Dear Father Peter,

A love letter to a gay priest

Dear Peter,

(The Prelude, an Interview with a Gay Priest)

I’ve stared at this page for so long not knowing what to write. Too many tears warp the paper.

Your words and your interview found a deep part of my soul. Once touched I felt a billiard ball in the back of my throat, my face burn, my stomach tie itself into a million knots, my eyes well up with tears. I haven’t been able to escape it. I haven’t been able to numb it.

Your words broke me. Your story broke me.

I suppose I’m writing you to figure out why.

I’m 30, I suspect roughly around your age. I am in a terminal career, like you. I have focused so much of my energies on my career and relationships, like I suspect you did too. I love Jesus, and have loved his Church. I’ve struggled with habitual porn consumption for decades, I’m guessing like you. Lots of gay porn, like you. I’ve had romantic attractions to girls. I’ve had sexual attractions to guys, like you. I have hid my attractions to men my whole life, like you. I’ve refused to put two and two together and just fucking come out of the closet, bi or gay or whatever the fuck I am. Like you.

Until I lost it all.

Unemployment. Isolation. Desolation. Too much pain. I tried to distract myself with endless social media swiping, didn’t work. I tried porn - copious amounts couldn’t numb the pain. I chatted with guys on apps, a familiar path in dark days. Pain remained. I made several plans to meet up with a guy for my first sexual experience ever. Just like you. But fear, denial, “I still like girls” and being a fucking romantic held me back. I still hurt. So much. I went to confession. Again. And again. And again.

Then I stumbled into Chris’ content. Confronted with “gay and Catholic” and sexually active. Could this be me? The temptation was real, a threat to everything I know about sexual ethics. He makes some decent points about primacy of conscience and natural law and I was horny and lonely and hurting. Is this an answer to my pain? Is the possibility of an active sex life with men on the table? By your interview I suspect you had a similar experience with his content.

The tools I used to hide from myself didn’t work anymore. Social media and Chris’ content called out my hiding. The gay porn called out my hiding. The guys on the apps called out my hiding. I couldn’t hide in my work, my education, my friends. It was only me and my apartment walls. Nowhere to go. Face my reality or abandon it all. A true existential crisis. The pain felt like I was drowning, flailing my arms to catch a fragment of a breath only to be thrust under the violent waves again. And again. And again. I often still feel like I am drowning. Just like you.

Then I stumbled into your interview.

“There was one moment when my parents had found some gay pornography in high school and asked me about it, and I just denied it. But that was the closest to ever sharing that with anyone.”

“I was habitually using pornography”

“At some point, I started to actually chat with some guys online.”

“It was sort of like opening Pandora’s box, where it was like all of this stuff that, again, looking back, I had been white-knuckling for so long...I was complete[ly] white-knuckling everything, which isn’t integration”

“Suddenly, I was thrown into this whirlwind of actually feeling disintegrated and recognizing and very much feeling like I’m not put together”

“I really did feel like I was drowning.”

“Did I just go to seminary to hide?”

Your words. But they could be exactly mine. I’ve written nearly identical phrases in my reflections, I’m happy to share. Maybe not seminary, maybe another terminal degree. But I have said these exact same things. Twin birds in flight, a chorus of pain and disintegration echoing between us. A brother in this chaotic closet. I felt seen, and felt like I could see you. You know these iterations of pain. I know these iterations of pain. And they are suffocating.

---

Then our songs diverged.

“Probably the summer of ‘24...The big thing was going on a trip and then actually encountering a guy and having my first sexual experience.”

“I remember asking myself very clearly, ‘Do I regret it?’ And I just kept thinking to myself, ‘I don’t.’”

“Are you celibate now? / No.”

“If I don’t really care about [celibacy], then am I really trying to live it out? And if I’m not really trying to live it out, then what am I doing?”

Your words cut me through, top to bottom, and left me staring down at my entrails splayed on the ground. I’ve been stuck at this exact point on the page for days. I can’t get past writing this line. I feel pure pain.

I think about my hundreds of confessions, if I were confessing my own lack of celibacy to one who were not celibate. I think to the masses where I’ve abstained from the Eucharist because of porn, when the celebrant elevating the host could have had some variation of anonymous sex last night that I held back from but crave. I think about your parishioners who, like me, may be thrown into existential crisis from this information. And they know you personally. They’ve talked to you. They love you, as best they can love what parts of you they know.

