Tag Archives: #BishopJohnStowe

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Is Our Bishop Catholic?

Whenever I read that His Excellency, The Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington, is in the news, I cringe, because I know it’s not for something good. From the Catholic News Agency:

Bishop Stowe ‘not in favor’ of Eucharistic document, but predicts it will pass

By Joe Bukuras | November 12, 2021 | 19:05 EST

Boston: An outspoken critic of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ draft document on the Eucharist predicts it will be adopted at their fall assembly next week, though he intends to vote against it.

“I’m afraid it is,” Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv., of Lexington, Ky., said during a media briefing Nov. 11 when asked if he thought the document, “The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church,” is going to be adopted.

“I think it will [pass] because it’s blander than what was proposed at first, and it’s got something that I think was trying to appease everybody,” Stowe predicted, “and I think a lot of bishops would have a hard time voting against it because there’s not something so objectionable contained in it.”

Stowe’s comments came Nov. 11 during a livestreamed forum about the fall assembly sponsored by Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture in partnership with the National Catholic Reporter. The assembly begins Monday with a closed-door meeting at which the bishops are expected to have a private preliminary discussion about the Eucharistic document, prior to discussing and voting on it in public later in the week.

There’s a lot more at the original, but it basically informs the reader that the document does not contain any explicit language which states that abortion supporting politicians like Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi should be denied communion, but addresses worthily receiving the eucharist.

In response to Stowe’s comments, Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila of Denver told CNA that the document on the Eucharist is in accordance with Pope Francis’ teaching.

“Bishop Stowe presents the discussion surrounding Eucharistic coherence as being motivated by a desire to return to a pre-Vatican II Church and to ignore Pope Francis’ teachings,” Aquila said.

“On the contrary, I believe that directly addressing the issue of worthily receiving Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is completely in line with what the Holy Father has called for and is directly linked with encouraging a deeper belief in and reverence for our Lord in the Eucharist,” he said.

“Some bishops seem insistent on portraying this effort to teach clearly on worthy reception of Jesus in the Eucharist as divisive. By framing the discussion this way, they are in fact increasing division by failing to address the scandal given to the faithful by those public figures who insist on saying they are devout Catholics in communion with the Body of Christ, when they are blatantly advancing laws that allow the taking of innocent life and the serious distortion of human sexuality,” Aquila said.

From St Paul’s website; note the ‘rainbow’ stole being worn by a clergyman. Bishop John Stowe is at the far right of the photo. Click to enlarge.

It’s that second part that bothers His Excellency the Bishop. The Diocese of Lexington does not have a lot of Catholic politicians advocating abortion, but it hosts, with the Bishop’s full support, a parish which openly supports homosexuality. He has openly supported homosexuality and transgenderism among parishioners, and if abortion is not a big topic in the Bluegrass State, a parish which welcomes open homosexuals in the same city as the Cathedral parish is pretty hard to ignore.

Photo from St Paul’s Catholic Church website. Click to enlarge.

Let’s be plain here: in stating that one should only attempt to receive the Host validly, all active and non-repentant homosexuals are necessarily excluded. Of course His Excellence the Bishop is going to be opposed to it!

Our Bishop just does not want to seem to be Catholic!

Then, on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page on Wednesday, was this bit of joy:

Philly priest sexually abused a teen at Cardinal Dougherty High and on a Shore trip decades ago, lawsuit says

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has been sued by a man who claims he was sexually abused by a priest in 1981.

by Mensah H Dean | Wednesday, November 17, 2021

A Philadelphia priest who was on the faculty at Cardinal Dougherty High School in the 1980s sexually abused a teen there and also took the boy on a trip to Margate, where he served him alcohol and assaulted him, according to a lawsuit filed in Atlantic County Superior Court.

The Rev. Peter Foley sexually assaulted the boy, then 16, on a trip to the Shore in 1981 and also at the school, where they worked together on student council, the suit says.

Foley, 83, reached by phone Wednesday at the church-run retirement facility in Upper Darby where he lives, said he had never abused the teen — or anyone else — although he acknowledged he had given him alcohol.

“The allegations are false,” he said. “I did give the kid alcohol, but that’s as far as it went. He was 17 or 18.”

There’s more at the original.

I will admit to having a low tolerance for such stories, because a claim forty years old can hardly be defended against. Mt impression is that the petitioner is just seeking a f(ornicating) payday. But the story is at least credible, because, as always seems to be the case, the alleged victim is male. Three other related stories appeared:

And, what do you know, the only other story which specified an individual accuser also specified a male ‘victim.’

