TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111389/11138900.016

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 8.3 KB | 159 lines

                                                                                RELIGION, Page 89

The Battle over Gay Clergy


Demands for toleration shake many North American churches


    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.