In 2018, an anonymous Catholic insider took to reddit’s r/catholicism board to explain how the Church became so infested by sodomites and pedophiles, and why it’s been so hard to disinfect the institution of these sins.
After one month, his account when silent, and remains abandoned to this day.
The posts went completely under the radar, with most receiving only a dozen or so upvotes. But they were honest, tactful, and offered such a simple and rational justification for the Church’s sex-pest problem, that we felt compelled to compile his most meaningful insights here.
- August 15, 2018 – u/ChurchEmployee registers an account on reddit
- August 24, 2018 – First post
- September 21, 2018 – Final post
Editor’s Note: Slight grammatical corrections were made to the content, and heading titles and highlights are our own. Author’s original posts are archived at archive.is and archive.org.
Seminary Culture & Gay Priests
I have worked in the Church for a while and known many priests. I will do my best to explain.
First off, it’s not profitable to over or under generalize. Every person has a unique story, but groups of people tend to follow trends and do many of the same things.
At various times in the history of the Church, the priesthood has been associated with different traits and lifestyles. In the Early Church, in general, the priesthood was for senior married men who made vows regulating their sex lives. So, in general, it was for family men, but not exclusively.
Later, particularly in the second millennium of the Church, celibacy became the disciplinary norm (for several reasons, including the connection of secular priesthood to monasticism, historical failures in the married priesthood to follow Church law, and development of the theology of priesthood, and if someone wants to debate the interplay of these forces, it’s worth a thread of its own). This means that priests in the Latin Rite were (in general) not allowed to marry.
At various times, and most recently and most of interest to us, in the second half of the 20th century in the West, men who were not interested in marriage were encouraged to become priests. It became a solution to the very pressing late 20th-century problem of sexual self-expression and fulfillment, for Catholic men who were not going to be married to choose the priesthood. This included a significant number of homosexual men.
In my estimation, this reached a peak in the late 70’s, early 80’s, but it has been significant since much earlier and probably has been statistically significant since the middle ages. I understand the discipline of celibacy, its underlying theology and history, and I respect it, but I have grave reservations about it and I think anyone who wants to weigh in on celibacy would do well to study all aspects of the issue very hard first. /soapbox
So, typically, once male homosexuality became a cultural phenomenon (in the USA, starting in the mid 60’s and reaching mainstream media such as TV sitcoms by the early 70’s) and young men were widely questioning their orientation, they would often confess these feelings to their priest. It became common for priests, hearing these confessions, to recommend seminary to them. I personally have friends who experienced this in various parts of the USA in this time period.
So, many young, rather confused, closeted homosexual Catholic men opted for seminary formation at the same time. This is during the immediate post-counciliar period, when it was rather crazy in the Church. Nuns were all leaving their orders, thousands of priests were petitioning to be laicized and leave the priesthood, birth-control and abortion were widely believe to be coming soon for Catholics, as were married priests and who knew what else. In this environment, it seemed entirely plausible that homosexuality would be accepted by the Church as well, and many men entered seminary with false hopes of either marriage during their life as a priest or a blessing of homosexual activity by Rome.
It was during this time that a pattern began to be set up, that seminary was a sexual “free for all” and essentially, what happened at seminary, stayed at seminary. There is, in many cultures with severe sexual restrictions, a tradition of “wilding” where young men are encouraged to have a sexual adventure before settling down to marriage. Seminary became this “wilding” period for these men. At first, I’m sure it seemed all very innocent, and very forgivable.
However, sex is not simple and not harmless, it is powerful and attached to human emotions and sins. A de facto sexual culture was established in seminaries (the stories from Sant’ Anselmo, the Roman Benedictine college, are the most outrageous I’ve heard from that time, when a certain notorious homosexual, Rembert Weakland, was the Primate of the Benedictines.)
A culture of sexual gamesmanship developed around these hothouses of young, lustful men and older, more experienced formators and rectors. Young men were used, abused, blackmailed, traded, and worse in some of these environments. For many, pious hopes of a worthy vocation which would make sense of the sexual identities as celibate priests were dashed and they were degraded by brother and father. Not every seminary immediately became like this, but eventually many (most, IMO) did.