Bishop Stowe is going to bat to defend homosexuality, when homosexual activity is explicitly forbidden in the Bible he purports to believe. More, homosexuality has been a huge problem within the Catholic priesthood, and that problem has spilled out in the form of predator priests. while it is wholly politically incorrect to say, the sexual abuse of minors in the Church has been a problem of homosexuality: the vast majority of sexual abuse by Catholic priests has been against boys rather than girls. The John Jay Report noted that, of the abuse cases it studied, between 1950 and 2002, stated:

The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.

The biggest problem with the Catholic priesthood has been homosexuality, and the Bishop of Lexington, by opposing this move by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is supporting allowing that problem to continue.

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The Catholic Church and the Right to Privacy

We have twice reported on Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who resigned as General Secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, after a conservative Catholic site used cell phone data to show him using Grindr, a homosexual dating app, and frequenting homosexual bars, and noted the New York Times story “Catholic Officials on Edge After Reports of Priests Using Grindr“. Naturally, the Church can’t say that it’s acceptable for priests to be using homosexual pick up apps, but the Church is very concerned about the privacy rights of priests, at least when it comes to their COVID vaccination status.

The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

Which brings me to the Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M.Conv., the Bishop of Lexington. We have reported, many times, on the Bishop’s policies, with a rather jaundiced eye.

While I have heard no statements from Bishop Stowe concerning Pillar’s exposure of Msgr Burrill’s activities, it would seem that the Bishop is pretty much unconcerned with the privacy of priests in his diocese.

    Bishop Stowe: Catholics deserve to know if their priest is unvaccinated

    Michael J. O’Loughlin | September 16, 2021

    Bishop John Stowe, O.F.M.Conv., last month asked that diocesan employees working at the Catholic Center in the Diocese of Lexington, Ky., vaccinate themselves against Covid-19, extending a mandate that had already been announced for faculty and staff at Catholic schools. The bishop said the diocese let go of “a handful” of employees who refused. When it came to priests in the diocese, the bishop said he turned to “moral persuasion,” urging them to vaccinate themselves as a way to protect parishioners. That seemed to work. About 92 percent of the diocese’s 50 priests have been vaccinated, a rate that puts them as a group well ahead of the 61 percent of adults in Kentucky who are fully vaccinated.

The math is pretty simple: 92% of 50 priests is 46 priests, meaning four diocesan priests are unvaccinated. The Bishop publicly exposed two of them, Father John Moriarty, the Rector of the Cathedral of Christ the King parish, and Father David Wheeler, a parochial vicar at the Cathedral parish, as not having been vaccinated. The Cathedral parish is where the diocesan Bishop has his seat, so His Excellency the Bishop was unable to persuade two other priests that he sees, almost every day, at his resident parish, to get vaccinated.

The other two unvaccinated priests of his diocese have not been named.

I note that the report states that the Bishop “let go”, a euphemism for fired, “a handful” of employees who refused to be vaccinated, meaning that he took “a handful,” whatever that number happens to be, and threw them into poverty. While The Lord hears the cry of the poor, he might not expect one of his Bishops to add to the number of the poor.

    But for the few priests who chose not to be vaccinated, the bishop believes they owe it to their parishioners to be upfront about their status.

    “When I found out that four of them still were not vaccinated, I said they had to disclose that to their people because people were expecting they would be vaccinated,” Bishop Stowe told America. He said he also told the unvaccinated priests that “they couldn’t go into the homes of the sick or the homebound or be in close proximity” to worshippers.

Odd thing, though, that the Bishop would fire let go the “handful” of diocesan employees who declined to be vaccinated, but did not fire let go the four diocesan priests who refused. Could that be because lay employees are far easier to find in this economy, but priests are in short supply? With more parishes, 59, than priests, several priests, including my own parish pastor, who will turn 88 years old in a couple of weeks, have to serve more than one parish.

We have previously noted that Bishop Stowe has been very supportive of homosexual rights and recognition of ‘transgender’ individuals as the sex they claim to be, rather than the sex they are, but I cannot accurately report his position on Pillar’s exposure of the homosexual activity of Msgr Burrill and the privacy rights of Catholic priests when it comes to their vows of celibacy. But we certainly know his views on the privacy rights of both his parish priests and lay employees when it comes to their vaccination status.

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A bad move by Bishop John Stowe

Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck) visits dying gangster Whitey Brennan (Mark Margolis) in “Dedication.”

