Garry Wills' insane claim: Pope John Paul responsible for gay priests

In the April 11th, 2005 issue of U.S. News & World Report, Jay Tolson writes in a bar across the bottom of pages 28-29 a short piece entitled "Admirers and Doubters" [of Pope John Paul II]. He concludes--true to secular media form--by quoting two sources, neither of which can be trusted to shed any reliable light on anything Catholic. First, he quotes historian Garry Wills [pictured left], who says in his book, Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit, that many people "suspect that John Paul's real legacy to his church is a gay priesthood." Then, to cap off this remark, he quotes Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, former editor of the lay Catholic dissident biweekly, Commonweal, who says of the late Pope: "He's done some wonderful things, but he will have a lot to answer for."

Now, you tell me: what can be more preposterous than the notion that the pontificate of His Holiness, Pope John Paul II was responsible for crisis of homosexuality in the Catholic Church that Michael Rose brought to light in excruciating detail in his expose, Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption Into the Catholic Church? Nothing has been more clear or onerous to dissidents than Pope John Paul's consistent reiteration of traditional Catholic doctrine on sexual morality. In fact, the Pope has written a significant body of literature specifically addressing this issue in works like Love and Responsibility and The Theology of the Body According to John Paul II: Human Love in the Divine Plan. What liberal dissidents like Gary Wills and Margaret O'Brien Steinfels want us to believe is that the sexual scandals in the Church are due to the "unbending patriarchy" of Pope John Paul's traditional Catholicism, its exclusion of women from ordination to the priesthood, and its prohibition of married clergy. If only the Church relented on these issues, they want us to think, if only priests had licit means of indulging their carnal cravings, there would have been no sexual scandal, no pedophiles, no crisis of homosexuality in the priesthood. What kind of sense does that make? Anglican and Episcopalian clergy are permitted to marry, and do they suffer no crisis of homosexuality and sexual scandal? What about the other mainline Protestant denominations? The publicity may not be as great, since there is less money to be made in lawsuits where diocesan properties are not owened by the local bishop, but when the sex scandals first came to light a few years ago, there were a significant number of reports showing comparative statistics across denominations and the largest number of sex abuse cases were not those in the Catholic Church. All of which goes to show simply that allowing for a married clergy does not prevent sexual abuse or homosexuality.

There is a perversity at work in the sort of accusation Gary Wills makes that borders on the unconscionable. How can Wills or Steinfels not know that a well disciplined priesthood that faithfully conformed to Church teaching would prevent precisely the sort of scandal of "a gay priesthood" cited by Wills? The sexual scandal of gay priests is a product, not of faithful adherence to the Catholic teaching of Pope John Paul, but of its antithesis: a conspiracy of dissent and apostasy allowing for an active gay subculture to establish itself within a sector of the Catholic priesthood. Look at what's happened to the Jesuits. Look at what has happened in the vocations programs of many of the major religious orders and diocesan priestly formation programs. Read Michael Rose's book. Look and see for yourself. Not only are the opinions of Wills and Steinfels laughable: they are an offense to reason and common sense, let alone an offense against the Catholic Faith.