To the Editor:
There will be more hypocrites in hell than homosexuals. I heard that statement attributed to Dorothy Day, who may be canonized a saint. Hypocrisy is worse than sins of the weak human flesh.
This doesn't mean homosexually is fine and dandy, as some assert. The homosexual urge must be resisted by those prone to indulge it, even if they claim they were "born that way." By the same token, I have trouble with heterosexual urges of adultery and must struggle. The struggle is good. We should not be satisfied with ourselves, the same necessary kind of struggle.
I'm particularly dismayed by the prevalence - estimated by some at one-in-four of gay-oriented priests in the technically celibate Roman Catholic Church I belong to. These are "tendencies", but there is plenty of overt gay activity among clergy.
The solution is simple. Allow priests to marry. In act, one of the epistles condemns those who ban marriage. This can't even be discussed openly by priests, on orders of the Vatican. Reforms are needed in the Roman Catholic Church, in addition to those instituted by Vatican II. Many people are "turned off by what they see as an effeminate effete Church.
The rampant homophobia of the Nazis and other bigots, the outright persecution of homosexuals, makes it hard to say that homosexually, like adultery, is wrong - but it is wrong. It will be a curse on the priesthood until priests are finally allowed - as in olden times - to marry. "It will be easier on Sodom and Gomorrah than on you when Judgment comes with what you have seen." That's Jesus' word on it in the gospel.
Richard Kovac