At the end of episode 15, Dedication, in the first season of Blue Bloods, Police Commissioner Frank Reagan visits Whitey Brennan, an Irish mobster whose son tried to assassinate the Commissioner. The elder Mr Brennan is in a nursing home, essentially waiting for death. Mr Reagan asks Mr Brennan if there’s anything he’d like to confess at the end, at which point the dying mobster laughs at him. The Commissioner then tells him, ‘Not to me,’ then opens the room door to admit a priest, so that Mr Brennan has an opportunity to make his last Confession. That’s a very powerful scene, at least for Catholics, but, with Bishop John Stowe’s new order, oops! so sorry, if you live in one of the widely spaced parishes in eastern Kentucky and your parish priest isn’t vaccinated, he can’t come to you to hear your last Confession.

It isn’t often that the Diocese of Lexington is mentioned by the Catholic News Agency, this being a very Protestant area, but it happened Tuesday morning:

    Unvaccinated clergy in Lexington, Kentucky barred from ministering to the sick and homebound elderly

    By Shannon Mullen, Joe Bukuras | Tuesday, September 14, 2021 |8:10 AM EDT

    The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

    Priests of the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 may not minister to the sick, elderly, and homebound, Bishop John Stowe has directed.

    The policy was announced during a Saturday vigil Mass Sept. 11 that Bishop Stowe celebrated at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Lexington.

    At the end of the liturgy, Deacon Tim Weinmann read a statement from the cathedral’s rector, Father John Moriarty, that both Fr. Moriarty and Father David Wheeler, the parochial vicar, have not been vaccinated.

    “The bishop has asked that Fr. David and I, Fr. John – I’m speaking for Fr. John – make an announcement that we are not vaccinated, so people can decide if they wanted to attend Mass where they were celebrating,” the deacon read, according to a video of the Mass posted by the Cathedral of Christ the King.

    “And if also the priests – and this has been done throughout the diocese – those priests that are not vaccinated are to follow the COVID protocol in the liturgy, and they are not allowed to visit the sick or elderly that are homebound,” the announcement continued. “Fr. John and Fr. David, again, have not been vaccinated.” Bishop Stowe stood beside Deacon Weinmann while the announcement was read but did not comment afterward.

You can see the announcement at the end of this video of the Mass, beginning at the 1:07:10 mark.

We have previously reported on the Bishop’s mandate that all employees at the Catholic Center must be vaccinated as a condition of employment, which has to mean that any who refuse will be fired. We have previously noted Bishop Stowe’s support for homosexuals, and that the diocese hosts St Paul’s Catholic Church, which is very openly “LGBTQ+” accepting, only a couple of miles from the cathedral parish, Cathedral of Christ the King, where the Bishop resides and has his seat. Bishop Stowe is fully aware of St Paul’s ‘mission.’ One wonders if our Bishop is more concerned with COVID-19 than he is the spiritual health of his parishioners.

Then again, I have often wondered if Bishop Stowe is more of a Democrat than he is a Catholic, the way Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and so many of our (purportedly) Catholic politicians are. Our Bishop is very much a supporter of liberal, Democratic political policies, and has been far more vocal about such than he has when it comes to abortion. While he noted, in yet another OpEd, that neither major party supports all of Catholic social teaching, he gave very short attention to Joe Biden’s support for abortion, two whole sentences, with neither mentioning that Me Biden also wants to have the taxpayers, which would include Catholics, pay for abortions, he devoted several long paragraphs condemning conservative policies on welfare and illegal immigration. The Bishop called President Trump “so much anti-life,” something that, sadly, our local parish priest reiterated in his homily. As noted above, he supports the diocese’s homosexual activist parish, and he has broken with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Equality Act. The USCCB opposes the legislation due to the fact that it does not contain sufficient protection for matters of religion and conscience, and might require Catholic diocese and other organizations to hire or retain open homosexuals or transsexuals living in a state of open scandal.

I have heard His Excellency the Bishop at Mass, twice, in our very small parish, and I can tell you that he is an excellent preacher who really tries to connect with his parishioners. If you are capable of being inspired by a priest’s homily, Bishop Stowe will inspire you. I have no reason at all to doubt his faith.

But, sadly enough, I do see reason to doubt whether his Catholic faith is stronger than his Democratic allegiance. He basically gave Catholic parishioners a choice of opting out of Mass if either Fr. John Moriarty or Fr. David Wheeler is the celebrant . . . and those are the only two priests other than the Bishop noted in the Cathedral staff directory. I guess that the Bishop will, personally, visit all of the shut-ins in his parish.

