrested development – with all its attendant suspicion of gay men as weak, vindictive, petty, unable to exercise leadership – still being promoted in theological and ecclesial circles.  We have a long way to go, we American Catholics.  Because we have talked about these issues only in whispers, we have not brought our prejudices into the light and examined them in the light, even as the culture at large has moved far down a path to open discussion of these matters.

What the analysis of Shuster (and of many liberal American Catholic theologians) completely overlooks is the historical evidence that gay men can, in fact, be outstanding leaders.  To cite only one among many examples: in the culture of classical Greece, gay men were considered to be fighters par excellence, model soldiers who would give their all to defend their comrades.

I also find Shuster's analysis conspicuously overlooking the ways in which the institutional church and clerical culture still punish openly gay priests or seminarians.  Can Shuster be unaware of the papal concern to weed gays out of the seminaries, as if in doing so, the church will solve the sexual abuse crisis?  Is Shuster seriously implying that it is easy to be openly gay in seminaries or the priesthood today?  If so, I must say that my observations and experiences have led me to quite different conclusions than his have done.

I know quite a few gay priests.  All are closeted, afraid to be seen in public in any setting in which they might be identified as gay.  In many cases, the closet the church imposes on these men deforms them and causes them to behave in socially and ethically inappropriate ways.  It is not their homosexuality, but how the church forces them to deal with it, that is the problem.  I also know quite a few seminarians who were expelled from the seminary with great ugliness when it was discovered that they were gay – and this happened in recent years, not in the "benighted" years prior to Vatican II.

Shuster's analysis overlooks another topic that demands much more careful inspection.  Shuster implies that the gay men entering the priesthood have historically been largely aware of their sexual orientation, and sought refuge in the priesthood because they knew it was a gay-affirming place.  In my experience, a large percentage of gay priests were totally unaware that they were gay at the time they chose a clerical vocation.  In my experience, many gay priests continue to be unaware that they are gay.

This lack of awareness of their nature, and the lack of access to accurate scientific information about human sexuality for many seminarians, often results in psychological disturbance.  A homosexual orientation is not the problem in many cases, for gay priests.  Lack of the tools to understand and acknowledge one's sexual nature is the problem.  This repression can result in dangerous acting out, in abusive relationships, in depersonalized sexual encounters, in attempts to use sex as a way of maintaining power over others.

Some closeted and self-loathing gay priests I have encountered are among the most homophobic people I have ever met.  In some cases, these men torment brother priests who, in their view, do not maintain the masculine facade as successfully as the closet cases believe they do.  This results in a toxic culture of pretend-masculinity in many seminaries and rectories, which priests who have married sometimes appear to wish to encourage.

Play acting is not going to save the church.  Posturing at being manly men won't rebuild the church.  Honest, loving discourse in which troubling topics are examined in the full light of day will help us far more.

In the last analysis, I hear Shuster proposing that manly-men leadership is the best criterion for exercising pastoral ministry in the church.   If this is the case, I must respectfully disagree.  Pope John Paul II has become an icon of Catholics on the right, in part because he was such a "true" man, athletic, decisive, willing to step on those who disagreed with him in order to make a point.  There's a whole subculture of discourse on the right which maintains that, if we could only retrieve the priesthood for manly men like John Paul II, we'd save the church.

John Paul II is often compared with Paul VI, the nervous-Nelly type who couldn't make up his mind, who dithered, who anguished over the decisions he made.  Paul VI was, in this view, a "weak" (read: gay) leader who feared stepping on the toes of others, and who thus could not take decisive steps.

Given a choice, I'd take the latter form of pastoral leadership over the former any day.  As a gay man in the church, I have suffered far more under the Ronald Reagan style of leadership of John Paul II than the nervous-Nelly style of Paul VI.  In my view, the latter is closer to the servant leadership Jesus himself depicts for us in the gospels.

W. D. Lindsey

W.D. Lindsey has M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in theology from University of St. Michael's College in Toronto, an M.A. in English from Tulane, and a B.A. from Loyola, New Orleans. He has written Singing in a Strange Land (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1991), Shailer Mathews's Lives of Jesus: The Search for a Theological Foundation for the Social Gospel (Albany: SUNY P., 1997), and Religion and Public Life in the Southern Crossroads: The Showdown States (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira, 2004) (with Mark Silk).