A typical story with typical consequences concerns Holy Trinity Seminary in Dallas, Texas. The Diocesan management of the seminary, concerned over falling enrollment, ordered the rector to admit openly homosexual men, and when he refused he was replaced with a certain Father Sheehan. Sheehan admitted a late vocation named Rudolph Kos, despite obvious problems. This account is, to my knowledge (and I have friends who were there at the time) accurate: How Rudy Kos Happened.
…and thus began the public sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. It had three elements which would become universally recognized: It was homosexual in nature, it began at a lax seminary among targets of opportunity there, and morphed into child abuse once the perp was ordained and sent to parishes.
The Kos case demonstrates how the naive sexuality of these young men, advised by confused parish priests struggling to deal with a larger influx of same-sex attracted boys into their confessionals and offices to enter seminary, was turned dark and hidden and opportunistic by abuse at seminary. Men abused by Father Rudy Kos and who were in that same environment with him are now bishops all over the United States. They never set out to become a member of any “mafia” but now they are all men in their 50’s and 60’s who are partakers in each others’ secrets and who have reputations to protect. They, de facto, are obliged to engaged in conspiracy in order to keep their lives and dioceses moving forward.
It’s the same all over the Church. For 30+ years, seminarians all over the Northeast and Rome were obliged to deal with “Uncle Ted” McCarrick in order to keep their vocations moving forward toward ordination, and they saw how swiftly men who would not “play ball” were dealt with. This sort of thing, happening all over the Church, winnowed out the corps of seminarians to groups of either complicit, compliant beta-homosexuals, or abusive, dominating alpha-homosexuals, or a long-suffering group of beta-heterosexuals who said nothing, objected to nothing, and made it through by being invisible.
The same groups still exist, and which of these three groups do you think is most represented in positions of power today? Dominating alpha-homosexuals.
That’s one man’s scattered and incomplete explanation of what the mafia is, and how it came to be. It’s the natural, Darwinian result of placing a bunch of sexually naive young men in an environment where sex, because it was completely denied on the surface and officially, ran according to the laws of the jungle in secret. The strong took advantage of the weak. Some of the weak accepted their place and some left and some became abusers of those even weaker. The men who refused to be part of it (heterosexuals) only survived by being as quiet and meek as possible.
Now, when someone asks “why are so many of our priests gay? And why do we have so few strong, orthodox priests?” you can provide something of an answer.
Whistleblower Suppression
> How much do you know?
I know all about my own diocese. As I’ve been saying, all of the information necessary to sort out this entire situation is laying on the surface, known by all of the lay employees in the respective institutions. The issue is how to get them to talk.
> Why aren’t you saying anything?
I have several reasons. I’m not really worried about anonymous people on reddit being angry at me, I’d rather they understood how things work.
- I don’t want to lose this job, for several reasons. First off, it’s my career, and it would be very over. Second, I like to think that, as an orthodox Catholic in a position of responsibility, I’m a net positive.
- I’ve already reported the only suspicions of active child abuse I had. I do that instantly. Everything I retain is lower-tier or older.
- Most of what I know is past the canonical precept period (statute of limitations) and would not result in a canonical case. Most people don’t know this, but if a priest can keep something secret for 5 years, no one can start a canonical case over it. This is a primary problem and could be changed by the head lawgiver, the Pope, in an instant.
- If the other AG’s take the PA stance, that of “we trust these files” then there is no use. Since the mid-2000’s, most dioceses pretty much stopped keeping serious files (why would they?) and a few canons are invoked to keep payouts secret from the diocesan finance council. If a victim (or more often, his parents) is paid off, signs a non-disclosure, and the check is cut without any oversight, then literally the ONLY people who know about the incident are the perp, the victim, the bishop, the negotiator (usually the vicar general) and the diocesan staff which handles the money… and as always, a few secretaries. It never goes into any files.
