Homosexuality & the priesthood.

Vocations off the straight & narrow

I went with my friend Samuel to see the movie Priest last year. We were drawn by two of the themes: the life of a priest, and how gay men living within the church deal with their sexuality. Seeing Priest drew me again toward an experience I had set aside many years ago. It made me think about the paths Samuel and I had taken, about the fact that we were both gay and called to the priesthood, about why many gay boys like us grow up to be priests.

I am a forty-three-year-old gay man who began adulthood as a Jesuit. My life as a Jesuit was a time full of friendships, of intense learning and exotic travel, of troubling feelings of inadequacy and loneliness offset by moments of illumination and great joy. It was a life busy with activities that touched and changed the lives of others and, through them, myself. But it was not the path that I could remain on for the rest of my life.

Ten years after entering the Jesuits, I left. I left because I wanted to become an independent, sexual being. At the time I used many other words to explain leaving. I said that I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny, to choose by myself where to live and with whom to live, that I had no vocation. But every reason was rooted in my desire to participate in the great dance of life as a dancer, not as a chaperone. I wanted to be an open member of the gay community. I wanted a lover.

Now I often find myself wondering about it all. And after seeing Priest I returned to one question I had not thought about for a long time: Why do so many gay boys grow up to be priests? I cannot offer the results of a sociological or psychological study, but I can offer my experiences, experiences that may resonate with those of others, in whole or in part.

These days when someone gets to know me, they need to know about my two closets: one lavender, one black. Most people at work know that I am gay. I have helped form a gay employee group and do work with a gay-sponsored charity. And I know for sure that my gay orientation is an agenda item on the rumor mill.

Not as many people know that I was once a Jesuit. That discovery, however, generates a reaction akin to my coming out. It, too, is a public declaration of having lived on the edge, of having communed with a veiled and compelling force. Surprisingly, many of my contemporaries find it easier to understand that I am gay than that I once led a life in religion; they can more easily comprehend that someone is gay than that he ever vowed (and kept) celibacy. Being gay is still being a searcher for love and intimacy, but being celibate and bound by a vow of obedience, living in a community of individuals not of your own choosing - that is like being a Vulcan, a creature of another species.

When people learn that I was a Jesuit, I can see flash past their eyes two central questions: Did I enter the Jesuits to deny my gayness? And, was there something special about me that I should become a priest?

The answer to the first question is easy. Yes, I was in denial. The answer to the second question requires more reflection.

It doesn't strike me as odd that I was not the only gay boy wanting to grow up to be a priest, but it rankles me to see my vocation reduced to a mere search for refuge from a hostile society. My experience tells me that there was something else involved. I know my desire for priesthood had a lot to do with repression and misdirection, but it also had to do with discovery and bravery and growth, perhaps even grace. There are many ways to talk about the path of discovery, but in this essay I will focus on the somewhat idiosyncratic interplay of three concepts: color, movement, and mystery.

Color. I don't want to overstate this, but I think it is interesting how the use of color often helps define who we are. Color can be a kind of tool that gives palpable expression to and helps shape our interior identity. It is quite common to find a favorite color, to dress in it, paint our walls or houses with it, literally surround ourselves with it. We find colors we think complement us: "I look good in blue," we think. Color is one of the many artifacts used, aptly or not, to help us create a sense of self.

Personally, choosing what I would wear each day was one of the pleasures of my childhood. My mother never forced anything on me; she gave me the freedom to wear whatever I wanted. I had learned from her how colors complemented each other. Sometimes, I confess, just thinking about some piece of fabric made me happy. My youth was an era of cowboy fanaticism, and I loved to put on a red shirt with coral snap buttons. It was a Western shirt, something a cowboy might wear when he went into town. The buttons were beautiful to look at and to touch, their color changing slightly in the light. And the red of the cloth made them stand out all the more. I was always proud to wear that shirt.

Thinking about colors became a daily ritual for me. Before I went to bed, I studied my wardrobe, matching shirt and pants and socks. Each selection had its own emotional signature. Having created the right wardrobe was as gratifying to me as climbing a tree was to my brother. There was something calming about it. Indeed, this exercise helped me to fall asleep.

