ARTICLES

Were Are Committing Suicide

Even the Jesuits Reject "Homosexual but Celibate" Priests

BY ROBERT KUMPEL

In a recent letter to a parishioner addressing the scandal over former Merced pastor Father Jean Lastiri (St. Patrick's), Fresno Bishop John Steinbock writes: "I have stated publicly that what is important of any priest, whether he has a heterosexual or homosexual orientation, is that he is living a celibate life style, faithful to the Lord Jesus and the teaching of the church, and then indeed he can be a good priest." Last summer, Bishop Steinbock removed Father Lastiri from St. Patrick's after it was discovered the priest was allegedly soliciting genital favors on a homosexual website. [See "Baca and the Bear," September 2004 Mission.]

Steinbock goes on to write that his position "is not against the Magisterium of the Church."

Really? Do Bishop Steinbock and his brother bishops know nothing of a 1961 Vatican directive to religious superiors and bishops that addresses this very case? The directive, Careful Selection and Training of Candidates For the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders, states: "advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers."

This prescient warning touches an issue that won't go away. Yet even a religious order as supposedly dissident as the Jesuits has rejected approving a "homosexual but celibate" priesthood.

Father Simon Cartwright (not his real name) is a longtime Jesuit of the California province. When Cartwright heard what Steinbock had written, he said that the California Jesuits recently attempted to make the same notion official, an attempt that was rejected outright by their Jesuit superiors in Rome. "We were having a meeting of procurators in Loyola, Spain, and each province sends in proposals," said Cartwright. "I believe it was at the 2003 meeting, some group [of Jesuits] in San Francisco had asked if homosexuals could enter the Jesuits as long as they were willing to be chaste. It just didn't go anywhere -- that is, it didn't go beyond our conference at that meeting."

As Cartwright explained, any Jesuit can make a request or proposal at such meetings, but that doesn't mean every proposal will be taken seriously. "The Jesuits gather in Loyola with the superior general at these meetings," said Cartwright. "They chose to just pass this one by. I think the attitude was, 'if people have to declare that they are homosexuals, then there's a problem.'"

Another California Jesuit priest was more measured in his criticism of Steinbock's proposal. "Bishop Steinbock, in general, is a good bishop," said this priest. "He's pretty solid, but he's also non-confrontational. On this issue, he may be saying things which are not good. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt because I think he is the best bishop, next to Vigneron, that we've got in California. Aristotle says perceptively in his Nicomachean Ethics that you can't expect any more precision in any science than the subject matter admits of. In human, things, there is a spectrum between rabid homosexuality and clear heterosexuality. At some point, you might have people who might have tendencies or desires or whatever, but who are committed and live celibate lives, and so on. You might be able to find an occasion where a person could be a good priest and have some kind of homosexual temptations, but it's hard for me to imagine, because I just can't think that way. To me, it's so warped and so perverted, yet I've got my own type of sins and maybe they've got their type of sins. You'll always find some kind of exception; but of course, hard cases make bad law. It's not just the temptation to bugger someone or sodomize someone, there's the whole mentality of effeminacy and lifestyle."

Yet another California Jesuit, Father Canisius (not his real name), says the proposal made at the Jesuits' Rome meeting to accept homosexual members came from the top levels of Jesuit leadership in the California province. "There was a meeting of Jesuits, where a number of them spoke strongly about the right of gay men to be ordained priests and that the Church was wrongheaded and going in a direction that the rest of the culture is not," said this priest. "The people they are bringing into the society and into formation don't believe what the Church has to say about this whole 'orientation' issue. The provincials for all the different provinces across the United States wrote a note that went to the procurators' [2003 in Loyola] meeting, saying that they were upset that the recent pedophilia scandals have pointed to gay people as being the cause. The note went to the [Jesuit] father general [Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach], saying that 'we don't think this is good and we want some statement that says that gay priests are not the cause of this problem and that gay priests are not the source of the scandals and should not be scapegoated.' The California province is one of the primary sources of this whole problem, not only within our whole Jesuit community in North America but in the North American Church."

A similar note sent to the U.S. Jesuits was signed by 10 U.S. Jesuit Provincials, including Provincial Father Thomas Smolich of California, and included this statement: "we do not equate sexual abuse with sexual orientation. We recognize that what is important to our identity as religious is our public promise of chastity and living it with integrity."

