Following the Vatican's controversial ban on priests who have 'deep-seated homosexual tendencies', two gay men who have worked as priests in Dublin talk to Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Dave Donnellan, a gay former priest, argues that the Catholic church needs to listen to gay people and to address its entire theology of sexuality
I was ordained in 1989 after seminary training for the Holy Ghost Fathers at Kimmage, in Dublin, serving for the next 11 years as priest. I spent nine of those years on the missions in Asia. I did not realise I was gay before entering the seminary. That did not really assert itself until the last years of my training. For me it was a private matter and not an issue.
In Asia I told colleagues, lay and clerical, and they were very supportive. Indeed my experience involving work colleagues - clergy (mostly Irish), and lay people, was excellent. There was nothing negative.
But then we were so busy, there was so much work to do, there wasn't time to dwell on it.
My decision to leave the priesthood had nothing to do with being gay. It hadn't to do with any sort of intellectual or faith crisis either. It was more of a gut thing related to the sex abuse scandals at home. And I was coming up to 40. If I hadn't decided to leave then I would probably have just drifted on.
Leaving happened over a number of years and with my realisation, as a missionary, that things had changed fundamentally where the church in Ireland was concerned. My relationship with the church in Ireland, from abroad, was umbilical, and soon I no longer felt sustained by it. The people's support for the church (in Ireland) diminished considerably. That had a big effect on me.
I returned to Dublin and studied personal development and IT for a couple of years before leaving the priesthood. Being a priest was a very positive experience for me and I wouldn't change a second of it.
The attitude of the church, as institution, to gay people can be very difficult and does have an enormous impact when working on the ground. It impacts very negatively. How I experience myself as a gay person and how it (the church) sees me are very different things.
The church does not recognise gay people as a class or group. It tends to see us as defective heterosexuals whose sexual development is stunted in some way - as objectively disordered, as prone to the intrinsically evil. We are seen as heterosexuals who have not matured effectively as people.
In a sense we are invisible to the church. I believe that, ultimately, gay people have to sit down with the bishops and leading church authorities and say 'this is who we are'. We have never experienced such engagement. It is a remote possibility in the short term and would be very difficult for both sides.
Why do I remain a Catholic? I was born and raised a Catholic. I drew a lot of sustenance, idealism, and inspiration from the Catholic tradition. It's a fabulous tradition, just one small part of it has to do with homosexuality and that is seriously flawed. It has too much to offer for me to walk away.
It is bigger than one man, even the Pope.
The reason it has become so hysterical around this issue in recent years is because Roman Catholic teaching on sexuality could collapse like a house of cards. If one element is taken away the whole lot will come down. That's because it centres on one thing alone - that sex is about procreation. If it admits it has been wrong on this in one area of human sexuality the whole teaching comes into question. It is dysfunctional. Its increasingly hysterical reaction at the onset of reality is indicative of how unsteady is the ground it is on.
That there is something not right about Catholic teaching on sexuality is clear as day to someone who is gay. Its attitude to people with "deep-seated homosexuals tendencies" like myself; its claim we cannot properly relate to men or women is deeply offensive and does not have a shred of empirical evidence to support it. It is very provocative, totally baseless, and deeply offensive.
Despite this I would love to be in a situation where a group of gay priests/people/Christians could sit down with the people who make these decisions and just talk. They (the church authorities) suggest an incredible lack of lived gay experience. They just haven't got a clue. Really, it is that lack of awareness and knowledge which reduces the credibility of the document.
On the ground, gay priests get great support from colleagues and their orientation is not an issue. They do a very good job usually with enormous empathy and compassion because they understand the struggles that have to be contended with.
Some survive by putting documents like this to one side and just getting on with it. Generally too, they have the support of their superiors. Some live double lives. They say Mass on a Sunday and have a relationship besides.
Invisiblity is very important. The real difficulties begin when you become visible. As a gay person you need support, which is why a "so-called gay culture" is so, so important.
For me faith is fundamental to who I am. It is very, very real still, but we are invisible to the institutional church. I would like to be able to make a contribution still, but it is difficult to see how that can happen.
As a visible gay person it is difficult to see how I can contribute to the Catholic church.
But being a Catholic is still very important to me. It is very difficult to walk away from something that has sustained you for so many years.
The church needs to address its entire theology of sexuality and its prejudice against homosexuals, absolutely. And gay Catholics have a hunger to be listened to.
