Priestly Pedophilia/Ephebophilia



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As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.



Toby Johnson's books:

Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc.


Finding Your Own True Myth - The Myth of the Great Secret III

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III


Gay Spirituality

GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness


Gay Perspective


GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe


Secret Matter


SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan


Getting Life

GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:  A Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods


The Fourth Quill

THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil




Two Spirits
TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams



charmed lives
CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers


Myth of the Great Secret


THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell



In Search of God


IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey



Unpublished manuscripts


About ordering


Books on Gay Spirituality:

White Crane Gay Spirituality Series


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  Toby has done five podcasts with Harry Faddis for The Quest of Life

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  Articles and Excerpts:

Review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness


Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco"


About Liberty Books, the Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996


The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate


A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality


Why gay people should NOT Marry


The Scriptural Basis for Same Sex Marriage


Toby and Kip Get Married


Wedding Cake Liberation


Gay Marriage in Texas


What's ironic



Shame on the American People


The "highest form of love"


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Gay Consciousness


Why homosexuality is a sin


The cause of homosexuality


The origins of homophobia


Q&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness


What is homosexuality?


What is Gay Spirituality?


My three messages


What Jesus said about Gay Rights


Queering religion


Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men


Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"?


The purpose of homosexuality


Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality


What the Bible Says about Homosexuality


Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men



Varieties of Gay Spirituality


Waves of Gay Liberation Activity


The Gay Succession


Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian?


The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter


Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium


Easton Mountain Retreat Center


Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism


The Mysticism of Andrew Harvey


The upsidedown book on MSNBC


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Enlightenment


"It's Always About You"



The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara


Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara


You're Not A Wave



Joseph Campbell Talks about Aging



What is Enlightenment?



What is reincarnation?



How many lifetimes in an ego?



Emptiness & Religious Ideas



Experiencing experiencing experiencing



Going into the Light



Meditations for a Funeral



Meditation Practice



The way to get to heaven



Buddha's father was right



What Anatman means



Advice to Travelers to India & Nepal



The Danda Nata & goddess Kalika



Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva



John Boswell was Immanuel Kant



Cutting edge realization



The Myth of the Wanderer



Change: Source of Suffering & of Bliss



World Navel



What the Vows Really Mean



Manifesting from the Subtle Realms



The Three-layer Cake & the Multiverse


The est Training and Personal Intention



Effective Dreaming in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven


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Gay Spirituality


Curious Bodies


What Toby Johnson Believes


The Joseph Campbell Connection


The Mann Ranch (& Rich Gabrielson)


Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy


The Two Loves


The Nature of Religion


What's true about Religion


Being Gay is a Blessing


Drawing Long Straws


Freedom of Religion


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The Gay Agenda


Gay Saintliness


Gay Spiritual Functions



The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.


The Sinfulness of Homosexuality


Proposal for a study of gay nondualism


Priestly Sexuality


Having a Church to Leave


Harold Cole on Beauty


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Marian Doctrines: Immaculate Conception & Assumption


Not lashed to the prayer-post


Monastic or Chaste Homosexuality


Is It Time to Grow Up? Confronting the Aging Process


Notes on Licking  (July, 1984)


Redeem Orlando


Gay Consciousness changing the world by Shokti LoveStar


Alexander Renault interviews Toby Johnson



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Mystical Vision


"The Evolution of Gay Identity"


"St. John of the Cross & the Dark Night of the Soul."


Avalokiteshvara at the Baths


 Eckhart's Eye


Let Me Tell You a Secret


Religious Articulations of the Secret


The Collective Unconscious


Driving as Spiritual Practice


Meditation


Historicity as Myth


Pilgrimage


No Stealing


Next Step in Evolution


The New Myth


The Moulting of the Holy Ghost


Gaia is a Bodhisattva


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The Hero's Journey


The Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016


The  Gay Hero Journey (shortened)


You're On Your Own


Superheroes


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Seeing Differently


Teenage Prostitution and the Nature of Evil


Allah Hu: "God is present here"


 
Adam and Steve


The Life is in the Blood



Gay retirement and the "freelance monastery"


Seeing with Different Eyes


Facing the Edge: AIDS as an occasion for spiritual wisdom


What are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?


