Over the past 10 years as a member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in good standing I’ve met many celibate gay or straight Roman Catholic seminarians, priests, brothers and nuns. I’ve worked alongside many different laypeople in cities like Rio De Janeiro, New York City, Cochabamba, New Orleans, Barcelona, San Jose, Saint Louis, Syracuse, Rome and Boston. Today I am no longer a Jesuit. I left the order over the firing of Colleen Simon, a lesbian who was fired from her position as director of outreach at the Jesuit-run parish in Kansas City, MO. I left an upper middle class lifestyle, where many gay and straight men do good work with the poor.

I could not be an openly gay Jesuit priest, and never (ever) would I be allowed to bless the same-sex relationship of a gay or lesbian couple. To me, the Church remains sadly out of touch with reality, complacent not prophetic, welcoming but not radically honest or radically hospitable. I question how gay priests can serve authentically, with integrity, and not marry gay men or lesbian women; is this not hypocritical: that, while the Church sanctifies, blesses and sacramentalizes a gay or straight man’s ordination to the priesthood, the Church will not sanctify, bless or sacramentalize same-sex marriages. The media does not seem interested in this.

This proves to me that the media is not interested in reporting that the institutional Church does not see humanity or human sexuality as intimately connected to God, as much as the Psalmist or the author of the Song of Songs or Saint Paul or Jesus himself might. And as the recent Synod reminds me the Church still distorts human sexuality, all the while good and holy gay and straight celibate priests serve Her whether they are closeted, confused, internally homophobic or marginalized because of their status as openly gay. To me it was a major let down to see Pope Francis let prelates like the bombastic Cardinal Timothy Dolan walk back on a language of inclusion of lesbian women and gay men, whereas even stating that LGBTQ men and women are nice and have talents proved too of-this-world for the Church’s all-male hierarchy. Today, Fr. Martin’s comment about revolution sounds more and more loquacious.