A memo to all California Jesuits from the provincial office dated January 2, 2003 announces the delegate and alternate to the Procurator's Congregation, as well as the messages or "postulates" from the California Province. The memo reads, "The Congregation sent only one postulate to Father General. The postulate dealt with God's calling men to chastity in religious life and to priestly ordination without regard to sexual orientation. The delegates asked Father General to reflect on how the current climate in some Church circles affects the union of minds and hearts in the Society of Jesus and the California Province." The memo also states that the postulate is the work of a California Province Congregation held at the El Retiro Retreat House in Los Altos, December 28-30, 2002.

A copy of Father Thomas Smolich's December 28 address at the Provincial Congregation includes his remarks on the sexual abuse crisis in the Church, which puts the blame on the ecclesiastical authority structure: "both from a cultural and from a neo-radical point of view, many political perspectives have come become attached to this scandal. The most dominant one right now is the issue of gay seminarians, that homosexually-oriented men should not be ordained priests... From my first year as Provincial, I have said publicly and in print that we always have had and will continue to have gay or homosexually-oriented members of the Province who are exemplars of our way of life."

One California Jesuit priest noted that he was certain that 21 of the 52 delegates to the California Congregation were homosexuals. "Some of the others are undoubtedly gay, and still others are sympathetic to the gay agenda," he said.

Another document reports on a superiors meeting which took place after the California Congregation, on February 26 and 27 2003. Written by Father Tony Sholander, the California assistant for formation, the letter mentions a gathering of newly ordained priests for three days in January 2003. The writer complains about the focus of the new priests and warns their superiors to watch them closely: "They were more concerned about rumors of documents from Rome regarding the suitability of gay men as priests than they have been affected by the current sexual scandals. In general, I think they are doing well, and I would urge you to attend closely to these men if they are in your community."

Father Canisius is convinced that the homosexual obsession of the California Jesuit Province is destroying the order from within. "My province is very supportive of all of this because it is dominated by gay men. At one meeting, a priest asked the provincial, 'what are we going to do about this position the Church is taking on homosexual priests not being fit for ordination and causing the scandals?' The provincial, Father Thomas Smolich, did not respond to him. He couldn't, because the Church teaches that this is an intrinsic disorder and it's not something we should be promoting. And it does have an effect on the community, because you now have an environment where gay men are living with gay men. They'll ask potential candidates for the Jesuits if they can live with gay men. That's now a screen-out question.

"These guys are God's sons as well, and I feel for them, but it's not going anyplace," continued the priest. "I don't know if it's going to die on its own or if it's going to require more force from Rome and the bishops to stop the contagion that's infected the clerical community in the United States. I have been told that the [Jesuit] father general in Rome knows what is going on, but he feels that there is nothing he can do about it, and we are simply committing suicide. We are dwindling because people don't see us as thinking with the Church, which St. Ignatius tells us we are supposed to do. We are supposed to serve the Church, but we now have men who believe the Church is wrong and are, therefore, disobeying it. It is not always done in an explicit fashion -- for example the University of San Francisco in November named Elizabeth Birch as a new Davies Fellow."

According to a press release from the University of San Francisco, Birch in November gave the Davies Forum Lecture on the Modern American Family. Birch, the director of the Human Right Campaign, "the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender advocacy organization," the university release said, "has been named a USF Davies Fellow for her political work, including her efforts securing marriage and family rights for GLTB [gay, lesbian, transsexual, bisexual] people." The Davies Forum, however, told this reporter that they had no "fellows" and that Birch was not on their staff, but was a speaker at an event earlier in the year, which would have been the result of a faculty member nominating her to speak.

Father Canisius does not hate homosexuals but is simply firm in his conviction that they need to recognize their own disorder. "When the blind man came to Jesus and wanted to see, Jesus didn't say, 'oh, my Father made you that way, therefore stay blind.' Or, the deaf, or, the lame. We have a case where there are people with a sexual disorder, a disorientation, but they don't see it that way. We have scriptural grounds to say, 'hey, be cured!' But because our culture is so caught up in this, academics won't touch it with a ten-foot pole. In fact, gays are imbedded within the academic community. But it's not going to last. God is bigger than that."

Questions regarding this story were sent to Father Thomas Smolich; he had not responded by press-time.

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