“Nowadays, if you meet young priests and nuns, 95 percent of them or more are conservative, solid, and very savvy. And seminaries and convents are starting to fill up again, after falling off drastically during the lax era. It’s like the Marines: A life of courageous sacrifice is attractive to young people if you’re will to offer it.”
Completely agree.
All I’m saying is that if homosexuals were hiding in the Church as celibate priests, it was from the broader culture. Now, they don’t need to hide anywhere, they can get married in 13 states with several others recognizing those marriages as well as many aspects of the federal gubberment, in many areas it is against the law to ‘discriminate’ against them.
A lower % of homosexual men becoming priests means less instances of abuse, as homosexual men abuse at a higher %. I bet the trend started in the 60’s and only manifested in the lowering of abuse instances 10 years later, as the homosexual priests died and weren’t replaced by other homosexual men who wanted to become priests. They had other options, and by then it was clear that the Church wasn’t going to change on things like bc within marriage, celibacy, priestesses or divorce and remarriage. There wasn’t any way the Church would ever accept/celebrate ‘gay relationships’ if they still didn’t accept those other things first, in my opinion.
Freegards
I’m not sure I have any disagreement with what you said. I don’t believe (as many liberals long to believe) that the priesthood had a lot of secret poofters prior to the late 1960s. I’ve never seen evidence for it, and maybe more important, popular prejudices, which are hard to fool, have never had the poofy priest as a stock character—unlike, say, poofy decorators, hairdressers, artists, etc., which have been icons of popular culture for a century and more.