I think about you. How disintegrated you might feel. How disintegrated I would feel in your life. To live a duplicitous life as a pastor, standing in a spotlight, covered in a shroud of expectations, especially about sexuality, while keeping to the shadows wandering the world outside your church. To preach on a gospel not fully living the words coming out of your lips. To speak words of absolution to a lust filled confession with the same sin echoing in your heart. To possibly consecrate and receive the Eucharist in a state relegated to mortal sin. To make a promise of celibacy then publicly deny that promise.

The dissonance resonates to those around you, intended or not. Your dissonance amplifies my own internal dissonance.

I am in such pain. I have spent hours sobbing my life away, curled in a ball, suffering true existential crisis, not knowing left or right, top or bottom. Floating in an abyss, an earth without shape or form.

And that’s when some still, small voice spoke, called out in my darkness.

I know Jesus. He knows me. I found him in an experience some 15 years ago. He is that still, small voice at the very core of my being. The world could be ripped away, everything I know lost, and He would be there.

My world was ripped away. I lost so much. I have more to lose, and my sexuality threatens it. I feel myself attacking...myself. Pure chaos. Pure disintegration.

But He remained.

---

Time passes. The pain persists, my new normal. Walking through life on a knife’s edge and breaking down at the smallest thing.

And with time, your words, Peter, provide me a light in this darkness:

“[H]ow would you characterize your degree of transparency with the formator? / Oh, nothing like [transparency]. Because I was very confident that if I were [transparent], I would have been dismissed. Because of my sexuality, and because of the fact that I was habitually using pornography.”

“And did you see [the psychologist] as well? / No. / Because? / Because I didn’t trust him”

“I couldn’t really be fully honest with myself and my desires, I think, even at that point. Or I certainly didn’t want to be if I recognized them.”

“What tools do you think your seminary gave you to deal with having just had that experience / Hide it.”

Your words. But they could be exactly mine.

Maybe your experience paves my road ahead. Maybe I can learn from you, from your choices. Hiding has caused nothing but pain. This closet is a fucking disaster.

So, I finally came out. First to myself and Jesus, sobbing in bed one night. Then one friend. Then two more. And they still loved me. “I actually remember connecting with one of the guys that I actually felt, it was almost like here is an angel sent from God just to keep me afloat in this moment.” Your words. But they could be exactly mine.

And for the first time, I felt some semblance of peace. I was loved in my unloveable. I was finally known, finally seen. My lifelong loneliness finally gave way to intimacy. And I had a space to run when the noise was too loud, the drowning felt inevitable. People who would simply hear my words and help me process. They are a life raft in this storm.

---

But only that was only the first step. There have been many more since then. My story turns theological, but I suspect you’ll get it.

I dove in. If I want to fight myself to the death internally, if I’m going to risk my soul for gay sex, I will be nothing if not fucking informed. Besides, I didn’t have anything else to do. After all, (spoiler) Newman emphasized that I’ve got to form my conscience to the best of my ability. My decade long training formed me to be a skeptic, and a skeptic I became. About everything.

I devoured Chris’ theological content with the lens of a skeptic.

I put on my philosophy pants and got critical about Chris’ perspective on natural law. Based on his content, it seems Chris’ view of Aristotelian eudaimonia (true human flourishing, that guiding principle of natural law) is founded on human pleasure and happiness. It is not hard to bridge, then, that gay sex = morally good. It appears he came to that position himself, no longer pursuing celibacy.

I was gifted Erik Varden’s “Chastity” by one friend I came out to, which surprisingly quickly and very beautifully unravels Chris’ fundamentals on natural law. Varden’s view is that the most pure and true human flourishing, eudaimonia, is prelapsarian, from before the fall. This is very simply evidenced by death, that ubiquitously unnatural phenomenon that will come for us all. You, Peter, witness the unnaturalness as you preside over funerals. I feel that unnaturalness in a layer of my being much deeper than my attraction to men. There is something inside me that calls out to the eternal, that truly knows the unnaturalness of this world. We were created for the eternal, that is where we find our human flourishing, this is where we find heaven, and this is where we find the summation of natural law.

This perspective on natural law inherently calls out to scripture for sexual ethics, that same scripture you preach on every day at mass. Following that thinking, I could not find a single example of lauded gay sex anywhere in scripture.

Chris lauds Newman’s primacy of conscience, so I read Newman. I understand and agree with his perspective on primacy of conscience.

“But the sense of right and wrong, which is the first element in religion, is so delicate, so fitful, so easily puzzled, obscured, perverted, so subtle in its argumentative methods, so impressible by education, so biassed by pride and passion, so unsteady in its course, that, in the struggle for existence amid the various exercises and triumphs of the human intellect, this sense is at once the highest of all teachers, yet the least luminous” (emphasis added)¹

And I kept reading.

