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'I'm gay and I'm a priest, period': Chicago priest opens up about his same sex attraction

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'All priests are required to be celibate, regardless of sexual orientation.'

Twenty-three years after joining the clergy as a priest, Father Michael Shanahan, the pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Chicago, has publicly admitted he is sexually attracted to other men.

Highlights

By Catholic Online (CALIFORNIA NETWORK)
Catholic Online (https://www.catholic.org)
2/3/2016 (8 years ago)

Published in Living Faith

Keywords: Father Michael Shanahan, Catholic, sexuality, homosexual, Church

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The news was released via the Washington Post, which reported Shanahan's initial reluctance to use his real name in the article concerning sexuality in the Catholic Church.

Rev. Warren Hall is one of a few priests who admit their same sex attraction and have chosen not only to make it public, but to use it as a basis for promoting an agenda of changing Church teaching.  He told the paper, "More priests are rightfully more concerned about homelessness versus getting caught up in something about sex. We should be more concerned about those issues [like homelessness] that are impacting people."

Unfortunately for Hall, more and more priests are deciding to admit what is now being called by many their "sexual orientation" and turn it into a public cause. For what purpose? Why would a man who vowed to remain celibate suddenly need to speak about their attraction to other men - or get engaged in any public debate concerning homosexual or lesbian unions being treated as the legal equivalent to marriage between one man and one woman.

What makes this particularly troublesome is that the Catholic Church, for which they were ordained, is unequivocal in its unchangeable teaching. That teaching is found in the scriptures and  confirmed by the natural moral law -  marriage is solely possible between one man and one woman, intended for life and open to new life? As Catholic priests, these members of the Catholic clergy are obligated to affirm and teach what the Church affirms and teaches. 

Shanahan recalled same-sex marriage becoming legal in the Civil law of California in 2008 and how badly he wanted to speak of it to his congregation. However, he refused thinking, "Oh my gosh, if I talk about it, they'll think I'm gay." Of course, if he talked about it all in his capacity as a teacher of the Catholic faith, he must teach what the Catholic Church teaches.

Rev. Fred Dalay, a Syracuse, New York priest who announced himself to be "gay" in 2004, reported, "Parishioners were very supportive. Religious women were very supportive. One group that was silent were my brother priests. Gay as well as straight. In a sense, it was like I sort of broke the rules of the clerical club."

Though Dalay spoke of his fellow priests' silence as a negative, it is not difficult to understand why they refrained from supporting him.

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The Catholic Church is unequivocal in its moral teaching that sexual relations are reserved for marriage between one man and one woman. It adheres to the clear teaching of the Bible that homosexual practice is sin. It does makes a distinction between someone who is struggling with same sex attraction, which the Church calls morally disordered, and someone engaging in homosexual activity, which is sinful.

In 2005, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed that homosexuality is "objectively disordered" and that the Church, "while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called 'gay culture.'"

Though Pope Francis' famous words, "Who am I to judge?" caused a great ripple in the Catholic community, his statement is taken outside of its real context. In the course of an interview he said "'If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" He was specifically responding to a question concerning someone who engaged in sinful sexual behavior and then repented of the acts.

The statement, though intended to reveal God's mercy, has become a slogan for too many who are seeking to change what is unchangeable, the teaching of the Bible and the Catholic Church on the nature and ends of marriage and God's loving plan for human sexual relationships.

In response to CBS2 questioning, a spokesperson for the Chicago Archdiocese released a short  statement on Monday from Archbishop Blase Cupich: "We support all our priests as they live out the promises they made on the day of their ordination."

Meanwhile, Thomas O'Brien, the director of DePaul University's Center for Religion Culture and Community, believes Shanahan should have no problems remaining in his current position - so long as his vow of celibacy remains intact.

O'Brien wrote, "All priests are required to be celibate, regardless of sexual orientation. That policy does not vary from diocese to diocese, although different dioceses do approach violations of celibacy in distinct ways depending on the leadership style of the bishop and his administration."

Mildred Soriano, who is an occasional attendee at Our Lady of Lourdes, claims Shanahan's orientations "doesn't really matter, as long as he believes in God. It doesn't matter to me at all. We're all God's children."

If everyone is fine with Catholic priests deciding to "come out" and say they are gay and that is that, why not just accept actively homosexual candidates for the priesthood? Better yet, what about having these proudly "gay" priests teach children that God made him attracted to other men and the teaching of the Bible is no longer relevant?

One can't help but wonder if some clergymen enter the priesthood specifically to keep their attractions at bay, or if there is something more sinister beneath the surface.

Is it possible that homosexuals have infiltrated the Catholic Church in an attempt to spread their agenda? To spread the disordered notion that "sure, God made us attracted to members of the same sex, made us believe we were born into the wrong bodies and that everything is fine because that's what society is telling us?"

When will people wake up and realize that attraction to others of the same sex, attraction to children, insisting we are different "genders" than what God created us to be, and craving sexual "reassignment surgeries" which cannot change sexual difference, are mental conditions which must be researched and treated? Of course, those with gender confusion and disordered sexual appetites need to be treated with human dignity, but that is not the issue. The issue is an effort to try to change the Church from within. Sometimes, even by priests.

Society accepts many things that are anathema to God. The Church's position has always been God's position. We will always love the person, but that does not mean we must accept sin and wrong moral choices as a normal condition, or worse yet, as some kind of new "right"?

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