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Both suffered bouts of deep depression. But why is the priesthood so gay? It is worth noting that the connection between homosexuality and spirituality is by no means restricted to Catholicism. Some evolutionary psychologists have found an ancient link between gay men and tribal shamanism.

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Carl Jung identified the archetypal gifts of the homosexual: Among gay priests themselves, I heard a variety of explanations. Some described to me how their sense of displacement as boys and teens made them more sensitive to the needs of other marginalized people: Others explained that they were drawn to the ritual of the church. Catholicism is a faith centered on the Mass, where the body and the soul and the senses are as important as the mind.

The Mass is, in some ways, a performance. These types — also found in the arts and scholarship — are sticklers for detail, ruthless about rules, and attuned to tradition and beauty. In many ways, the old, elaborate High Mass, with its incense and processions, color-coded vestments, liturgical complexity, musical precision, choirs, organs, and sheer drama, is obviously , in part, a creation of the gay priesthood. Their sexuality was sublimated in a way that became integral and essential to Catholic worship. Then there is the common experience of a gay boy or teen, brought up in the church, who turns to God in struggling with the question of his difference and displacement from the normal.

He is forced to ponder deeper questions than most of his peers, acquires powerful skills of observation, and develops a precocious spirituality that never fully leaves him. This resonates for myself as a Catholic boy and teen. The first person I ever came out to was God, in a silent prayer on my way to Communion. Like many solitary gay Catholic boys, I saw in Jesus a model — single, sensitive, outside a family, marginalized and persecuted but ultimately vindicated and forever alive. But there are other reasons for gay men to seek the priesthood that are far from healthy.

The first is celibacy. If you were a young gay Catholic in centuries past, one way to avoid social ostracism, or constant questions about why you lacked an interest in girls or women, was to become a priest. This pattern, though much less severe than in the past, endures.

I will become a magisterial personality. Often, this unconscious struggle breaks down. It is simply too difficult not to be oneself. Some cope through absurd flamboyance and high camp; others sink into depression. Alcoholism and addiction take over. They had been such athletes when they were young. And then I had a meltdown. It was one of those moments of wanting something to happen with a friend. One evening, when I left his place, I realized I really wanted to have a relationship with this guy. Then it came flowing out of me.

Other gay priests, more self-aware and cynical, find there is a career to be made in all of this falseness.

Everything was suppressed, no questions were asked in seminaries, and psychological counseling was absent and even now is rare. Scarred, scared men became priests, and certain distinct patterns emerged. One, as we have come to learn, was sexual acting out and abuse.

To conflate sexual abuse with the gay priesthood, as many now reflexively do, is a grotesque libel on the vast majority who have never contemplated such crimes and are indeed appalled by them. It is classic scapegoating. At the same time, to decouple the sexual-abuse crisis entirely from the question of gay priests is a willful avoidance of an ugly truth. Pedophilia is a separate category outside the question of sexual orientation.

But some abuse of male teens and young adults, as well as abuse of other priests, is clearly related to homosexuality gone horribly astray — and around a quarter of the reported cases involve to year-old victims. The scale of it in the late 20th century was extraordinary — but, in retrospect, predictable. If you do not deal honestly with your sexuality, it will deal with you. If you construct an institution staffed by repressed and self-hating men and build it on secrecy and complete obedience to superiors, you have practically created a machine for dysfunction and predation.

And the hideous truth is we will never know the extent of the abuse in centuries past or what is still going on, especially throughout places in the world like Africa and Latin America where robust scrutiny of the church is still sometimes taboo.

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Another pattern was externalized homophobia: What you hate in yourself but cannot face, you police and punish in others. It remains a fact that many of the most homophobic bishops and cardinals have been — and are — gay. Take the most powerful American cardinal of the 20th century, Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York, who died in He had an active gay sex life for years while being one of the most rigid upholders of orthodoxy. Monsignor Tony Anatrella, an advocate for conversion therapy consulted by the Vatican, was recently suspended for sexual abuse of other men.

Anti-gay archconservative Cardinal George Pell was recently found guilty of sexual abuse of boys in Australia. The founder of the once hugely influential hard-right, anti-gay cult the Legion of Christ, Marcial Maciel, was found to have sexually abused countless men, women, and children. Those in the hierarchy obsessed with the homosexual question often turn out to be gay; those who are calmer tend to be straight.

Benedict XVI has described himself as a bookish boy, averse to sports. But this is because so many in the hierarchy still cannot see homosexuality as being about love and identity rather than acts and lust.

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As we uncover layer upon layer of dysfunction at the very top of the church, it may be time to point out how naked these bejeweled emperors can appear. And this, of course, has added another layer of complexity to the story of gay priests: Generations matter. Those in their 70s and 80s grew up in a different universe, where the closet was automatic and the notion of even discussing gay priests was scandalous.

But their reaction to the modern reexamination of homosexual love, and the consideration of sex as distinct from procreation, was panicked retrenchment.

Those in their 50s or 60s or younger, by contrast, are generally much more self-aware, and their Catholic peers and families much more accepting. Suddenly the entire system of secrecy, clerical self-protection, cover-ups, and scandal was brutally exposed. For most gay priests, this was a huge relief.

They were as appalled as anyone. But they knew, too, that the system now being dismantled had concealed not only the crimes and abuses of bad priests but also the sins and consensual adult sex of good ones. They had secrets too. Celibacy is not an easy task. It is impossible for most human beings to avoid falling in love or physically expressing their sexual being at some point in their lives. In practice, these failures have often been confronted and confessed; as long as the priests are honest and recommit to celibacy, they are allowed to go forward. Some of the gay priests I spoke with acknowledged lapses but insisted that, in consultation with their spiritual directors and superiors, they chose celibacy when the choice became impossible to ignore or avoid.

The goal, they explained, was to be free of any particular attachment so they could devote their entire selves to the church as a whole. But most had some kind of past incident or failing that could be used against them if made public, even if it were only their identity as a gay man. Mundane failings — like a brief affair — can become easily blurred with profound evils like child abuse.

If you expose a child molester to his superior, for example, he might expose your own homosexuality and destroy your career. This dynamic has made the clerical closet — not the fact of gay priests but the way that fact has been hidden — a core mechanism for tolerating and enabling abuse.

On top of all this, the vow of obedience to superiors gives gay bishops and cardinals huge sway over their priestly flock. Some, of course, realized this power could be leveraged for sex and abused it. New procedures for the protection of minors were put in place after But so much damage from the past has yet to be confronted.

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The McCarrick case in particular revealed that the pattern of concealment and toleration of abuse went to the very top of the church. That some of the sex criminals were also responsible for directing vast sums of money to the Vatican — Maciel and McCarrick were legendary for their fund-raising — makes the toleration seem particularly cynical. We still do not know why, exactly, the traditionalist Benedict XVI decided to be the first pope to resign the office, but some were quick to note that he had compiled an extensive dossier on sexual abuse in the church … and yet somehow felt unable to act.

Was he simply overwhelmed by the task, taken aback by the scale of it, and fearful that the entire church could collapse? Francis, in one of his first press conferences as pope, struck out on a different course. He reiterated the distinction between sins and crimes and, while denouncing abuse, did not insist on sexual perfection in the priesthood, as long as failures were confessed, sins absolved, and the priest was committed to a future of celibacy.

Then he went further in allowing for good gay priests in the church: It also, perhaps, worried some powerful sex abusers, who recognized the role of the clerical closet in keeping everything quiet. He called on the pope to resign: The lull may be temporary. In September, Francis appeared to lose his equanimity.

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