Conscience is so delicate, so fragile, yet so critical. Because of the critical natures of conscience, Newman emphasized development of conscience: “If in a particular case [conscience] is to be taken as a sacred and sovereign monitor, its dictate, in order to prevail against the voice of the Pope, must follow upon serious thought, prayer, and all available means of arriving at a right judgment on the matter in question.” Without development of conscience Newman states man is left with “that miserable counterfeit.” “Conscience is a stern monitor, but in this century it has been superseded by a counterfeit...It is the right of self-will.” (emphasis added, footnote 1)

“The aim of most men esteemed conscientious and religious, or who are what is called honourable, upright men, is, to all appearance, not how to please God, but how to please themselves without displeasing Him…Nay you see it in religious exertions; of which it too commonly happens that the chief aim is, to attain any how a certain definite end, religious indeed, but of man's own choosing; not, to please God, and next, if possible, to attain it; not, to attain it religiously, or not at all.” (emphasis added)²

I worry about my own self-will superseding my conscience, an ironic sin against the primacy of conscience.

I want gay sex! Sorry for being blunt!

But does my conscience? The more I read the more dubious I became.

---

It was time to generally get critical of Chris’ content itself. His content itself feels ironically...disintegrated.

He defines his account as being space for many things including discussions, yet that space for discussion…doesn’t really exist. He hosts no spots for dialogue - even his Substack comments are behind a paywall. With no space for dialogue, his content becomes biased. The only discussions are Chris posting screenshots from his DMs; He controls the narrative and the messages he shares. There is little-to-no rise of any voices that might disagree.

This is not dialogue. This is not how we find truth.

I felt sad reading his interactions during his (free version of his) interview with you. It felt subversive. I’d love to call out the various identifiable biases across his work, but you’d get bored (confirmation/sampling/response/wording/observer biases, framing effect…my world of work unfortunately). The paid interview injected more humanity into Chris and the subversiveness and some biases started to melt away. But there shouldn’t be a paywall for me to see subversiveness and biases melt away.

One line of Chris’ commentary read like a taunt to both you and me: “I know a lot of priests who do both [abandon celibacy and continue priestly duties].” He poked at your heart and my heart, at an incredibly raw and vulnerable spot. And provides no aftercare, no support, no direction.

It is this line that haunts me the most. If a lot of priests, the men who have been ordained to lead my church, can do it, why can’t I? If they, the conduit who absolves my sins, yet live a life of gay sexual activity, why can’t I? If they can celebrate the Eucharist, the height of our faith, living a duplicitous life, why can’t I?

Notably, it was the interviewer, not you, Peter, who prompted these hauntings.

But again, you, Peter, took the words out of my mouth when you responded (in the paywalled version):

What’s been unhelpful are the people who have a very clear-cut prescription for how it ought to end up, whether that be, “You need to leave,” “You need to stay,” “You need to do the in-between thing.”…But just making space for me to be able to be vulnerable and share, “These are the real questions I’m wrestling with,” has been good.

I completely agree. I need space to wrestle with these questions myself, and coming out to my friends has been so incredibly helpful for that. Having a supportive group of people around me has been paramount. This is where I have best found any answers in this mess. Reading your words, I again feel the echos of our parallel stories.

Chris has some interesting commentary in his (paywalled) interview. He states:

It’s probably like 70% of priests are gay and almost half of priests are sexually active. Which I don’t necessarily think is how it has to be; I suspect it’s actually probably pretty consistent with the history of the church.

Part of why I try to have conversations like these and share them is because I want to also warn dioceses that if you continue to behave this way, your priests are going to be getting formation from people like me. I don’t think that’s a good thing. I don’t think that’s ideal. That’s not what I want to be doing.

Where are you going, Chris? What is the goal of your content? Single handedly, this is my biggest question as I’ve put on my skeptical pants and consumed his content. Chris rarely notes his goals in content creation - in fact (behind this paywall!) is one of the first times I’ve seen him say he wants to warn dioceses of this. He very rarely if ever makes theological or moral claims for others, seemingly not wanting to walk down that path for others based on this interview.

But queer Catholics, lay and ordained alike, are looking for a voice. Chris is absolutely right: the Church is not pastorally doing…anything?! for queer people. They have effectively no voice in the space. We, the queer in the church, are lost sheep, and the first person who is standing up and saying anything will implicitly will gain followers.

