Tag: Gay Priests

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Sex, Celibacy, and Priesthood: A Bishop’s Provocative Inquisition

Sex, Celibacy, and Priesthood is a pastoral review of the research, sexual activity, and celibacy among Roman Catholic priests. It features heart-wrenching, anonymous, and candid self-disclosures about the sexual behaviors of heterosexual, gay, and bisexual priests. It explores the meaning of celibacy in accordance with Roman Catholic Church teachings, doctrine, and canon law. It is an honest, raw, and frank study of current perspectives on celibacy in light of priestly sexual behaviors. This new book allows for Roman Catholic priests to speak out in their own voices about their struggles and conflicts between celibacy and their sexual activities.

Seminaries, formation teams, religious superiors, pastoral care counselors, spiritual directors, therapists, and anyone fascinated or concerned about the sexual scandals within the rank and file of the Roman Catholic Church will find Sex, Celibacy, and Priesthood a candid and transparent study.

In a time when most people are disgusted with the sexual scandal cover-ups, smokescreens, and a veil of secrecy provided by many Roman Catholic bishops and their apologists, Sex, Celibacy, and Priesthood tells the truth and encourages us to think imaginatively and compassionately about an issue of crucial importance to the Roman Catholic Church at this time in history.

About The Author:
The Most Reverend Lou Bordisso is Bishop Emeritus within the Old Catholic faith tradition serving the Diocese of California, American Catholic Church. He is a religious with the Order of St. John Vianney (OSJV) providing pastoral and spiritual care for both ordained clergy and lay ministers.

Prior to being received into the Old Catholic faith tradition and the Diocese of California, Bishop Bordisso was a Roman Catholic vowed religious. Bishop Bordisso has served as Presiding Bishop for the American Catholic Diocese of California and as Provincial for the Order of Saint John Vianney (OSJV).

Like the vast majority of the clergy in the Old Catholic/Autocephalous tradition, Bishop Bordisso is bi-vocational. Bishop Bordisso has been licensed as a marriage and family therapist for over two decades.

Bishop Bordisso is program host for the public and community access television and online broadcast, “Political Inquisitions” which addresses ethics, morality, spirituality, and politics, interviewing political and community leaders about a variety of distinguished topics.

http://tinyurl.com/42scx5x

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Facebook blackmailers target 100 gay priests in Italy

At least 100 gay priests across Italy were blackmailed by two people who met them on social networking websites, a media report said Friday.
The pair asked the priests for up to 10,000 euros each to keep quiet about their virtual sex sessions via webcam and in some cases, actual encounters, Italian weekly Panorama reported.

The weekly cited a judicial probe spearheaded by magistrates in the town of Isernia in Italy’s southern Molise region, which led to the arrest of Diego Maria Caoggiano, 35, and Giuseppe Trementino, 30, on July 26.

The men live together in the town of Bagnoli del Trigno, where they have been placed in house arrest, Panorama said.

Police found the contact details of over 100 priests on computers and mobile phones of the suspects, as well as video recordings of sex sessions involving priests and incriminating messages in what prosecutors described as a ‘disturbing’ case.
Trementino, a despatch rider, told Panorama through his lawyer that he had initially been seduced by a priest who he had delivered a parcel to and had sex with soon after they exchanged phone numbers.

The priest had made regular payments to him via Postpay ‘often of his own free will’ and had offered to buy him a car, Trementino claimed.

The priest reported Trementino to police in May but he, meanwhile, met another priest on the social networking website Facebook.

Trementino claimed to have spent three days with the priest in a hotel in Rome during a conference, and said the priest paid for his rail ticket and gave him 300 euros ‘to buy canabis, alcohol, condoms and lubricants’.

Trementino claimed he was soon inundated with erotic messages and requests for sex from ‘dozens’ of priests with whom he came into contact on Facebook and Messenger.
‘I would begin to speak to them using dirty talk and they would get undressed and masturbate,’ he said. ‘I would get up to five requests a day, and even had one from France,’ he said.

‘Asking them for money was a way of filtering the requests, which had got out of hand,’ he said, adding that he became ‘disgusted’ by the priests’ ‘absurd’ and ‘asphixiating’ needs.

Caggiano, who had access to Trementino’s computer and to his friends’ social networking profiles, appears to have been the chief blackmailer, asking some priests for up to 10,000 euros, according to investigators.

There are ‘a multitude of priests’ in Italy who are keen for sexual contact via the internet, where they exchange information on the casual partners they meet there, Isernia prosecutors said, cited by Panorama.

http://tinyurl.com/3vb4mvn

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The Church of England has double standards when it comes to gay bishops

The latest evidence of prejudice against homosexual people in the Church of England has come from the leaked Colin Slee memo and advice that Archbishop Rowan Williams sought in order to get around the Equality Act (2010). This counsel was to ensure that a gay man, ie Jeffrey John, was not appointed as bishop of Southwark. A cunning checklist was devised, consisting of five questions:

• whether the candidate had always complied with the Church’s teachings on same-sex sexual activity;
• whether he was in a civil partnership;
• whether he was in a continuing civil partnership with a person with whom he had had an earlier same-sex relationship;
• whether he had expressed repentance for any previous same-sex sexual activity; and
• whether (and to what extent) the appointment of the candidate would cause division and disunity within the diocese in question, the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion.
By my reckoning, Jeffrey John fails on five out of five. One could be forgiven for thinking that this is a list deliberately designed to exclude him.