- We wait to see, in this brave new era, what ends up being “disallowed”. We all know that back in the 70’s and 80’s, actual child abuse was treated as “allowable” in the Church. In the 90’s, seminarian abuse was “allowable”. Now in this giant paroxysm, a new standard will again be set. What will be “allowable”?
- Will it be “allowable” to assign a diagnosed homosexual sex addict priest to work at an elementary school if his file is clean?
- Will it be “allowable” for a bishop to make a completely secret six-figure payout which no lay person ever knows about?
- Will it be “allowable” for a priest to stay in active ministry for decades if all the many instances of touching of minors in his file is above the waist?
- Will it be “allowable” to move a heterosexual priest within multiple parishes if he has affairs, wrecks homes, and costs a diocese hundreds of thousands in settlements at each one in succession?
- Will it be “allowable” for a bishop to keep priests in active ministry who have admitted to being currently active homosexuals?
- Will it be “allowable” for a bishop to keep embezzler priests in active ministry? Where’s the threshold? $50K? $100K $200K? Most dioceses have plenty of these, and typically the diocese mostly makes the parish whole again.
See, nobody knows yet. If these sorts of things are “Allowable” then Church employees don’t know anything useful. If these are things the laity will not put up with any more and the bishops get the message, then your average diocesan employee is a wealth of information.
Like I said, I don’t care if people on reddit don’t like me, I’d rather that they knew what really happens on the inside.
Fear, Blackmail, and Secrecy
Stop the persecution of whistleblowers within the ranks of Church employees.
Virtually every diocesan employee or administrative employee within religious orders or Catholic institutions knows something germane to the scandal. They are all low-paid individuals, and many are not impressive, but some are very good people. I consider myself to be a good one.
We all know that if we were to come forward and register our testimony with appropriate persons or agencies, we will lose our jobs and we expect to be sued. I know people who work for the Church who have kept quiet about child abuse because of the horrible retaliation they have seen.
I think many people who are having the “it’s not about homosexuality” debate all over the internet are out to lunch. It’s not about homosexuality, it’s about a pervasive, dysfunctional, threatening, powerful, underground sexual culture in the Church which uses blackmail to have its way and keep its power.
> Who do you think is part of such a thing?
Straight men are terrible at sexual intrigue, mostly because women who are scorned tend to make a lot of noise. The kind of secretive homosexual men who become priests are excellent at running this sort of perpetual scam.
Church employees could provide ALL of the information necessary to bring it down. I mean it. But no one gets it. I can’t afford to get a lawyer and fight the Church. Ha! The idea is ludicrous.
If I know about actual child abuse, I can call the hotline. I have. I will not hesitate to call it again.
But the hotline doesn’t take calls about the bishop sleeping with his secretary, or two priests who sleep together on the reg, or the priest with the Grindr account, or any of the other thousands pieces of crap the average Church employee knows about.
It is this culture of secrecy, where everyone has the goods on somebody else, and everyone is implicitly blackmailing everyone else, that allows actual abuses to operate.
The USCCB could START with a legal defense fund for whistleblowers. And instead of useless “if you see something, call the hotline” training we all have to go to every year, change it up with a year about my legal rights if I go to the press.
That’s why I don’t believe anyone is really serious about this.
From Pedophiles, to Molesters, to Queers
> The problem, as I’ve repeatedly failed to get across, is that no one knows what is and is not really allowable in the Church.
Right now, a very vocal portion of the Church in the United States is saying “the scandal is about homosexuality.” I would modify that, based upon my experience, to say, “The scandal is about sexual secrecy, which is much more prevalent among homosexuals than heterosexuals.”
Well, once that fight is completely done and we have our “new standard” concerning what is and what is not acceptable behavior for priests in active ministry, then the swamp can be drained to whatever the agreed-upon level is.
Open the drain a little bit, for a short time, and drain out the active pedophiles.
Open the drain longer, and drain out the homosexual sex addicts that the USCCB calls “at risk for abuse.”
Open the drain even longer, and drain out the active homosexuals.
Open the drain longer still, and drain out the active heterosexual home-wreckers.
Open the drain longer and longer, and eventually drain out the climbers who turned a blind eye to everything to advance their careers.
And so on…
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