Well it seems that Ireland's priest training college St. Patrick's in Maynooth has had an infestation of gay culture recently, with seminarians having been found to be using the gay dating app Grindr. Hence Grindrgate. Hence the article talking about Diarmuid Martin pulling seminarians from his Dublin archdiocese out of Maynooth and sending them to Rome for to become priests (original interview here).
Now Martin is, genuinely, one of the progressives within catholicism, being far more honest and open about the child sex abuse problem that the church has than any of the last three popes, but it is illuminating if you look at his attitude about this issue, he is still very anti-gay, citing that as the main reason for pulling students out of Maynooth, even more so than the facts that accusations levelled against the seminarians being anonymous*. He goes so far as to say that he wants to reopen a seminary in Dublin to immerse future priesthood students in Dublin culture, while keeping them free of the gay! Of course at the moment there are only c.5 men per year who look to become priests, most of them older men.
As regards a gay culture in Maynooth, there has been one there for years. A distant relative of mine was a student there, studying to be a priest, c.30 years ago. Two of his classmates were caught in bed together one day. As a result they were excommunicated and to hush up the scandal the rest of the year were deported to Texas to finish their studies. My cousin couldn't come back to Ireland for ten years afterwards, banned by the church under threat of defrocking and excommunication over the "taint" he had from coming into close proximity with gay men. There have also been many romours of priests grooming young seminarians to be their bottoms, and when found out the priests were quietly slipped away while the victim, the seminarian was cast into the outer darkness (and before the 90's having the rcc against you was a huge black mark in Ireland and amongst the Irish diaspora, good luck finding a job).
So if anybody wants to know, no the rcc hasn't changed not one bit. It is still the neanderthal, misogynistic, fascistic, authoritarian and bigoted organisation it always was and the likelihood of it changing is somewhere between nil and hell freezing over.
*Of course as anybody who has ever been involved in whistleblowing criminality and/or dangerous and negligent practise will tell you that anonymity is often necessary.
Now Martin is, genuinely, one of the progressives within catholicism, being far more honest and open about the child sex abuse problem that the church has than any of the last three popes, but it is illuminating if you look at his attitude about this issue, he is still very anti-gay, citing that as the main reason for pulling students out of Maynooth, even more so than the facts that accusations levelled against the seminarians being anonymous*. He goes so far as to say that he wants to reopen a seminary in Dublin to immerse future priesthood students in Dublin culture, while keeping them free of the gay! Of course at the moment there are only c.5 men per year who look to become priests, most of them older men.
As regards a gay culture in Maynooth, there has been one there for years. A distant relative of mine was a student there, studying to be a priest, c.30 years ago. Two of his classmates were caught in bed together one day. As a result they were excommunicated and to hush up the scandal the rest of the year were deported to Texas to finish their studies. My cousin couldn't come back to Ireland for ten years afterwards, banned by the church under threat of defrocking and excommunication over the "taint" he had from coming into close proximity with gay men. There have also been many romours of priests grooming young seminarians to be their bottoms, and when found out the priests were quietly slipped away while the victim, the seminarian was cast into the outer darkness (and before the 90's having the rcc against you was a huge black mark in Ireland and amongst the Irish diaspora, good luck finding a job).
So if anybody wants to know, no the rcc hasn't changed not one bit. It is still the neanderthal, misogynistic, fascistic, authoritarian and bigoted organisation it always was and the likelihood of it changing is somewhere between nil and hell freezing over.
*Of course as anybody who has ever been involved in whistleblowing criminality and/or dangerous and negligent practise will tell you that anonymity is often necessary.
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