Word: pinkertons
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...early 1990s, a friend told Pinkerton he was "lying by omission." His parishioners assumed he was celibate when they listened to him preach. And increasingly, he could not beat back "the voice" of dissonance. "If you can't be yourself in your life, that creates a huge amount of stress," he says. In 1994 Pinkerton left formal ministry...
...ordained priest, Pinkerton found himself doing what he calls "the tap dance" to reconcile committing his life to an institution that was not unconditionally committed to him. By 1984 he was completely out to his brother friars, whom he describes as open and supportive. But in October of 1986 he stopped celebrating Mass after the release of a Vatican directive (later dubbed the Halloween letter) that called homosexuality an "objective disorder" and warned that society should not be surprised if violence were committed against gays and lesbians seeking civil rights. After several months of reflection, Pinkerton managed to talk himself...
...Pinkerton, the dancing wasn't over. He was never celibate, he says. He had two long relationships with other priests. Logistically, having a partner was not hard; priests are expected to go on vacation together, and most of Pinkerton's work, ministering to gay people and AIDS patients, took place in a tolerant zone. "I told myself the same thing I would say to parishioners in the confessional: These [lovers] were put in my life by God, and they enrich my life--and my ministry...
...Like Pinkerton, some men were drawn to the priesthood as a shelter. Others hoped that by taking the vow of celibacy, they could cancel out the orientation that had caused them so much shame. As one gay priest in New York City puts it, "Think of yourself as a gay person wanting with all your heart not to be a gay person. What do you do?" And for still others, there was the allure of the culture. "Catholicism has been one of the most homoerotic of widely available modern cultures," writes Mark Jordan, a professor of religion at Emory University...
Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has expressed concern that seminaries foster a "homosexual atmosphere or dynamic that makes heterosexual young men think twice" about entering them. But seminaries vary tremendously, depending on the time and place. Whereas Pinkerton says he never noticed a "gay subculture" during his student years in the 1970s, a New Jersey priest who attended a Chicago seminary around the same time has more colorful memories: "It was a pretty wild, free-for-all place. If you went into any of the gay bars, you were bound to meet a priest...