Gay Catholic priest reflects on his church, his calling, his future (what's wrong with this story?)

Post Standard ^ | October 17, 2005 | Renee Gadoua

[NYer]

It wasn't until two years after his ordination as a Roman Catholic priest that the Rev. Fred Daley acknowledged he might be gay.

"I was coming down the stairs for morning Mass, and I felt this real deep ache and pain in the pit of my stomach," he said. "It was the first time I was recognizing an ache within that my activity and work and ministry was covering up, and avoiding something."

A light went on, he said.

"I began to become aware of my sexual feelings and desires," he said. He was 27.

Almost 30 years later - after a painful, prayerful and mostly lonely journey - he disclosed his sexual orientation to his Utica congregation in May 2004. As speculation grows that the Vatican is preparing a document that would bar gays from ordination, Daley says he's proud to be a celibate, gay priest.

He said news of the forthcoming Vatican document and visits to American seminaries worries many people - clergy and lay, gay and straight - that the Roman Catholic Church does not welcome gays in its pulpits or pews.

"The church is least faithful to Jesus when it is in the business of excluding," Daley said. "The church should be rejoicing that gay men are ready and willing to use their talents to energize the church. To deprive the church of these gifted men would be a terrible loss."

Daley and other gay priests say the attention to sexual orientation blames gay priests for problems in the church, including the clergy sexual abuse crisis and the shortage of priests. It also reinforces stereotypes of gays as immoral and unable to control their sexual impulses, Daley and others say.

"To the extent the church uses outdated and inaccurate information about homosexual orientation, they are indirectly encouraging the oppression and physical violence against gays and lesbians," Daley said.

Daley, pastor of St. Francis de Sales Church in Utica, is the first priest in the seven-county Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse to publicly disclose he is gay. He is thought to be among just a handful of gay priests in the country who have done so.

[sure_fine]

Homosexuals are a contridiction to the belief

Romans 1:21-31

1:21 Because, though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were they thankful; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

1:23 And exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.

1:24 Therefore God gave them up, through the lusts of their own hearts, to sexual impurity, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves:

1:25 Because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

1:26 For this cause God gave them up to vile affections: for even their women exchanged natural relations for that which is against nature:

1:27 And likewise the men, leaving their natural relations with woman, burned in their lust toward one another; men with men doing that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

1:28 And as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.

1:29 They were filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malevolence; whisperers,

1:30 Slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

1:31 Without understanding, untrustworthy, without natural affection, unmerciful:

[Father Anthony]

It sounds to me as if this guy needs to see a good spiritual director rather than flaunt his feelings to the world. I wonder if he has been influenced by the "gay lobby" and that they're making a mouthpiece of him. I too find it difficult to believe that he is going through puberty at 27, or he must have big problems!

Fr. Anthony

[BizzeeMom]

"The Catholic Church is a huge hurdle to homosexuals who want their orientations affirmed. They are bent on destroying the Church from within."

My thoughts exactly.

There is a wonderful piece by Dennis Prager, who is conservative and Jewish, called "Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality".

click here