Of course, the Cathedral parish is a large one, with three priests, but, the diocese being a very much Protestant one, we have, overall, small parishes covering large geographic areas. My own pastor, who is in his eighties, has to cover two parishes, and it isn’t physically easy on him. I’m certain that he is vaccinated, since he adds, every Sunday, a plea for everyone to get vaccinated. Still, if two priests, in the Cathedral parish, with the Bishop hanging over their heads every day, have chosen not to get vaccinated, the obvious question is: how many other priests, in smaller, rural parishes scattered throughout eastern Kentucky, have also chosen against vaccination? The Bishop has just said that such priests cannot visit the sick and the homebound, which, in effect, denies the sacraments to some ill or elderly parishioners who might want and need them.

I understand the Bishop’s concerns about the virus, and, like him, I believe that everybody should get vaccinated, though I oppose vaccine mandates. But the Bishop’s latest actions hurt his parishioners.

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The Lord hears the cry of the poor So, why would Bishop John Stowe make some Catholic employees poorer?

One of the hymns sung frequently at Mass, at least in my parish, is The Lord hears the cry of the poor.

So, in a Church which is very concerned about the poorer among us, I have to ask: why would the Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington, throw people out of work if they refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19?

    The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

    Diocese Mandates COVID-19 Vaccination for Catholic Center Employees

    August 17, 2021

    LEXINGTON — Employees at the Catholic Center of the Catholic Diocese of Lexington will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of their employment, starting on Sept. 1, Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv. of Lexington announced today. Pastors who choose to implement this policy at the parish level on Sept. 1 have his support; further mandates may be forthcoming. The bishop also reinstated the policy of requiring masks for all employees at work at the Catholic Center.

    “This is an urgent matter of public health and safety. There is no religious exemption for Catholics to being vaccinated, and Pope Francis has repeatedly called this a moral obligation,” said Bishop Stowe. “The health care system is now overwhelmed by a crisis caused primarily by those who refuse to protect themselves and others by getting vaccinated. This is unacceptable, and our diocese now joins those employers who have already made this basic commitment to the common good a requirement.”

    The Catholic Center is located on W. Main Street in Lexington. The Catholic Diocese of Lexington covers 50 counties in Central and Eastern Kentucky, with 59 parishes and missions serving some 46,000 Catholics.

It’s one thing to require COVID-19 vaccination of any new hires; it’s something entirely different for the Bishop of Lexington, who, supposedly, does hear the cry of the poor, to throw people out of work if they refuse to take the vaccine.

I will admit it; I have been critical of the political positions of Bishop Stowe. Wikipedia noted:

    In January 2019, Stowe wrote an op-ed that condemned Nick Sandmann and other students for sporting apparel supporting President Donald Trump during the 2019 March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. He said the slogan “Make America Great Again” “supports a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies”.

While Bishop Roger Foys of Covington later apologized for jumping the gum in criticizing Mr Sandmann and his group, if the Most Reverend Stowe ever did, I have missed it.

The USCCB opposes the legislation due to the fact that it does not contain sufficient protection for matters of religion and conscience, and might require Catholic diocese and other organizations to hire or retain open homosexuals or transsexuals living in a state of open scandal. We have previously noted Bishop Stowe’s support for homosexuals, and that the diocese hosts St Paul’s Catholic Church, which is very openly “LGBTQ+” accepting, only a couple of miles from the cathedral parish, Cathedral of Christ the King, where the Bishop resides and has his seat. Bishop Stowe is fully aware of St Paul’s ‘mission.’

But now? The Bishop, who hears the cry of the poor, would, apparently, make any employees who decline to take the vaccine poorer, even though many other American bishops have recognized an exception for conscience. “John, our Bishop,” as our pastor says in Mass, would consign current employees who have moral objections to the vaccine to unemployment. While the linked article does not specifically state that they would be fired if they do not take the first dose of the vaccine in the next two weeks, making such a “condition of employment” can mean nothing else.

YouTube video of the hymn below the fold. Continue reading →

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Is Our Bishop Catholic? The Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington, supports things which are clearly not Catholic

When I saw this article referenced in my email, I had a sinking feeling that the Bishop of Lexington would be one of the two:

Two US bishops back pro-LGBT campaign calling for acceptance of men who claim to be female

Bishops Wester and Stowe joined the Human Rights Campaign in calling for ‘transgender individuals’ to be ‘treated with dignity and respect’

By Pete Baklinski | Friday, April 9, 2021 | 5:17 PM ET

The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

April 9, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A U.S. Catholic archbishop along with a bishop and several priests joined up with the pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign in releasing an April 1 letter affirming “transgender individuals” — men who claim they are women and women who claim they are men — while calling for an end to the “epidemic of violence” that they say such individuals face.