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The Vision


The mystical experience at the Servites'  Castle in Riverside


A  Most Remarkable Synchronicity in Riverside


The Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis


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The Techniques Of The World Saviors

Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby


Part 2: The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara


Part 3: Jesus and the Resurrection


Part 4: A Course in Miracles


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The Secret of the Clear Light


Understanding the Clear Light


Mobius Strip


Finding Your Tiger Face


How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated


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Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey, and the modern Gay Hero-- a five part presentation on YouTube


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About Alien Abduction


In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke


Karellen was a homosexual


The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance


Intersections with the movie When We Rise


More about Gay Mental Health


Psych Tech Training


Toby at the California Institute


The Rainbow Flag


Ideas for gay mythic stories


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People


Kip and Toby, Activists


Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.


Harry Hay, Founder of the gay movement


About Hay and The New Myth


About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first man to really "come out"


About Michael Talbot, gay mystic


About Fr. Bernard Lynch


About Richard Baltzell


About Guy Mannheimer


About David Weyrauch


About Dennis Paddie


About Ask the Fire


About Arthur Evans


About Christopher Larkin


About Mark Thompson


About Sterling Houston


About Michael Stevens


The Alamo Business Council


Our friend Tom Nash


Second March on Washington


The Gay Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the "Statement of Spirituality"


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Book Reviews



Be Done on Earth by Howard E. Cook


Pay Me What I'm Worth by Souldancer


The Way Out by Christopher L  Nutter


The Gay Disciple by John Henson


Art That Dares by Kittredge Cherry


Coming Out, Coming Home by Kennth A. Burr


Extinguishing the Light by B. Alan Bourgeois


Over Coffee: A conversation For Gay Partnership & Conservative Faith by D.a. Thompson


Dark Knowledge by Kenneth Low


Janet Planet by Eleanor Lerman


The Kairos by Paul E. Hartman


Wrestling with Jesus by D.K.Maylor


Kali Rising by Rudolph Ballentine


The Missing Myth by Gilles Herrada


The Secret of the Second Coming by Howard E. Cook


The Scar Letters: A Novel by Richard Alther


The Future is Queer by Labonte & Schimel


Missing Mary by Charlene Spretnak


Gay Spirituality 101 by Joe Perez


Cut Hand: A Nineteeth Century Love Story on the American Frontier by Mark Wildyr


Radiomen by Eleanor Lerman


Nights at Rizzoli by Felice Picano


The Key to Unlocking the Closet Door by Chelsea Griffo


The Door of the Heart by Diana Finfrock Farrar


Occam’s Razor by David Duncan


Grace and Demion by Mel White


Gay Men and The New Way Forward by Raymond L. Rigoglioso


The Dimensional Stucture of Consciousness by Samuel Avery


The Manly Pursuit of Desire and Love by Perry Brass


Love Together: Longtime Male Couples on Healthy Intimacy and Communication by Tim Clausen


War Between Materialism and Spiritual by Jean-Michel Bitar


The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal


Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal


The Invitation to Love by Darren Pierre


Brain, Consciousness, and God: A Lonerganian Integration by Daniel A Helminiak


A Walk with Four Spiritual Guides by Andrew Harvey


Can Christians Be Saved? by Stephenson & Rhodes


The Lost Secrets of the Ancient Mystery Schools by Stephenson & Rhodes


Keys to Spiritual Being: Energy Meditation and Synchronization Exercises by Adrian Ravarour