Recently, Chris Sugden and Colin Coward debated the issue of gay bishops on Radio 4’s Sunday programme. Sugden seemed determined to conflate homosexuality with promiscuity and adultery. However, Jeffrey John is a man in a faithful relationship with his life partner. Normally the church would commend this sort of long-term and committed relationship – but the rules change when the two people in question are the same gender.

I wonder whether the checklist above is remotely just? If these questions are put to homosexual candidates, then I would hope that heterosexual candidates were asked equivalent questions:

• whether the candidate had always complied with the Church’s teachings on sexual activity being solely within matrimony;

• whether he had expressed repentance for any previous premarital sexual activity.

Of course, these questions seem inappropriate, invasive and irrelevant. The sex life of my bishop is of zero interest to me, as long as it attests to the values of love and faithfulness that we expound in the church. Moreover, I agree with the comments from the Archbishop of York backing William and Kate’s premarital sexual activity when he said that many modern couples want to “test the milk before they buy the cow”.

Please, let us make some attempt to be even-handed and avoid such blatant hypocrisy.

http://tinyurl.com/3khc5v5

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Hundreds of Roman Catholic priests across the United States have died of AIDS-related illnesses

Remarkable series at The Kansas City Star. See the full series HERE!

Catholic priests are dying of AIDS, often in silence
Hundreds of Roman Catholic priests across the United States have died of AIDS-related illnesses, and hundreds more are living with HIV, the virus that causes the disease. It appears priests are dying of AIDS at a rate at least four times that of the general U.S. population.

Priests speak out in national survey
Six of 10 Roman Catholic priests in The Kansas City Star’s survey know at least one priest who died of an AIDS-related illness, and one-third know a priest currently living with AIDS.

• About The Star’s survey
AIDS, gay-related issues trouble many denominations
The Roman Catholic church may be the nation’s largest denomination, but it isn’t the only one grappling with the issues of homosexuality and AIDS. Many denominations have lost clergy to AIDS, and numerous churches are mired in battles over whether to ordain homosexuals or to perform same-sex marriages.

Homosexuality, AIDS and celibacy: the church’s views
The Roman Catholic Church has no national policy on dealing with priests who have HIV or AIDS. Nor does the church have specific guidelines on educating priests about sexuality. Priests and seminarians are expected to rely on church doctrine on homosexuality and celibacy and to follow their bishop’s or superior’s lead in ministering to colleagues afflicted with AIDS.

Florida priest finds acceptance after devastating news
In early 1989, the Rev. Dennis Rausch was thinking about leaving the priesthood. Though ordained for nearly a decade and serving as Catholic chaplain at a Florida university, Rausch felt unfulfilled. Then he tested positive for HIV.

MARK ZIEMAN: EDITOR AND VICE PRESIDENT
Priests’ stories carry crucial messages
The credibility and worth of any newspaper series should rest squarely on the stories themselves, not on columns such as this one. Our series beginning today on AIDS in the Catholic priesthood is no exception. That’s why I urge you to read our coverage for yourself.

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Vatican investigates gay-friendly Mexican bishop

Bishop Raul Vera Lopez of Saltillo, Mexico has told a Mexican newspaper he has received “a series of questions” from the Vatican about his support for the San Elredo community, which holds positions on homosexuality that are contrary to Church teaching.

“There has been a call from the Vatican and I am ready to clear things up … I have to respond to a series of questions that Vatican City has sent me about my work with homosexuals,” Bishop Vera told the newspaper Zocalo.

He said the Vatican inquiry has come about “because a Catholic agency based in Peru, ACI Prensa, has made false claims that I promote homosexual relations.”

ACI Prensa is Catholic News Agency’s Spanish-language sister publication.

He accused ACI Prensa of distorting his work. “They allege that I am against the magisterium of the Church and unfortunately they are driven by prejudice and phobias against the homosexual community.”

The request for clarification from the Holy See, he insisted, “is because this Catholic news agency has said outrageous things.”

Bishop Vera told the newspaper, “In the Diocese of Saltillo, we have very clear objectives. We work with (the gay community) to help them recover their human dignity, which is frequently attacked at home and in society, and they are treated like scum.”

“I am not against the magisterium of the Church, nor do I promote dishonesty. It would go against my principles to promote depravity and immorality,” he said.

In response to the Vatican inquiry, the coordinator of the San Elredo community, Noe Ruiz, told Zocalo the group would be willing to leave the diocese in order to prevent the work of Bishop Vera from being hindered.

“If tomorrow they come tell Bishop Raul Vera, ‘You are endangering your work in Saltillo because of such a small community, a network of barely 600 people,’ it would not be worth the risk,” he said.

In March of this year, Bishop Vera published a statement on the diocesan website expressing support for the “sexual, family and religious diversity forum.” The event was aimed at “eradicating what some sectors of the Church believe about homosexuality” — especially the belief “that homosexual actions are contrary to God.”

Father Robert Coogan, the American priest who founded San Elredo, maintained that the group’s work is not contrary to the teachings of the Church.

He added: “How can a person with same-sex attraction have a fulfilling life? And the only answer the Catechism gives is to tell them to be celibate, and that is not enough.

http://tinyurl.com/444zngg