“We, Bishops, religious and lay leaders of the Roman Catholic Church join with the Human Rights Campaign in calling for an end to the epidemic of violence against transgender individuals,” states the letter signed by Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester and Bishop John Stowe of the Diocese of Lexington.

Yup, I guessed right: His Excellency, The Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington was one of the two.

The Catholic Church teaches, however, that the male and female sexes, man and woman, are biological realities willed and created by God. The view is backed by science which conclusively shows that the sexual difference between men and women exists in genetics, endocrinology, and neurology. Even from the very first moment of conception male cells containing XY chromosomes differ from female cells containing XX chromosomes.

The 2019 Declaration of Truths put out by several prominent Catholic bishops along with a cardinal states that it is a “rebellion against natural and Divine law and a grave sin that a man may attempt to become a woman by mutilating himself, or even by simply declaring himself to be such, or that a woman may in like manner attempt to become a man, or to hold that the civil authority has the duty or the right to act as if such things were or may be possible and legitimate.”

Is the Bishop of Lexington even Catholic? The Catechism of the Catholic Church is something with which our priests and bishops purportedly agree, yet here the Bishop of my diocese is telling the parishioners of his diocese that the Catechism is wrong, that the Bible is wrong, and that the Church throughout all of its millennia are wrong.

His Excellency the Bishop is a great priest in one regard. He has twice celebrated Mass in our small parish, for the Sacrament of Confirmation, and I can tell you, he is excellent at it. He is dynamic, he is active, and no one would ever be in doubt that he truly believes what he says. If you are Catholic, and you participate in a Mass he celebrates, you will come away inspired.

But while it’s clear that he truly believes what he says, is what he believes actually Catholic, actually Christian?

Wester and Stowe have a history of pushing the normalization of homosexuality within the Catholic Church. Earlier this year, they joined Cardinal Joseph Tobin of the Archdiocese of Newark and a few other bishops in signing a statement in partnership with the pro-homosexual Tyler Clementi Foundation in support of young people who identify as LGBT, telling them that “God is on your side.”

Photo from St Paul’s Catholic Church website. Click to enlarge.

This is what it’s website calls “Historic St. Paul Roman Catholic Church,” at 425 West Short Street in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s mission clearly includes supporting homosexuality among Catholics, and it is very clear that His Excellency the Bishop supports St Paul’s and its self-perceived mission. Trouble is, the Catholic Church, and the Bible, do not.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, concerning homosexuality:

§2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

§2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

§2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

What part of “under no circumstances can they be approved” do some priests and bishops find unclear?

Another photo from St Paul’s website; note the ‘rainbow’ stole being worn by a clergyman. Bishop John Stowe is at the far right of the photo. Click to enlarge.

It’s simple: the Church recognizes that some people simply are homosexual, but that while it is a sore trial for them, they are called to remain celibate. That is not what St Paul’s Catholic Church, a church in Bishop Stowe’s diocese, seems to do.[1]I will admit it: I was tempted to go to confession, as research, at St Paul’s, confess to homosexual acts, and see what the priest would say, but doing so would be a grave sin, and I will not … Continue reading

As we noted here, His Holiness the Pope explicitly ruled out ‘blessings’ for homosexual unions.

Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and priest, wrote:

Roman Catholic clerical culture favors doctrinal rigidity, conformity, obedience, submission and psychosexual immaturity, mistaken for innocence, in its candidates. These are the personality elements that lead to advancement and power in the clerical system. Single men are more easily controlled if their sexuality is secret. Double lives on all levels of clerical life are tolerated if they do not cause scandal or raise legal problems. Sexual activity between bishops and priests and adult partners is well known within clerical circles. The secret system forms a comfortable refuge for unresolved gay conflicts. There is a new emerging awareness of the systemic nature of sexual/celibate behavior within the Roman Catholic ministry that is increasingly destabilizing to the church.

Dire consequences will follow the exposure of this sexual system embedded in a secret celibate culture. Authorities who are or have been sexually active, although not with minors, are hard put to publicly correct clerics who are abusing minors. The need for secrecy, the cover-up, extends beyond defending criminal activity of a sex abuser. The power and control that holds the Roman Catholic church together depends on preservation of the celibate myth. The Vatican and Pope John Paul II declared its inviolability.