In Walt We Trust by John Marsh


Solomon's Tantric Song by Rollan McCleary


A Special Illumination by Rollan McCleary


Aelred's Sin by Lawrence Scott


Fruit Basket by Payam Ghassemlou


Internal Landscapes by John Ollom


Princes & Pumpkins by David Hatfield Sparks


Yes by Brad Boney


Blood of the Goddess by William Schindler


Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom by Jeffrey Kripal


Evolving Dharma by Jay Michaelson


Jesus in Salome's Lot by Brett W. Gillette


The Man Who Loved Birds by Fenton Johnson


The Vatican Murders by Lucien Gregoire


"Sex Camp" by Brian McNaught


Out & About with Brewer & Berg
Episode One: Searching for a New Mythology



The Soul Beneath the Skin by David Nimmons


Out on Holy Ground by Donald Boisvert


The Revotutionary Psychology of Gay-Centeredness by Mitch Walker


Out There by Perry Brass


The Crucifixion of Hyacinth by Geoff Puterbaugh


The Silence of Sodom by Mark D Jordan


It's Never About What It's About by Krandall Kraus and Paul Borja


ReCreations, edited by Catherine Lake


Gospel: A Novel by WIlton Barnhard


Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey by Fenton Johnson


Dating the Greek Gods
by Brad Gooch


Telling Truths in Church by Mark D. Jordan


The Substance of God by Perry Brass


The Tomcat Chronicles by Jack Nichols


10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives by Joe Kort


Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same Sex Love by Will Roscoe


The Third Appearance by Walter Starcke


The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann


Surviving and Thriving After a Life-Threatening Diagnosis by Bev Hall


Men, Homosexuality, and the Gods by Ronald Long

An Interview with Ron Long


Queering Creole Spiritual Traditons by Randy Conner & David Sparks

An Interview with Randy Conner


Pain, Sex and Time by Gerald Heard


Sex and the Sacred by Daniel Helminiak


Blessing Same-Sex Unions by Mark Jordan


Rising Up by Joe Perez


Soulfully Gay by Joe Perez


That Undeniable Longing by Mark Tedesco


Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman


Wisdom for the Soul by Larry Chang


MM4M a DVD by Bruce Grether


Double Cross by David Ranan


The Transcended Christian by Daniel Helminiak


Jesus in Love by Kittredge Cherry


In the Eye of the Storm by Gene Robinson


The Starry Dynamo by Sven Davisson


Life in Paradox by Fr Paul Murray


Spirituality for Our Global Community by Daniel Helminiak


Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society by Robert A. Minor


Coming Out: Irish Gay Experiences by Glen O'Brien


Queering Christ by Robert Goss


Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage


The Flesh of the Word by Richard A Rosato


Catland by David Garrett Izzo


Tantra for Gay Men by Bruce Anderson


Yoga & the Path of the Urban Mystic by Darren Main


Simple Grace by Malcolm Boyd


Seventy Times Seven by Salvatore Sapienza


What Does "Queer" Mean Anyway? by Chris Bartlett


Critique of Patriarchal Reasoning by Arthur Evans


Gift of the Soul by Dale Colclasure & David Jensen


Legend of the Raibow Warriors by Steven McFadden


The Liar's Prayer by Gregory Flood


Lovely are the Messengers by Daniel Plasman


The Human Core of Spirituality by Daniel Helminiak


3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke


Religion and the Human Sciences by Daniel Helminiak


Only the Good Parts by Daniel Curzon


Four Short Reviews of Books with a Message


Life Interrupted by Michael Parise


Confessions of a Murdered Pope by Lucien Gregoire


The Stargazer's Embassy by Eleanor Lerman


Conscious Living, Conscious Aging by Ron Pevny


Footprints Through the Desert by Joshua Kauffman


True Religion by J.L. Weinberg


The Mediterranean Universe by John Newmeyer


Everything is God by Jay Michaelson


Reflection by Dennis Merritt


Everywhere Home by Fenton Johnson


Hard Lesson by James Gaston


God vs Gay? by Jay Michaelson


The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path by Jay Michaelson


Roxie & Fred by Richard Alther


Not the Son He Expected by Tim Clausen


The 9 Realities of Stardust by Bruce P. Grether


The Afterlife Revolution by Anne & Whitley Strieber


AIDS Shaman: Queer Spirit Awakening by Shokti Lovestar


Facing the Truth of Your Life by Merle Yost


The Super Natural by Whitley Strieber & Jeffrey J Kripal


Secret Body by Jeffrey J Kripal


In Hitler's House by Jonathan Lane


Walking on Glory by Edward Swift


The Paradox of Porn by Don Shewey


Is Heaven for Real? by Lucien Gregoire


Enigma by Lloyd Meeker


Scissors, Paper, Rock by Fenton Johnson




Toby Johnson's Books on Gay Men's Spiritualities:




