You Know What THEY Say: The "Wisdom" of the Collective Closet

     "You know what they say."

     While I was in seminary and the priesthood, this was the most common response that I received from close friends, spiritual directors, and counselors when I told them that I wanted to read a book written from the perspective of a gay man that was out of the closet.

     "But you already know what they say!"

     This, the wisdom of friends and mentors, who were themselves closeted seminarians and priests:

     "Why do you need to read what they have to say?  You know what they believe, but have you read this?" 

     Now came the suggestion to read something written by a fellow closeted gay, white, Catholic cleric, who was also, by divine default, male.  Naturally, these men knew what it was like to live "the gay lifestyle."  They knew how empty that life was, how real and lasting intimacy between two male lovers was not possible, and that it always came down to sex, sex, sex.  Anal sex!  Orgies.  S and M.  Self-abuse!  The self-centered need to get one's own rocks off by using another for his own sexual gratification.  Gay men were intrinsically disordered, after all.

     "You know what they say."

     So, I didn't place my order on Amazon.com.  Instead, I emptied my digital shopping cart, while falling on my sword of double-edged shame and self-loathing.  From the catholic/seminarian/priestly side of myself came the shame of even having considered reading what some sinful gay man would have said about truth and love, and, from the neglected gay boy on the other side, I beat myself up for being a wimp and not having the balls to chance seeing what intellectual and human truths were on the other side of the closet.

     "Because, you know what they say."

     I devoured the holy texts placed before me, the likes of Henri Nouwen, Richard Rohr, Ronald Rolheiser, Thomas Merton, Donald Cozzens, etc.  I threw myself into the mystics: John Main, Teresa of Avila, and Francis of Assisi, lapping up everything these possibly-gay Catholics had to say, but, of course, none of them was out of the closet.  None of them knew what it was like to be on the other side.  But still, of those on the other side, I was told:

     "You know what they say."

     But that wasn't good enough for some of my more conservative friends, who claimed to know what the Rohrs and Nouwens really had to say.  To these more "traditional" Roman Catholics, some preferred the modifier "orthodox," the texts written by Opus Dei, the Vatican, or the Courage Apostolate were the only true word  about the gays, for when it came to the more scientifically, psychologically, and theologically progressive Catholics, well:

     "You know what they say."

     So, I didn't read what those on the outside had to say.  I neither spoke nor listened to anyone on the other side of the closet door, for it was too dangerous to my priesthood, my soul.  It was too dangerous to the church, too dangerous to the other men with whom I shared that crowded clerical closet, and too dangerous to myself.  For surely if I came out, I'd catch HIV and die.  I'd lose myself to drugs.  I'd be unfulfilled and depressed and commit suicide.  I'd never find real love, for only god could really love me.  And, I 'd wind up back in the priesthood at some point down the road, only with my career in shambles as I came begging to be taken back after squandering my father's inheritance.

     "You know what they say."

     "Bullshit!"  I finally screamed a year and a half after my priestly ordination.  "I don't know what they say.  I only know what white, male, closeted clerics say and what they say about them."  And so, I started reading them: Paul Monette's "Becoming a Man," James Alison's "Faith Beyond Resentment," Brian McNaught's "Now that I'm Out, What Do I Do?" and any book with a cover that looked like it could be of help to me.  And very quickly, I discovered much to my relief and to my delight that:

     I did NOT know what they had to say.

     I devoured volumes of coming out stories and memoir after memoir.  It was the only thing that gave me energy and pleasure during my final months of priesthood, when I was clinically depressed; the only thing that kept me sane and from killing myself: I was not alone.  People like me had a history and had a place in human history.  We had families, careers, and LOVE!

     I am thankful that I finally had the courage to find out what they had to say.

     And, somewhere out there on the other end of this internet connection, I hope there is someone reading my words, hoping to expand his/her knowledge of what they have to say.