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A Reflection on Homosexuality in the Catholic Church
by John Houk

Homosexuality is not a subject I have spent much time thinking about, until recently. My interest increased when the Vatican determined that scapegoating homosexuals was an appropriate response to our pedophilia scandal. But it was this latest action of the bishops of Massachusetts that really got my attention. Briefly, Catholic Charities in Boston has been directed to stop placing adoptive children with homosexual couples, which means they cannot do business in Massachusetts as an adoption agency—so they are out of the adoption business. Two of our six children were adopted through Catholic Charities, and now the four bishops of Massachusetts have shut down their adoption agency because they don’t like homosexuals.

If you look at the details it gets even worse. Catholic Charities has (perhaps I should say had, because eight of them resigned over this issue) a large Board of Directors who unanimously (every single one of them) voted to place adoptive children with homosexual couples. Now remember these couples must pass muster on all accounts, emotional to financial, to be accepted as an adoption family. Our Church leadership says instead that placing children with a homosexual adoptive family is a “grave moral evil”. That means the whole Boston Catholic Charities Board is in deep trouble with God. There is no doubt in my mind about who looks bad here.

No one knows for sure how many priests and bishops are homosexuals, but people who are in a good position to guess put the number at about one-third or higher. These are the same people who are calling themselves “gravely disordered” (they like that word “grave”). Convincing me that this is a mentally healthy situation would be a tough sell.

Does any of this make sense? We close parishes because there are not enough priests (that’s dumb in itself), and then we tell a third of them they are gravely disordered and proceed to weed them out of the seminary. Professionals who should know say there is no connection between homosexuality and pedophilia (and I believe it), yet who gets blamed? A large group of respected Catholics say we should let homosexual couples adopt, and four bishops slam the door on the whole operation. Let’s make one more feeble attempt at trying to understand what is going on.

Our Church has taught homosexuals not to like themselves so we have a bunch of people making decisions in our Church who don’t like themselves. Homosexuals are blamed for pedophilia because our bishops don’t want to deal with what might be the real cause or causes such as sexual immaturity, mandatory celibacy and a very limited universe of candidates from which to choose. The “grave moral evil” statement comes from a Vatican document, and we have a bunch of bishops who would agree that up is down if the Vatican says so. So we have bishops who don’t like themselves, avoid dealing with real causes and whose best quality is that they are good at following orders. Is this the profile of a bishop you would vote for?

Silly me. We don’t get to choose our bishops, do we? However, I am reminded that both Pope Leo the Great and Pope Gregory the Great (the only two “Great” popes) are both reported to have believed, and to have said, “He who presides over all should be chosen by all.” I would vote for a homosexual bishop if he didn’t hate himself/herself, looked for real causes when dealing with problems, and was willing to tell people in the Vatican what they needed to hear instead of what they want to hear. If we are willing to listen to Popes Leo the Great and Gregory the Great that day may come.