Gay
Perspective cover
Gay Perspective

Things Our [Homo]sexuality
Tells Us about the
Nature of God and
the Universe


Gay Perspective audiobook
Gay Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated by Matthew Whitfield. Click here







Gay
Spirituality cover
Gay Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness



gay-spirituality-audiobook
Gay Spirituality   is now available as an audiobook, beautifully narrated by John Sipple. Click here








charmed lives
Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling

edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman







secret matter
Secret Matter

Lammy Award Winner for Gay Science Fiction

updated







Getting Life
Getting Life in Perspective

A Fantastical Romance





Getting
Life in Perspective audiobook
Getting Life in Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated by Alex Beckham. Click here 






The Fourth Quill

The Fourth Quill

originally published as PLAGUE




johnson-the-fourth-quill-audiobook
The Fourth Quill is available as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie Moreland. Click here






Two
Two Spirits: A Story of Life with the Navajo

with Walter L. Williams




Two Spirits
audiobookTwo Spirits  is available as an audiobook  narrated by Arthur Raymond. Click here






Finding Your Own True Myth - The Myth of the Great Secret III
Finding Your Own True Myth:
What I Learned from Joseph Campbell

The Myth of the Great Secret III








In
Search of God in the Sexual Underworld
In Search of God  in the Sexual Underworld










The Myth of the Great Secret II

The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell.

This was the second edition of this book.




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Toby Johnson's titles are available in other ebook formats from Smashwords.



Priestly Sexuality


There is a message behind the ongoing priest pedophilia/ephebophilia scandal that is being missed—especially by the current LGBT argument that the Church is wrong to connect the crisis to homosexuality.

What the crisis reveals is that being gay tends to make people more religious, more sensitive, more committed to service. That’s the implication of the revelation about priestly sexuality. What seems to be shocking to the public is there are gay men in the priesthood, because the public doesn’t understand homosexuality (or priesthood, for that matter). The crisis indirectly shows that “essential gayness” makes people “better” people, the way we used to think priests were “better” people (when we didn’t know about their sexuality and thought of them somehow as essentially eunuchs).

What the crisis reveals is that the Church's false and hypocritical condemnation of homosexuality—and sexual experience, in general—can have devastating consequences for these gay men who sought to give their lives to God by joining the Church, only to find a complex set of confusing and false double-binds in priestly life. Because the Church is so benightedly anti-sex and anti-gay, these men are effectively driven crazy (I use that word non-technically) and they do things beyond the pale and maybe even without knowing what they're doing.

Priests ARE gay because gayness is a holy kind of consciousness. Priests are sexual criminals because that truth is denied and vilified by the Church. It's Christian teaching about the nature of human incarnation that is wrong. And the proof is the “fruits” of that teaching—to use Jesus's test for veracity: “By their fruits you will know them.” Belief in the anti-sex doctrines and myths results in bad sexually–related behavior.

And on top of all that, the trauma in the lives of the victims is so much, much worse because of the conflicts, guilt, shame and embarrassment around sexuality and homosexuality the Church inculcates in them to protect its own closet.

We need a “new myth” that is psychologically sophisticated enough to honor sexuality and human incarnation and shape it positively. You'd think that is what Jesus was talking about 2000 years ago with his comment about who gets to throw the first stone, but his followers sure distorted the message.


The priestly pedophilia scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church and challenged the authority of the hierarchy tells us that there is something wrong in the Catholic teachings and doctrines about sex and embodiment. Priests are pedophiles not because pedophiles become priests but because priestly indoctrination warps men's judgment and their experience of embodiment. These men are victims of religion who end up acting sometimes in grossly inappropriate ways without conscious understanding of what they're doing.

