Devout Homosexuals
The Age Monday, July 23, 2001
Mark Dowd’s article on homosexual clergy is not trouble-making, as some might say, but merely confronting a problem that will not go away. It is a folly and a cruelty to refuse to acknowledge the many devout people of all religions who are homosexual.
The Catholic Church holds that it is okay to be homosexual but not to practice it. But just imagine how we heteros would feel if that rule were applied to all of us!
Abstinence might be okay for a select few: but if I believed intimacy was evil, I think I would find myself suffering, disoriented and despairing.
The silly thing about all of this is that the human population has never changed in having a proportion of homosexuals — and never will. If a church community does not make a viable and respected place for these people, it is failing to embrace creation the way God made it.
Philip O'Carroll