Whether Chris likes it or not, by virtue of producing this content he is stepping into the role of a formator. He has become a pastor of an online and flock, many of whom are experiencing an intense internal disintegration and pain like you and me, Peter. And when we find his content it is like stumbling upon a life raft when we are drowning. My heart was far too wounded and tender to ignore his voice. And parts of me are glad I’ve listened.

But in reflection, Chris’ current content at best feels like it misses a mark, feels disintegrated, almost a religious mirror of an online right or left wing echo chamber. It is not a space for dialogue or truth seeking.

At worst his content feels like pastoral malpractice. Whether he likes it, whether it is intentional or not, he has an online flock that will heed his voice. His voice holds weight. And I worry that he (intentionally or otherwise) twists that “so delicate, so fitful, so easily puzzled, obscured” conscience in the sheep that follow him. (footnote 1). Intentionally or otherwise, his content twisted my own conscience.

As I’ve wrestled with these questions, especially after coming out to my friends and finding real space for true dialogue, my wounded heart has started to recognize echos of an ancient deceiver, one who asks excellently poised questions and provides shadows for answers, portions of truths. I’m not saying Chris is the devil; I choose to believe he has good intentions with his content. But I want to know those intentions, not keep them hidden behind a paywall. I want clarity. I want direction for how to form my conscience if he’s going to discuss it, how to discern between my self-will and my conscience. I want Chris to evaluate the fruits of his work, and see if they line up with his intentions.

I want the Truth. I want integration. I want to be whole.

I do not want to be duplicitous either. I’m sick of that life. I have learned many good things from Chris’ content. My relationship to his content is not black and white. His content pushed me to come out. It has led to a lot of very good, but incredibly painful healing. Sexual healing, interpersonal healing, spiritual healing. I’m more and more convinced that the closet is pure evil because of his content. My closet, your closet, the closet of any priest or seminarian or lay person. And that closet doesn’t just have to be sexuality. Closets contain all sorts of secrets. And I can’t think of a single good that has come from any of my secrets staying hidden. And the church should talk about that. And not fucking ignore it.

We need voices who are willing to be pastors in this space. And we need them now more than we ever have before.

---

…I found some other voices, Peter.

I stumbled into our Christian brothers and sisters, debating the “sides” and living them out. I stumbled into a whole new vocabulary (side A, side B, side X, side Y), an entirely new realm of debate. They were less enthralled by Aristotle and Thomistic teleology. They engaged more in scripture, in community, and exploring creative paths of celibacy.

I read Side B [celibate gays] David Bennet (watch this too), Eve Tushnet, listened to podcasts of gay pastors moving from their gay marriage and living Side A [affirming of gay sex] to side B [celibate]. I read eye opening pieces on Side B Catholics leaning into their gay spaces and friendships and finding freedom from lust in the process. I’ve started the process of joining Eden Invitation - a recommendation by a friend I came out to - a community of celibate Catholics of which he is a part. A place for dialogue, for wrestling, for discussion. A place you, Peter, wouldn’t be alone at all. Even as a priest.

There are many more examples, just ask.

Side B Christians have engaged in the arguments. The thought process. They debate the Greek translations of the New Testament. They dissect Leviticus. They have open dialogues between the sides - you can find them! They’ve done much more work in this space than our Catholic brothers and sisters, and we have tons to learn from them.

They have their own journeys toward finding integration. And there are so many who have found integration and happiness in celibacy. Their content feels whole, acknowledges their Side A (gay sex affirming) brothers and sisters and loves them like a Christian should. Their content is perfumed with a calmness, a steadiness, a patient knowing, like their eyes are fixed to a horizon far away from here. I see so much more peace in their lives, a peace I crave. Their lives are a witness to their integrity.

And - most importantly - they talk about Jesus.

Jesus. The one marker I’ve found in all my time dissecting and tearing and ripping about in this world of content about sexuality. Those who do not talk about him, those who seem to not have a relationship with him. Those are the voices that feel the most disintegrated. The least whole. The most subversive. I’ve started to pay attention to His name. And it is often noticeably absent.

Jesus.

---

More than anything throughout this truly existential crisis, I have prayed. I’ve prayed like I’ve never prayed before. My pain itself became a prayer, a communion, a moment that Jesus finds me and wants to just holds me. And I let him. I suffer, I sob, I hurt. I hurt so much. I can’t write these very words without crying. And yet He just holds me when I let Him. He doesn’t take the pain away, He doesn’t solve it. He just loves me like a mother holding her child.

