10.
“I was raised as a very conservative Catholic, home-schooled, well-read, and well-educated in terms of having a traditional liberal arts education. I also attended a small Catholic college that was very conservative along those lines. We had several Masses each day and everyone was expected to attend. We had some pastors who were pretty aggressive in preaching to them about religious/priestly vocations. If you’re going to marry a certain girl by the time you’re a senior, you should go to seminary.”
“That pressure, combined with the piety and religious seriousness that was part of the atmosphere I breathed there, was relentless, and I applied to seminary immediately after graduation. When I got to seminary, I was disgusted by how “liberal” the seminary I was attending seemed. That perception was further amplified by the fact that there was a very active culture of homosexual men who were predatory and did a lot of grooming towards young men. I was a victim of some of them. Although the predatory behavior was not as bad as some have experienced, it still made me feel violated and powerless, especially since the seminary refused to even address it.
Looking back, we see that it was probably mainly because their psychosexual development was stunted because they had to repress their sexuality (nearly all of them were sent to study in the United States, where the only excuse for being a single man in your twenties was to become a priest).
I was struggling with ideological insecurities, sexual misconduct, and a growing awareness of the church’s excessive obsession with money and fundraising. My friends there called it “Jesus Company.” In addition to that, it’s very effective in making you think that what seminaries and churches are doing is actually not that bad, and no matter how dysfunctional it is, it shouldn’t be an obstacle for you. They basically teach that if you were holier and more committed to your mission, it wouldn’t really matter, so ultimately if you’re unhappy, it’s really your fault.
I finally reached a breaking point about six months before my ordination, and I could no longer deny the reality that I was going to be very unhappy in that life. And that even if you move on, at some point it will become unbearable and you will inevitably leave. Sexuality was one very important part of that. Not having sex or getting married by chance or circumstance is one thing, but intentionally choosing to block that possibility is psychologically different. I can’t really explain how, but it’s just the way it is.
The other thing is that I realized that I can’t really have things of my own, that I can’t decide my own life. I would always live in someone else’s house, if that makes sense. I felt like I couldn’t really grow up, and it bothered me a lot. I realize now that I don’t want to do it, and I spent years gaslit and telling myself I really wanted to do it.
After I left, I was still pretty religious, basically until Trump came along. I have observed people who thought they believed the gospel use it for political expediency. This led to more and more doubts and the realization that the church was actually just an exercise in raw power created by humans. Basically, when it was inconvenient, I felt like I had been tricked into really believing a doctrine that even the church itself did not believe for many years. ”
Source: BuzzFeed – LGBTQ – www.buzzfeed.com
