‘Comfortable being gay’: a priest speaks
Patsy McGarry
He asks to be described as a religious-order priest comfortable with his sexuality. He is gay. It is “one aspect of his life”. He doesn’t like the term “gay priest”. Before this interview he pondered whether to let us publish his name. But, he realised, “I don’t have any desire to make a major dramatic statement. It doesn’t define me, and I don’t want to be defined by it. I don’t want to draw huge attention.”
A few years after his ordination he began to tell people about his sexuality. “I began to open up to friends and colleagues. Then it got to the point where I got tired telling. The need went away. Anyone who needs to know knows. It’s not an issue.”
He has been aware of his orientation since puberty. It played a part in his realising he had a vocation to the priesthood. “Despite the [church’s] negative teaching I never had the sense that God didn’t love me.”
In his teens he “used to call into the church on the way home from school. It was the one place where I could be myself. God knew who I was. My sense of a calling had its seeds there.”
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http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/comfortable-being-gay-a-priest-speaks-1.1651119