The equation of paedophilia with homosexuality by the Vatican is part of the cover-up of abuse, says one Dublin gay priest no longer in active ministry
I am still a priest, but no longer in active ministry. After many years working in a busy Dublin city centre parish in 1989 I left the congregation I had joined in 1975. I was ordained in 1984 and have never applied for laicisation.
I was always aware I was gay and it would have been known to the congregation when I entered. Even then, in the mid-1970s, there were quite vocal debates, especially in the western church, on whether it was acceptable to be knowingly gay and in ministry.
For me it was not an issue. It was part of what I brought to religious life and the priesthood. Some colleagues were aware and others didn't want to know. In a quasi-celibate environment sex and sexuality were not overt in conversation. Sexuality was ignored rather than tolerated. Any discussion of it was usually in the form of innuendo or adolescent-type comment.
Being gay played a part in my decision to leave, but not the primary part. I was in a community of 23 when I left, nine of them active addicts, mainly to alcohol. I was a workaholic and felt very unsupported. Looking ahead I could see no role which would sustain a long-term commitment on my part.
During my time in the parish I became known as a priest gay and lesbian people could come to for confession or counselling. In the 1980s, and as a result, I was asked to go to Clonliffe by Archbishop Kevin McNamara to help prepare pastoral guidelines for gay people. I went in good faith and was met there by his secretary and two other priests, one a canon lawyer.
I got a heavy grilling on moral theology. I felt leaned on and that I had been set up. They asked me to put in writing what I had said. I sent them the pastoral guidelines (for gay people) published by San José diocese in California and heard nothing from them again.
In those days life was so busy (that) being a workaholic was a good way to manage a lot of things including homophobia and theological censure which did not explore the phenomenon of human sexuality. It arose from a very narrowed perspective on human experience dressed down as theology.
I believe that in the Christian tradition being homosexual has something to do with the purpose of loving. The church does not see it that way. I recall as a novice in the 1970s a Vatican document using the word evil in connection with homosexuality. It was the first time a distinction was made between the disposition and homosexual acts. Real human beings don't live out of those sort of distinctions.
Yes, I am still a Catholic, if an unorthodox one. Faith is not about the institution. It is about me trying to live my life informed by the gospel not the orthodoxy of the Roman Catholic Church. Faith is very important to me. It nurtures who I am. I am happily on the fringe, on the edge. My theology would be largely of Vatican II, of the people of God.
The equation of paedophilia/ ephebophilia with homosexuality by Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)just doesn't hold up. It is part of the cover-up where abuse is concerned. As a psychotherapist I deal with priests and nuns, and with perpetrators of clerical abuse. Some are alcoholics, and I see how the institution has allowed abuse continue without even looking at or addressing it.
What is going on in the Ratzinger camp is so far off the mark I genuinely feel it is a form of denial. It is delusional and cut off from humanity.
We should be looking at why homosexuality exists in the sight of God. Ratzinger and his friends have not even begun that discourse. That they (Ratzinger camp) have to go back to ancient Judaic law in 2005 is complete bullshit.
Why do they only see sex as about procreation, as only about making babies? The institution is refusing to engage with that, just as it is with the abuse of children.
Years after I left the religious life I went to Rome and I remember being quite shocked in St Peter's and in the Square at the number of priests who were cruising (for sex).
The gift of celibacy is given to very few, if it is a gift at all. I feel it is just another way of not addressing sexual issues. There is an incredible denial going on here. But I am mindful of very many women and men in religious life who really struggle to live their celibacy authentically. There is no space for them either (where discussion in the institutional church is concerned). There is no dialogue, no support for them either.
As for the future, I really think personally the world has moved on and grown in its appreciation of sexuality. The church says the world is falling apart as a result. I do not agree. The world has grown up while the church continues to write from a defensive position to appease those looking for reassurance.
People use their conscience and are not knocked off course by the church. The church can stay put or come into dialogue at a real level. Meanwhile the split grows wider and wider.
The institution, hopefully, will fall apart in its own sweet way and then reform. In the meantime why engage with it? To be pilloried, exposed, called names? It is much better to get on with things; to be, rather than to talk. I believe that is what a lot of homosexual people do, they get on with living the gospel message.
They are heroes. After Vatican II the church took fright. The power dynamism was shifting to the people from the clergy. John Paul and now Benedict have taken very significant steps backwards.
In Ireland people are voting with their feet. They are no longer queueing up for Mass to listen to what doesn't speak to them. There is a sense of crisis and I think that is a good thing. Even sexuality was used to control people.
'Paul' did not wish his real name to be used