There may be some men, even some homosexuals, who were attracted to the priesthood because of the power it could give them over other people, sexually and emotionally. But they are not certainly most priests. Most priests today joined at the end of parochial school or high school when they were 13 or 17 years of age. Such earnest young men were driven by naïve zeal, selfless generosity, and the tenets of Catholic doctrine to renounce the things of the flesh entirely for the sake of God's immaterial, ethereal Kingdom. These boys don't join the priesthood because they think it will be a good way to get sex. If anything, they believe they will be able to give up sex entirely—and should, in order to be good boys.

The media-driven sensationalization—and the legal claims for huge settlements of Church money—distort the reality of priestly “pedophilia.” What is properly called child molestation is predominantly a heterosexual phenomenon, with homosexuals no more likely than heterosexuals to sexually abuse prepubescent children. For what the priests were doing, ephebophilia would be a more correct term, love of post-pubescent teenagers, the mentoring pattern which some cultures—Classical Greece, the usual example—institutionalized as honorable and beneficial. (Of course, even so, you have to wonder how these priests could have been so ignorant of the laws about age of consent.)

An article on abcnews.com by Fr. Edward L. Beck cites statistics:

Of about 3,000 reported cases of sexual misconduct among priests committed in the past 50 years, only 300, or 10 percent, of those cases involved true pedophiles. Pedophilia is psychologically classified as sexual attraction to prepubescent children, younger than 13. Ninety percent of the reported abuse cases involved Roman Catholic priests classified as ephebophiles, those attracted to teens between 13 and 19. Of those reported cases, 60 percent were homosexual abuse and 30 percent heterosexual abuse, according to the 2004 John Jay Report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In the media and in court, the sexual gestures of the accused priest are characterized as ravishment and child-rape to evoke images of forceful penetration—what frustrated, angry adult males do to females. Heterosexual dynamics get projected onto the situation, because the media, the courts, and the public don't understand homosexual sexual dynamics.

With gay understanding, we may see that, while some of these acts truly are crimes of rape and molestation, often they are far more innocent, well-intentioned, if terribly misguided and grossly inappropriate, gestures of affection. More likely, we can imagine, these adult priests, obsessed with religious imagery and driven by it to suppress sexual feelings, had come to revere the innocence of the young boys in their care. They see in those boys their own lost boyish innocence. They covet that innocence. And they desire the boy who incarnates it. They likely experience their desire as something totally different from sex, perhaps even as something holy. It certainly isn't the heterosexuality they vowed to abjure. They may believe they can save a youth from a dysfunctional upbringing. They may project onto a boy serving at their altar that this innocent youth too has a religious vocation and think their affection for him a sign of God's electing the boy to the next generation of priesthood. Drawn by the vision of Christ in the boy, they reach out to touch that vision and find themselves totally unprepared for the sexual emotions and compulsions that follow.

Media attention has made it appear that those coming forward to report that years ago they were traumatized by the homosexual advances of priests and to sue the Church for damages are now heterosexual adult men. About half the victims who've organized to challenge the Church cover-up of priestly sexual misdeeds are women; they weren't victimized by homosexual advances. And, of course, some of the victims are gay, but they're not the media focus. Were gay adults all similarly traumatized or were they, perhaps instead, liberated? There is no media attention, after all, given to proclaiming a priest had had sex with you and, even though it might have been embarrassing and a little creepy at the time, you've got good attitudes about your sexuality, have no recriminations against him, and no desire to claim money because of it.

The heterosexual adults, male and female, are right, of course, that they should not have had any sexual, especially homosexual, experience forced upon them. And it would have been especially inappropriate for it to come from a priest. But wasn't the psychological trauma caused less by the priest's advances than by society's and the Church's hysteria around sexuality and homosexuality?

If these people had been raised to understand all sexual activity to be wonderful and beautiful and an experience of God's vitality in the physical world, would they have ended up adult “victims”? Was the traumatizer the inept, psychologically crippled priest or the Church doctrine that made into a trauma what—in a VERY different setting, of course—could have been a simple, playful human interaction?

