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SPENGLER
Catholicism - isn't that a
gay thing?
In 1506, the Venetian
prostitutes' guild lodged a complaint with the Signoria
that homosexuality had become so prevalent as to
threaten its livelihood. Civilizations in decline
typically take on the characteristics of Bonobo monkeys,
Nero's Rome being the most lurid example. No precedent
exists to my knowledge, though, for the priesthood to
become the homosexual vanguard.
American
Catholic priests are five or 10 times as likely to be
homosexual as ordinary American men. In 1990, an
American Franciscan priest mailed a survey to 500
priests selected at random. Forty-five percent of 398
respondents identified themselves as homosexual.
"Studies suggest that perhaps 30-50 percent of priests
(especially those under 50) are homosexual in
orientation, compared with about 5 percent in the
population at large," writes Professor Donald Cozzens of
John Carroll University.
Homosexuality in the US
Church drew attention after an avalanche of lawsuits for
alleged sexual abuse of minor children landed atop St
Peter's throne. The New York Times estimates that 1,200
American priests were accused of sex abuse as of the end
of 2002. No comparable estimates exist for the European
priesthood, although the proportion almost certainly
will be smaller than in the United States. In most
Catholic European countries, such as Ireland and Poland,
the proportion of homosexual priests is quite low, as it
is in the Latin American and African wings of the
Catholic Church.
Why do American homosexuals
gravitate toward the priesthood, but not Irishmen or
Poles? Priestly celibacy cannot be the only explanation,
as it applies to Poles as well as to Americans. For that
matter, the US branch of the Anglican Church appears
quite as gay as the Catholics, having just elected an
openly gay bishop in the state of New Hampshire.
Anglican priests may marry.
The answer lies
instead in the motives that bring Americans to the
priesthood. Traditionally the priesthood represented a
step up the social ladder for poor boys. In poor
countries, the Catholic Church offered the only
meritocracy willing to promote clever boys from
impecunious families. Polish boys would aspire to the
priesthood for the same reason that Turkish boys would
aspire to the military.
Few American boys,
however, are so poor as to consider the Church a vehicle
for social advancement. Americans become priests out of
conviction - but conviction about what? Eighty percent
of American Catholics do not believe in
transubstantiation (the transformation of wafer and wine
into the body and blood of Christ during the Mass). They
are religious in a general sort of way, but no longer
can believe in the mysteries of the Church.
In
the United States, priests no longer are the mediators
of the great mysteries of death and rebirth, of sin and
forgiveness, of damnation and salvation. The priesthood
has become what Americans quaintly call one of the
"helping professions", such as psychology, social work,
nursing and so forth. "Blessed are those who preach the
gospel of peace," said Jesus, but the gospel has changed
a bit. Having joined the ranks of the helpers, American
priests have adopted the secular gospel of St Freud.
All traditional religious dogma is tragic; man
suffers in this life because of sin, and through great
struggle can achieve redemption despite his sinful
nature. Religion does not expect life to be pleasant; it
exists precisely because life is unpleasant (at least to
the extent that it leads to the unpleasantness of
death).
Inspired by psychiatry, the "helping
professions" take a more cheerful view of life. Therapy,
Prozac, and conflict-avoidance can solve all problems,
provided that the "helpers" can extirpate the root of
aggressive behavior, namely sexual frustration.
Civilization requires repression of the libido,
Sigmund Freud argued (in Civilization and Its
Discontents). Its foundation is the paternal family
in which the father employs the threat of violence to
suppress the sexuality of other family members:
If civilization requires such sacrifices,
not only of sexuality but also of the aggressive
tendencies in mankind, we can better understand why it
should be so hard for men to feel happy in it. In
actual fact, primitive man was better off in this
respect, for he knew nothing of any restrictions on
his instincts. As a set-off against this, his
prospects of enjoying his happiness for any length of
time were very slight. Civilized man has exchanged
some part of his chances of happiness for a measure of
security. We will not forget, however, that in the
primal family only the head of it enjoyed this
instinctual freedom; the other members lived in
slavish thraldom. Many Catholic priests are
not traditional Christians, but Utopian radicals whose
goal is to eliminate conflict by purging humanity of its
aggressive instincts (Freud to his credit did not
believe this could be done). In other words, they are
homosexuals out of principle. They share with the
radical feminists the idea that man's aggressive
instincts supposedly arise from sexual repression, whose
source is the patriarchal family. The combination of an
all-male fraternity with a Utopian agenda provides a
magnet for male homosexuals.
For the same
reason, issues such as gay marriage, legal protection of
homosexuals and the sponsorship of alternative sexual
subcultures stand at the top of the Utopian agenda. No
respectable US university lacks a "gay, lesbian and
transgender studies" department, and the elite schools
compete with one another to define the cutting edge of
social experimentation. The University of Michigan now
offers a course called "How to Be Gay: Male
Homosexuality and Initiation". A number of states, with
Vermont in the lead, now are proposing to formalize
same-sex "civil unions", that is, marriage.
As
usual, provincial America lags enlightened,
sophisticated Europe. In June, the Swedish parliament
passed a law forbidding speech or writing critical of
alternative sexual lifestyles. No criticism will be
forthcoming from the rest of Europe, whose male
population sincerely hopes that all Swedish men (but not
women) will become homosexual.
In the United
States, the most likely outcome will be the
strengthening of the heterosexual (that is, Evangelical)
wing of US Christianity at the expense of the Catholics
and other liberal Christians. Republican strategists
view the issue of gay marriage as a gift for the 2004
elections. Democratic pre-candidates for the presidency
require the support of the Utopian wing of the party to
mobilize activists and money for the primary elections,
which puts them under enormous pressure to support the
sexual political agenda of the left. In the general
election, though, support for alternative lifestyles
will be a liability. The net result probably will be to
continue the rightward shift in US politics.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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