Happily, many people these days barely have to come out at all – but for me the process was ultimately unavoidable. Once I realised I was gay (or at least “experiencing gay feelings”, as the various pamphlets put it), I entered my most fundamentalist phase of religiosity: a desperate, final scrabbling for God, in the hope that he would solve my “problems”.
You might think this a curious reaction, but if you've been exposed to fundamentalist religion from a very early age, you’re used to being given all the answers you need to life, given to you in very straightforward, unambiguous terms. Things are either right or wrong. People are either saved or they are not. The idea of a world where one doesn't have all the answers, or where answers might change, ends up terrifying to the point of paralysis.
Many commentators in our liberal echo chamber would suggest the Catholic Church rethink its policy on celibacy when it comes to priests, but having once existed in a very fundamental black-and-white world, I can understand why they would consider bowing to "worldly" demands as unthinkable. But if it’s true that a “gay culture” has sprung up in this particular seminary, and that Grindr is being used by the religious men within it, I have something to say to these would-be priests because I sympathise with them. I'd suggest they contemplate what it was that put them on the path they're now on, and how much they really know about the organisation to which they are considering. It might seem like a curative life of service, but realistically it’s a life of self-denial which I’m more than relieved I managed to sidestep.
