Gay Today: World

Gay Priests Are Numerous,
Says Kansas City Star

Compiled by GayToday

Kansas City, Missouri—In its extraordinary series that began Sunday on AIDS as it affects the Roman Catholic priesthood, the Kansas City Star continued Monday to break newspaper taboos that have formerly protected the clergy from a scrutiny that causes ideological discomforts for priests and believers alike.

Star reporter Judy L. Thomas pioneers journalistic priest-outing with her January 31 article titled "Issue prompting church to deal with homosexuality among priests," in which she tells how AIDS has forced the church "to acknowledge a reality that it has tried to avoid for centuries…A significant number of its clergy are gay."

Some Catholic experts quoted by Ms. Thomas, estimate that 30% of priesthood is gay and that half that number may be sexually active. This estimate was based on a survey of 2,700 priests. A groundbreaking survey, conducted by the Kansas City Star itself, found that 15% of priests who responded admitted to being gay and that 5% considered themselves bisexual.

Catholic apologists, in an attempt to downplay such startling figures, explain the influx of gay clergy by saying that the very anti-gay taboos spawned by Roman Catholicism find young Catholic boys desperate to honor the Vatican's strict sexual codes. But because they are not attracted to women, they find themselves under social assault from their Catholic relatives and peers.

Their only way out of this dilemma, explained one priest with AIDS to The Star, is for young gay men to announce their intentions to become priests. When this happens, the pressures to conform heterosexually become non-existent. "People respect you enough not to push the heterosexual game on you any more," according to the priest.

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Ms. Thomas tells of one openly gay Jesuit priest, William Hart McNichols, living in New Mexico. McNichols' artistic talents have kept him afloat in the eyes of the Catholic hierarchy since he is widely recognized as one of the world's most creative iconographers.