The Battle over Gay Clergy

By Richard N. Ostling

Not so long ago, Christians who were homosexual devoted much of their energy to cloaking that fact. Today not only have many of them come out of the closet, but they are also staging rallies, disrupting worship services and aggressively demanding church endorsement of their life-styles. For gay liberationists, nothing would better epitomize moral acceptance than for the churches to ordain open, practicing homosexuals as clergy. The result is a bitterly fought battle over the acceptance of gay ministers now being waged in both the Roman Catholic Church and mainline Protestant groups.

The latest skirmish erupted last week in San Francisco, as parishioners of St. Francis Lutheran Church voted 46 to 5 to call a lesbian couple as assistant pastors: Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart, both graduates of Luther Northwestern seminary in Minnesota. Bishop Lyle Miller refuses to approve them as ministers because they will not commit themselves to sexual abstinence. The congregation, half gay, will have to ordain the women on its own, defying both the ordination rules of the 5.3 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and its policy against "homosexual erotic activity" among ministers.

In the Episcopal Church, numerous bishops openly oppose the denomination's official stand against ordination of "practicing" homosexuals. Some clergy are promoting more radical opinions. Carter Heyward, one of the Episcopalians' pioneer female priests, is now an enthusiastic lesbian and a theology professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts. In a new book, Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God (Harper & Row; $12.95), Heyward says that for gays "fidelity to our primary relational commitments does not require monogamy." She even allows for some sadomasochism.

In the 8.9 million-member United Methodist Church, ecclesiastical legislatures have wrestled with several cases involving gay clergy. Though some national church agencies have advocated toleration of gay clergy, grass- roots conservatives have fended off any such policy change. The latest round of the 17-year battle involves a committee that is re-examining the church's approach to homosexuality. The Presbyterian Church too is restudying sexuality, raising the prospect that its stand against gay behavior could be changed.

Some Protestant denominations have landed on the liberationist side. The Unitarian Universalists openly welcome gay clergy. The United Church of Christ, which in 1972 became the first major denomination to ordain an avowedly homosexual clergyman, subsequently stated that homosexual orientation is no barrier to ordination, leaving open the matter of ministers' active sexual behavior. The United Church of Canada is in an uproar over a similar policy issued last year.

Perhaps the most emotional debates are those now occurring within the Roman Catholic Church. Father Andrew Greeley, the irrepressible sociologist and novelist, complained in a recent article that regard for priestly celibacy is being undermined by a "national network" of actively homosexual clergy. "In some dioceses, certain rectories have become lavender houses," he grumbled. Theologian Richard McBrien of the University of Notre Dame contends that homosexuality is so widespread that "heterosexual males are deciding in ever increasing numbers not even to consider the priesthood."

Just how common is homosexuality among the Catholic clergy? A September Washington Post article cited the figures of a Baltimore therapist, A.W. Richard Sipe, who, after 25 years of interviewing 1,000 priests, concluded that 20% of the nation's Catholic clergy are gay, half of those sexually active. Sipe also estimates that 4% of priests are sexually attracted to adolescents and an additional 2% to children under 13. Responding last month, David Brinkmoeller, director of the U.S. bishops' secretariat on priestly life, questioned the validity of the figures.

In a new anthology, Homosexuality in the Priesthood and the Religious Life (Crossroad; $14.95), Salvatorian priest Robert Nugent, who has worked among gay Catholics for twelve years, says estimates on the numbers of homosexual clergy range from "the most conservative 10% to a more reasonable 20%" or higher. He notes that a national survey by vocation directors in men's religious orders showed that, from 1981 to 1985, 5% of candidates accepted for the priesthood identified themselves to the church as being homosexual in orientation.

In another recently published anthology, Gay Priests (Harper & Row; $17.95), University of Kentucky researcher James G. Wolf reports the results of a survey conducted among a loose network of homosexual clergy who sent the questionnaires to one another. The 101 respondents, obviously not a representative sample, typically estimated the extent of clerical homosexuality at 40% to 60%. Though those numbers are of little scientific value, the participating priests offered interesting revelations on their own views. Only one of them said he had abstained entirely from sex once he became a priest; 37% reported their sexual activity to be frequent since ordination.

Influenced by liberalization in both theology and society, such clergymen reject or redefine the official concept of celibacy. Many of them interpret it as a ban upon marriage instead of sex, or as an ideal instead of a law to be obeyed. One of Wolf's homosexual priests said of the celibacy rule, "Since it is forced, it has no moral binding power as long as scandal is avoided."

Another clergyman, who is a regional director of priestly education in one of the larger men's orders, explained to TIME the justification for his private homosexual life during recent years. "We'll never know what is right or wrong until we open up the issue and look at people's experiences," he said. "I don't see any contradiction between having an intimate relationship and a total commitment to Christ." This prominent priest said his superiors have been quietly aware of his long-running, but not live-in, relationship with a fellow gay. They expect him to be judicious, he says, not to change.

Catholic teaching holds that all homosexual acts are sinful, though a homosexual orientation is not. There are U.S. Catholic bishops willing to ordain priests with homosexual proclivities as long as they promise to remain celibate and support church teaching on the topic. But in practice, the barrier between homosexual orientation and homosexual activity is difficult to maintain. No doubt aware of that, the Vatican issued a sharp decree in October 1986 that is known among enraged gay Catholics as the "Halloween letter." The text warned that homosexual inclination tends "toward an intrinsic moral evil" and "must be seen as an objective disorder."

The Vatican has also ordered bishops to withdraw support from groups that either are "ambiguous" or "neglect" the church's teaching. That was aimed especially at Dignity/USA, an organization that has 5,000 members in 100 chapters and formerly held Masses with church approval in dozens of cities. In the wake of that attack, the national Dignity convention last September declared clear-cut opposition to the church's moral teaching.

With growing support from liberal theologians, the gay activists insist that Christianity has unjustly repressed a perfectly moral alternative life-style. For Catholics, the dispute is a classic test of loyalty to the Pope and the magisterium, or teaching authority, of the church. For Protestants, it is an example of the deep-seated conflict between the traditional and liberal approaches to the Bible.

"This is not an issue of morals," asserts Michael Hiller, assistant pastor at San Francisco's St. Francis Lutheran and openly homosexual. "It's an issue of justice." It is also a large and continuing problem for ordinary churchgoers, Protestants and Catholics alike, many of whom feel it would be morally wrong to undercut a tenet that Christianity has held with such confidence over so many centuries.

With reporting by Barbara Dolan/Chicago and Dennis Wyss/San Francisco