The homosexually-repressed priests fall in love with the wrong boys. Their gaydar has been rendered defective. Because they have been indoctrinated and traumatized themselves into denying homosexual feelings, they may be self-righteously judgmental toward obvious pre-gay, sissy boys. Having been required by the Church to be themselves “straight-acting and straight-appearing,” they fall for boys who are straight-acting and straight-appearing—and really straight.

Straight teenage boys aren't the proper object for the priests' affections and ministrations. These young men won't benefit from learning that the condemnations of homosexuality are a cover for a secret and a technique for pulling the wool over the eyes of the breeding masses. But sexually mature gay teenagers might very well benefit from a relationship with a priest—not, of course, from Father prematurely and inappropriately manipulating them into adult sexual intercourse. That simply shouldn't happen. But from Father mentoring them in the ways of the world, letting them in on the Church's secret, and telling them how beautiful and innocent and beloved by God they are—and how blessed that they'll grow up to be gay men. (Such an honest and intimate, but totally non-sexual, relationship with a priest when I was in the seminary dramatically helped me become a proud and psychologically healthy adult gay man.)

A question that remains unanswered—and maybe unanswerable—is whether priests and other religious have always been pedophiles, i.e., sexual initiators. Catholic seminarians joke about the so-called jus primi noctis (“right of the first night”), according to which, supposedly, in ancient times the feudal lord or the presiding priest had the prerogative to sexually initiate a virgin bride on the first night of her marriage. Perhaps one of the traditional functions of the priesthood was to initiate young people into sexuality. That's not to defend it, just to question what's actually been going on.

It's a joke in modern American society that parents can't bring themselves even to have the “bird and the bees talk.” They become tongue-tied by their reluctance to see their beloved babies grow up to sexual adulthood and by their own sexual awareness of their children. Parents are confronted with feelings that cannot be allowed into consciousness. Fathers can't initiate their sons into masturbation. Mothers can't show their daughters how to feel the pleasure their bodies are capable of experiencing.

Sexual maturity ends the innocence of childhood; sexual, emotional, and relational issues displace the simple concerns of the playroom. Delaying that is a boon to the children and an aid to their maturation. The offense of sexual advances towards children shouldn’t be understood as the sex, but the theft of childhood.

Yet they are going to become aware of their physical urges. Their genital organs are going to mature. That's inevitable. So who should teach sons and daughters how to touch themselves and to celebrate human incarnation in feeling flesh? Shouldn't it be priests? Who better should understand how to place all these feelings in the context of ego-transcending love? Who better to tell boys how to bring themselves to orgasm without snickering and embarrassment? Who better to teach them—at the proper age, of course—the Body Electric techniques for finding ecstasy in sexual arousal?

Obviously it isn't going to be the Catholic priests of today's Catholic Church, with its anti-sexual, homophobia-justifying agenda. To find such priest-initiators we have to recall those hunter-gatherer days when the religions worshipped the Great Mother and celebrated her mysteries with reverent orgies and transcendence-inducing orgasms. To find such priests perhaps we have to create a metaphorical history of such a matriarchal time. Perhaps we need a radically new religion.

Considering the trauma, belligerence, and violence that our current anti-sexual, patriarchal religions have produced, perhaps it's not just the altar boys who've been f--ked by the priests. All of us have had the wool pulled over our eyes.

The ecclesiastical solution to the scandal has been to blame homosexuals in the priesthood and to act surprised that there are such men in their midst. Of course, there are homosexuals in the priesthood. Priests are likely to be gay. They are supposed to exemplify self-sacrifice, generosity, sensitivity, kindness, and non-competitiveness—all the traits of gay men.

Celibacy is said to keep homosexuals out of the Church, but celibacy is actually not the renunciation of sex, but of marriage and childrearing. Sex is, of course, indirectly forbidden because, according to Catholic doctrine, sex is only lawful in the state of marriage. Celibacy originated in the need to avoid widows and children becoming the responsibility of the institution. Church property couldn't be allowed to pass through inheritance outside the Church. Priests can't have heirs.