He wants the best for me, and I just want to be with him. The only semblance of respite from the tortures of this world and the tortures of our minds. Jesus. He is real, and you turn bread into Him every single day. That is bat shit mother fucking insane. He tells you, Peter, “I would create the universe again just to hear you say that you love me.”³

He does it all just to hear your voice. Your voice, Peter! Unopened closets, gay hook up sex and everything!

So, Father Peter, I want the best for you, just like I want the best for myself. I want you to find Jesus, to remember him, to find shelter in Him, find solace in His wounds.

I want to get to Heaven and be with Jesus forever.

And I want to meet you there.

I suppose that’s what love is.

And I suppose I’m coming to find the purpose of this letter: It’s a love letter of sorts.

I guess it’s true: I love you. I really, really love you. I love your story. I love the echos of your story in mine. I love your wanderings, your hurts, your pains, your dissonance. You have led me down a path of healing. Painful healing, but necessary healing. Without your witness I don’t know that I would ever have started to find integration.

I have cried over you and your story more than I have cried over any person in my life. I’ve never met you, I may never meet you. But I love you. So much.

I have prayed for you and thought about you every day since I read your interview. Your story reverberates so profoundly in mine that I know it will never leave the depths of my heart. Your voice has found a home in my story, both darkness and light both. I will think of you and I will pray for you every day until the day I die and, God willing, maybe beyond.

---

Staring into the abyss we have a parallel choice to make.

I choose Jesus. I choose that still small voice that spoke existence into my own abyss. That voice through whom all things came. I choose Him in the sacraments, the very Eucharist you, Peter, offer for me every day. I choose Him in this Church and all its broken members and hierarchy, its lack of queer pastoring. I choose Him in the Church’s teachings, even in the dissonance and tension they may bring in my life. I choose Him as I discern and choose celibacy with men.

I just want you to choose Jesus too.

This reads like I want you to choose celibacy. Selfishly, I suppose I do. But I’m not the one who should tell you to choose celibacy. And it shouldn’t be Chris, your therapist, your friends. It should be Jesus.

It should be Jesus, present in the beautiful things we encounter. Jesus, that still small voice in the chaos and abyss we feel in our disintegration. Jesus, who harkens to the eternal, pointing always to heaven. Jesus.

There are many out there who sacrifice their moral views on their sexuality, viewing it an insurmountable battle that cannot be won. Honestly, I get it. Inspired by Chris’ content I did just that.

Let Jesus tell you, Peter, what you should be. Let Him unleash your imagination and let it run wild: maybe an out, gay priest, living celibacy and integration, bringing Christ to a queer people, a voice to those struggling to find their spot in a Church who so often crowds them out, a voice who can speak directly into the struggle of others, especially the ignored and closeted sexual struggles. A voice preaching on the dangers of that closet, the suffering we unknowingly put queer people through. There is so much there.

You matter. Your presence matters. Your words matter. I think the Church is so much better having you in it, and as you find integration that very integration will echo in the souls of others, just like your story of disintegration echoed in my own disintegration. We need you and your voice, your story, your presence, your example. We need great men, great priests and great saints like what you can be. And we need them now more than ever have before.

You may choose to leave your priesthood, to leave your flock, your life, everything you know. I would understand. I would still love you. You may choose to abandon celibacy permanently, to wander into a life of sexual decadence and hook ups or partnership or whatever the fuck you want. I would understand. I would still love you. I am right beside you, staring with you into that abyss. You are not alone.

I am sorry for the ways our Church, your seminary, your formators and our Catholic culture have failed you. Because they have failed you - you should have been able to come out long ago, live in a supportive environment, not at the threat of not being ordained.

I still love you and will always still love you. You are that twin bird in flight, an echo of my own unwitnessed and closeted story and chaos. My thoughts will find you, coming out, hiding in shadows, wherever you are and wherever you will be. Whatever choice you make, I will still love you.

I pray for your integration: Integration from the deepest parts of your soul where a light lay still and quiet, to the tumultuous and uncovered parts of your sexuality, the duplicity you may feel in your priesthood and your priestly promises, the shit you didn’t talk about in your interview, integration in everything.

I don’t know if you will ever find this. At this point I do not care. But I still love you, and always will. Please know that I share so much of your story. Please know that you are not alone, and that this journey is one that must be shared. I share it with you, and will continue to share with you into the future. Reach out if you feel so inclined.

Until we meet, even if in Heaven, I will think of you from a distance.

I am praying so much for you, and should you ever read this, please pray for me too.

Love,

Dave

1. https://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section5.html

2. https://www.newmanreader.org/works/parochial/volume4/sermon2.html

3. Jesus to St. Teresa of Avila