The truth about secret sex in the celibate system portends grave danger. The reality of celibate violations extends beyond priests who abuse minors and the bishops who hide them.

And this points up another problem: if “sexual activity between bishops and priests and adult partners is well known within clerical circles,” that means that it is largely homosexual activity, something else expressly forbidden. How many priests are homosexual?

Of course, many factors influence a person’s decision to join the clergy; it’s not like sexuality alone determines vocations. But it’s dishonest to dismiss sexuality’s influence given that we know there is a disproportionate number of gay priests, despite the church’s hostility toward LGBTQ identity. As a gay priest told Frontline in a February 2014 episode, “I cannot understand this schizophrenic attitude of the hierarchy against gays when a lot of priests are gay.”

So how many gay priests actually exist? While there’s a glut of homoerotic writings from priests going back to the Middle Ages, obtaining an accurate count is tough. But most surveys (which, due to the sensitivity of the subject, admittedly suffer from limited samples and other design issues) find between 15 percent and 50 percent of U.S. priests are gay, which is much greater than the 3.8 percent of people who identify as LGBTQ in the general population. [2]The Centers for Disease Control conducted the National Health Institute Survey in 2013, and found that only 1.6% of the population are homosexual, with another 0.7% bisexual, and another 1,1% … Continue reading

In the last half century there’s also been an increased “gaying of the priesthood” in the West. Throughout the 1970s, several hundred men left the priesthood each year, many of them for marriage. As straight priests left the church for domestic bliss, the proportion of remaining priests who were gay grew. In a survey of several thousand priests in the U.S., the Los Angeles Times found that 28 percent of priests between the ages of 46 and 55 reported that they were gay. This statistic was higher than the percentages found in other age brackets and reflected the outflow of straight priests throughout the 1970s and ’80s.

The high number of gay priests also became evident in the 1980s, when the priesthood was hit hard by the AIDS crisis that was afflicting the gay community. The Kansas City Star estimated that at least 300 U.S. priests suffered AIDS-related deaths between the mid-1980s and 1999. The Star concluded that priests were about twice as likely as other adult men to die from AIDS.

The John Jay Report on the sexual abuse of minors by priests and deacons within the Church, 1950-2002, noted that 81% of the known victims, of an all-male clergy, were boys, and that they tended not to be smaller children, but boys entering and through puberty. This was not pedophilia, but homosexual attraction.

Sadly, the Bishop of Lexington has supported the misbegotten New Ways Ministry, and now transgenderism as well. I have no idea what Bishop Stowe’s sexual orientation is. He has taken a vow of celibacy, and I presume here that he has kept it. But homosexual orientation has been rampant in the Church, even if we aren’t certain what the exact numbers are, and the Bishop of Lexington has lost his way on sexual issues.

I get it: the left believe that it’s just wrong to deny homosexuals their desires, but a Catholic priest, a Catholic bishop, must follow the teachings of the Bible in which they all profess to believe, and the Bible is unambiguous in its condemnation of homosexual activity, in both the Old and New Testaments. While some have claimed that Jesus never personally addressed homosexual activity, specifically, they are incorrect.

Matthew 5:17 “Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.
18 For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law, until all is accomplished! 19 Therefore, whoever nullifies one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness far surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The law included the prohibition on homosexual activity in Leviticus 18:22, and proscribes the penalty in Leviticus 20:13. There is no ambiguity whatsoever in this.

Our Bishop has lost his way. He is responsible for the instruction of the parishioners in his diocese in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, but his most publicly visible teachings, the ones which have gotten the most attention outside of the Church, are teachings which contravene the doctrine of the Church. His piety appears to be beyond question, his internal faith in his beliefs strong, but his beliefs when it comes to sexual matters are just plain wrong. I understand his sympathies, but allowing his sympathies to teach that what is immoral is acceptable, that what is sinful is not sinful, leads the faithful not up the stairway to Heaven but down the highway to Hell.

References

References
↑1 I will admit it: I was tempted to go to confession, as research, at St Paul’s, confess to homosexual acts, and see what the priest would say, but doing so would be a grave sin, and I will not do that.
↑2 The Centers for Disease Control conducted the National Health Institute Survey in 2013, and found that only 1.6% of the population are homosexual, with another 0.7% bisexual, and another 1,1% either stating that they were ‘something else’ or declining to respond. This does not support the article’s contention that 3.8% of the population are homosexual.