Homosexuals, especially in the old days before the Gay Rights Movement and the awareness in society of gayness as a psychological phenomenon, enter the priesthood because they aren't motivated to pursue sex with women, marriage, or parenthood. They're just the kind of men the Church needs. They're drawn to the religious life because the Church provides the doctrinal explanation for their disinclination toward heterosexual sex. The Catholic Church helpfully declares that sex is the greatest temptation and boys shouldn't even look at girls for fear of arousing sinful passions. Is it any wonder young, unaware homosexuals would seek refuge in the Church?

To solve the pedophilia problem, the Church needs to offer a sex-positive vision, a doctrine of sexual pleasure that allows priests to form sexual bonds with women, perhaps women priests—or with other conscious gay adult men—and that utilizes modern technologies to prevent conception. The Church needs to embrace masturbation (perhaps as meditative, spiritual practice—the way some modern gay men are doing), contraception, even abortion in the service of body-positive, celibate (i.e. childless) sex lives for priests.

Instead, Church authorities address the scandal by driving out the openly gay, sexually aware priests. They say they're getting rid of the bad apples, leaving only properly repressed heterosexuals in the ranks. This leaves the Church with the even more confused, conflicted, repressed men in various stages of nailing shut their closet doors. Proclamations of the evil and inherent disorderedness of conscious gay people ring with hypocrisy.

Everybody sees that the real “crime” is the hierarchical cover-up. The bishops—even the Pope—lied and shielded the child-abusers to protect their own public image and fundraising abilities. This has been partly, of course, out of the same kind of loyalty that causes police officers to protect other police officers and doctors to protect other doctors, but perhaps also out of the bishops' innate understanding that the sins of the priests often weren't as heinous as the scandal has made the public believe.

But the bishops are in great part responsible for the public's hysteria, and the hysteria indeed makes the priests' behavior heinous and its consequences traumatizing. (Secrecy and cover-up always make sexual abuse far more emotionally damaging than the actual act of sex itself.)

Conscious gay people’s awareness of the secret homosexual slant to things and our own understanding of the innocence of homosexual affections allow us to see that the bishops demonstrate a certain understanding and sympathy for the pedophile priests. Perhaps the bishops see this is not something new and that the ephebophile priests' behavior though not acceptable is at least “understandable.” (That’s the word Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, used about violence against homosexuals.)

But then instead of finding somebody to blame, why don't the bishops defuse the hysteria by telling the truth about homosexuality? As Church historian Mark Jordan describes in The Silence of Sodom, the real crime is that the Church knows it's a gay institution and understands the homosexual peccadilloes of its priests while fiercely denying the truth and ratcheting up its rhetoric against homosexuality to bolster the denials. The Church's sin is being soft on conflicted, closeted homosexuals in its midst while being hard on open, self-affirming gay people in modern, secular society. The Church opposes gay rights, fights gay marriage, objects to safe sex education, and condemns homosexuality as unnatural and disordered—all to protect its own secret.

Priests serving in the Church, and especially idealistic young seminarians, identify themselves as gay not in rebellion to Church authority but out of personal integrity. They're not necessarily violating their vows: One can be openly gay and proud and be sexually continent. For men (and women) in the Church, it's an act of courage, psychological health, and honesty to tell the truth—to themselves, to their brothers or sisters in religious community, and to God. Openly gay priests and seminarians aren't disobedient, they're heroic. They're telling that truth about the Emperor's new clothes. They are not the ones who need to be disciplined.

But maybe gay priests should be leaving the Church—for their own sake. Conventional religion—with its antiquated understanding of human psychology, rigid rules of social behavior, and neurosis-inducing attitudes toward embodiment—is not the place for gay men. Gay men are spiritual and spiritual men are usually gay. These men deserve a religion that enables them to flourish as the saints they are, not one that cripples their sexuality and shapes them into predators. What a terrible waste of good gay lives!
 

This article is based on material from Toby Johnson's Gay Perspective: Things our [homo]sexuality tells us about the nature of God and the Universe (White Crane Books, 2008).

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Toby Johnson, PhD is author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of his teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness. 

Johnson's book GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

His  GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They remain in print.

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual qualities of gay male consciousness.

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