Every painter delights in creating mood and structure by juxtaposing colors of many hues and brightnesses within a composition. An appreciation of color is a key element of a painter's natural talent as well as a skill to study and acquire. Perhaps for me the choice of wardrobe allowed a similar sense of achievement, providing a way to bring harmony into one aspect of my life.

We all easily recognize that colors have significance; there are colors which are appropriate for various organizations, military and religious, for example. Black is for mourning in our culture. Red is a color of lust - or martyrdom. Color communicates, and is one of the tools that people employ for both fitting into society and for defining themselves. For all of us, finding (or redefining) our place in society is a central challenge in our lives.

For gay children, finding that place can be a frightening journey. Role models are few. In a Catholic culture, stating you have a vocation is like draping yourself in the perfect color. A vocation to the priesthood both brings immediate respect for you as an individual and sets you into a recognizable and respected role. And it is a career open to everyone (at least every male); no unique talent is required beyond a desire to do good. For an outsider - for gay children - stating you have a vocation is a way to turn the tables on society. As a young boy I could not visualize myself in any other career than the priesthood. Other professions were full of pitfalls and hazards I could not negotiate. I knew I was more interested in dolls than sports, more comfortable playing with girls than boys, more enchanted by music and dance than by collecting baseball cards or torturing frogs. I carried with me a suspicion of society. How could I fit into the masculine world as I experienced it? Having a priestly vocation set all that fear aside. Indeed, for a young boy fascinated with colors, a church that honored and understood the aesthetic and theatrical power of color seemed a perfect place to work. Declaring a vocation brought me into harmony with my future life, just as my choosing of wardrobes as a young child had prepared me for each new day. Needless to say, color can also be an essential component of disguise.

Movement. Mass was the ballet of my youth. I was an altar boy, serving nearly every day. Perhaps I served so often because of my punctuality, or my willingness, or my surety with the Latin, or because I usually was paired with my brother. For whatever reason, I was often at the altar. The ritual, however, began before we walked out into the sanctuary. First we vested in the great clean colors of white and black, ample cloth folding over our light child bodies, a white surplice hanging over a long flowing black cassock. While the priests kissed their garments before putting them on, our vesting was less formalized. Still, vesting was a special kind of movement. It was different from every other change of clothes. When you put on a cassock, you draped your whole body with this single action. In the newer cassocks, one had to reach down and pull up the hems of both sides in order to zip up the long zipper sealing you in. And as the cassock fell back down to your ankles, a young boy knew that he had stepped into another world, a slightly feminine world, a world where your walking and turning were the peaceful glide of a sacred corpus, a world where your body was less visible but where your movement was more noticeable.

Next, one slipped on the surplice, pulling it over like a sweater. It was never the smoothest of actions, more a struggle with some odd, combative creature. Once it was on, I would move to the full-length mirror to straighten everything out. It was then that I noticed the neatly ironed folds, saw the contrast of white over black, two strong colors that made each other stand out. On a boy with the right shape, the surplice sat on square shoulders and formed an architectural covering over the soft, conical cassock.

Within these sacred robes, an altar boy's body became a stage prop. Even a young, shapeless youth could feel in his flesh that his movement was grand and dramatic. The bows, the genuflections, the well-timed turns, the subservient presentation and movement of holy objects during the liturgy, all of these were part of a great sacred drama. They were something to see. And to the altar boy, they were something to feel.

Surely the fancy dancing two-stepper, the men walking into a restaurant with good cheer and fine looks, and the well-toned youth comfortably strolling the beach, experience the same sensations: the seduction of the right look and the right movement. The body can be a delight to the eye, not just the hands. It is part of a dance, an ancient and honorable choreography.

Movement is an expression of what is going on inside. It can speak of reverence or indifference, rhythm or cloddishness, an awareness of space or obliviousness to it. And movement speaks sex. It always speaks sex because a body is always a sexed thing. By cloaking a sexed object one can tone down the immediacy of hormonal impulse, or redirect its energy into another form. But you cannot eradicate that essential attribute.

