Please let me be a priest, and a hero.

Please let me be a priest, and a hero.
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Wall Street Journal writers Matthew Hennessey and Ian Lovett author two articles about the priesthood in the United States of America. Hennessey calls the priesthood heroic, exemplifying its virtue in the life of a not-well known Franciscan priest, Maximilian Kolbe. Ian Lovett writes about the decline of the American seminary system, which chronicles the closing of institutions of priestly training and formation over the next decade. Neither Hennessey nor Lovett included gay men like me in their stories.

I wanted to be a hero priest, one like Maximilian Kolbe, and to dedicate myself to Christians of the Roman Catholic Church. I heard my calling at age 15, on Long Island, and prayed for the courage to dedicate myself God. I yearned to preach the Gospel and to lead my fellow Christians to God, and others back to the Church through Reconciliation. I anticipated a rich Eucharistic life, one in which I was willing to humble myself and take the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Quickly I learned, the diocesan priesthood was not a fit for me. At my core I am apostolic, and craved an urban and missionary lifestyle; thus, I chose to enter a religious order.

Over time I discerned my vocation, had it tested through a rigorous process of examination, and entered and stayed in the Society of Jesus (aka Jesuits) for 10 years. Fr. Walter Ciszek became my Jesuit patron saint; he authored two texts With God in Russia and He Leadeth Me. I read both before entering the St. Andrew Hall, the Jesuit Novitiate in Syracuse, New York.

In 2004, at the age of 24, I was concerned about my soul, as the Roman Catholic Church had taught me, through Her Catechism of the Catholic Church that gay men like meare "disordered," and that any expression of love for another man is unnatural, contrary to natural law and evil.

Walter Ciszek, however, had through his writing encouraged me to not be scared of the Church’s codified and dogmatic language, but rather to journey on, to become a hero priest for others, to as the Jesuits say, Go, Set the world on fire.

Over time, as the Church continued to chasten the ministry of LGBT people, questioning their virtue, firing them from jobs and volunteer positions, negating their spiritual and corporal works of mercy, I grew impatient, and then angry. As any hero might, I sought to confront injustice, wrongdoing and challenged the Society of Jesus to speak publicly about the good works of LGBT people, to praise them as good and faithful stewards of the Gospel. I challenged my superiors to publish an employment non-discrimination statement, to protect LGBT employees in Jesuit sponsored universities, colleges, high schools and parishes.

When this did not happen (sic could not happen because of the Catechism of the Catholic Church) I discerned my departure from the Jesuits, and put a hold on my heroic vision of living a priestly life as an out, gay Jesuit priest, a life that the Jesuits informed me I could not lead. They could live with my being gay but would not allow me to be OUT as a gay priest. I then applied to the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, and was received into the Anglican Communion at St. Luke’s in the Fields.

At General I studied for a master in sacred theology, and sought fellowship from male and female, gay and straight, peers who believed in erecting God’s kingdom in New York City and beyond. I worked as a therapist and later a school social worker. My priestly vocation never left me, and God didn’t cease encouraging me onward in my vocation.

On my way to work this summer a friend called me, remembering my efforts to publish my memoir, he told me about Fr. James Martin’s newest, bestselling book, Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity (HarperOne, 2017). Immediately, I wondered where was Fr. Martin when I was leaving the Jesuits? Why didn’t he help me become an OUT gay Jesuit priest, which from the beginning was my Catholic dream? Or better yet, support me and my challenge to the Society of Jesus?

To my astonishment Martin’s book is dedicated to the LGBT men and women who were massacred at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. It was during the summer of 2016 when 49 LGBT men and women were massacred and the Roman Catholic Church remained silent. Where were the voices of the closeted gay religious, priests, bishops or deacons?

The LGBT community is invisible to the wider Church, a Church whose clerics will not identify gays and lesbians by using their proper name in social or pastoral outreach. Instead the Church uses demonizing language like homosexual, which has had the pejorative effect of linking gay men with pedophiles. (Nothing could be further from the truth!)

LGBT people do not need to be treated with sensitivity and respect by the Church, that is the Church’s mandate from Jesus – rather, they need to belong, as full members, and in cases like mine, to be accepted and loved as a heroic out gay priest.

Before professing vows as a Jesuit in 2007 I wrote in a mandatory paper, “My own personal desire to profess perpetual vows of chastity, poverty and obedience answers God’s calling me to freely, humbly and lovingly live out my own Baptismal creational principle and foundation. By professing perpetual vows of chastity, poverty and obedience I act out of complete and perfect love, finding the initiative in grace and nature, to courageously choose a Jesuit life always ready for more.” I did so as a closeted gay Jesuit seminarian, but could not live them as an out gay Jesuit priest.

Hennessey, Lovett and Martin write about heroism in one form or another. Hennessey distills the heroism of the priesthood exemplified by Maximilian Kolbe. Lovett the heroism of seminarians who seek formation as priests while their training centers close. These writers are bringing attention to an important issue: the need for priests in our modern world. We also need gay priests, and I hope someday the Catholic Church will ordain gay priests as I had asked the church to allow me to do: to be a declared, out Catholic Jesuit.

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