As a gay boy I knew that sex and body were at the heart of my identity. I had known for years that I could still be a man and be a priest, but as a priest I would be a man whose body performed a more stylized movement, never the twisting, sinuous, and unpredictable movement of sex with another. I did not think that priesthood sought to annihilate sex; it only emphasized other parts of sex - the visual parts, the flirtatious parts, the chivalrous parts, and the moral responsibility that the great lusty act of creation engendered. In my imagination, the priest participated in a romantic movement, the mysterious love for the Other. Yet it was a movement in which he never settled down into one solid, firm relationship. He was more a leaf taken up in a great wind than an oak that remained rooted in one spot only to spin off seedlings. He could be desirable and even loved, yet he could never be touched by another human being. Still, he would not be alone. If he could not father a family, he could lead a community. And he could do that proudly as a man.

Mystery. I remember especially a devotion of my childhood, the veneration of the Virgin, the sorrowful mother. I remember it occurring at the end of another greater devotion, the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. In the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the consecrated host was displayed in the monstrance, prayers were said, songs were sung, there was much incense, the priest wore an impressive cope, a gold cape that hung over his shoulders. I remember that if you entered the church after the Blessed Sacrament had been exposed, you had to kneel before entering your pew. This was not a genuflection. You had to get down on both knees and bow your head, as if you were a peasant entering the presence of a monarch. After all, deity was revealed.

After the host was replaced in the tabernacle, the priest would process over to the Marian altar. Then the music changed; it became plaintive, and we spoke the words of children, distressed children in search of peace.

"Hail holy queen, enthroned above. . .our mother. . .All loving, all holy . . . we beseech thee, poor banished children of Eve . . . mourning and weeping in this vale of tears . . . to thee do we cry . . . ."

Ritual has power. Mystery has power. Their allure is all the greater in the mind and imagination of a young child. There is an energy force around ritual, and each particular ritual act contains that energy and directs it. I knew that the power of what took place in the sanctuary was not like the power of armies or presidents or corporations or even principals and teachers. I knew it was a power that sometimes took a long time to gather into an active force. But when it had gathered, it could not be stopped. The God of Israel had tried many times to edge the Egyptians into freeing the Israelites. But when he had had enough, he acted with awesome might.

But God's power did not have to be obvious, did not have to be like ordinary power. God's power was cloaked, often acted out by people he had chosen. When Pope Leo I spoke with Attila outside the walls of Rome, it was God who persuaded the great marauder to spare the city. God didn't have to crush the Hun or his horde. God changed his heart - or at least his mind. Enough of that kind of change, and the world would be a different place, a world with room for people like me.

A gay child knows, even if he cannot articulate it, that his struggle is in the heart and in the mind. It is a struggle that starts with an awareness of difference, often an awareness that is accompanied by feelings of isolation and loneliness. That awareness of difference kept me thinking and wondering, speculating about why I was different. It took me thirty years to articulate the reason.

As a boy I was drawn to issues of the heart and of the mind. I have struggled with these for many years, and I know the terrain. It is not at all surprising to me that I, and many others like me, gravitated to a career that would allow us to bring harmony and understanding into the hearts and minds of others, as well as ourselves.

When I left the Jesuits, a good friend called my attention to a passage from Saint Augustine's Confessions: "Aliud est de silvestre cacumine videre patriam pacis, et aliud est tenere viam illuc ducentem." I would translate: "It is one thing to look at the land of peace from atop a wooded knoll, and another to take up the road leading there."

Sometimes we take many steps wandering in circles atop the knoll, waiting to set out on our journey. When we do set out, it is often our bodies that force us to do so. Anxiety attacks, or strokes, or changes in weight, or sexual desire, or an overwhelming sadness, or the entry of a loved one can push us off the knoll. Such discomfort or physical expectation can propel us out of our leisured walk and onto the path toward peace - a more harrowing route.

For me, and perhaps others, priesthood promised to be that land of peace. But for many of us, priesthood turned out to be merely the knoll, and real peace could only be achieved by pushing on toward a fuller understanding of our sexual identity. True, many priests who are gay speak of honesty, integrity, openness, courage, self-respect, acceptance, and love within the priesthood. But for some of us, peace never came until we extended our search along a different path, and that meant leaving our roles in the church. Yet we needed to climb the mountain first, to go high enough so we could see. And in the deep silence and trembling power of insight, we finally opened our eyes and hearts and bodies and set forth on a different road.

Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.

John Shekleton lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.