What the Sirico Story Does (and Does Not) Mean

"referring to Father Sirico as the “ex-gay” priest" I read the column and may have missed this, did Fr. Sirico actually say he was once gay?

I'm not a fan of EWTN or Fr. Sirico, but your approach here seems curious, as if you've just begrudgingly "outed" him and now hope everyone, Sirico included, will use appropriate restraint and refrain from judgment. I believe I've heard these things about Sirico for years, and thought neither more nor less of the man than I do of myself when I think of my past. If your point is that Sirico should show some understanding of those with whom he disagrees, agree wholeheartedly, and I hope NCR's commentators will do the same.

Zzzzzzzzzzz.

Smacks very much to me of internalised homophobia I fear. A pathology shared regretably by too many of today's self-loathing gay clerics.

I'm a very confused and troubled by this tortured tap dance you're doing here. On the hand you're standing up for his integrity, intellectual, sexual and otherwise, while on the other calling out his "sanctimony" in regards to certain other issues, i.e. wanting to see all his positions through something he did in the past. Moreover, it continues a very troubling trend on your part of really going after, personally and otherwise, people with whom you disagree. It really demeans you and your readers.

I think clergy that are politicized run the risk of putting their politics above God's will. A telling sign of a politicized clergy (or anybody else) is when they spend their time sorting out who is on their side and who isn't, and trying to prove that they are right. God made us all and works even through those who we don't identify with. The world may seem unruly and messy to those who seek to impose their own order to God's creation. We don't know all about the world God made, we do know a lot about our own hearts.

Here is a link about his life prior to his seminary education and ordination: http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?15360-Robert-Sirico...

I am no lawyer but his responses seem to walk that delicate line between denial and stating that, “yes, it may be true but…..” He seems to try to appeal to the old “people can change and be converted” routine. But, if you study his chronology and his relationships, the career path is very disturbing – seminary changes; needed the Paulists to support his ordination and then he drops the Paulists and finds a bishop to support him. Meanwhile, he latches on to EWTN and other conservative groups/money raisers and forms the Acton Institute. Notice, he gets appointed to positions, etc. with very little lifetime experience, etc. He is not very educated – has a masters (so what? From a seminary no less – has less and less substance in these days – more like a tech degree from a vocation school). There is a book out about his life, etc. that makes some pretty devastating accusations (The Rite of Sodomy – see link below) – probably not documented.

Here is the other link: http://www.romancatholicreport.com/id119.html

Here is a quote defending him – notice it uses language very similar to the e-mail I received from Sirico: “substantial falsehoods, was written by a person who did not allow Fr. Robert or the Acton Institute to respond to her allegations, and contains not a single person on the record backing up her claims.”

Of course, we never see the “substantial falsehoods” – notice that Sirico doesn’t deny his chronology but wants to provide reasons and explanations that would change the context, impression, impact, etc. Would love to know the whole truth.

I give Fr. Sirico the benefit of the doubt, it seems he has reformed his ways and changed his mind. There is no suggestion that there is any sinful relationship with a man. While the inclination may remain, many Priest's have hetrosexual inclinations that they musn't give in to.

I know much of the NCR readership suffers from Same Sex Attraction, maybe they can use this as an example of how these inclinations can be dealt with in a serious and Catholic way.

A Tempest in a tea-cozy if ever there was one. Is anyone outside of this very narrow world even concerned about this "story?" The problem with blogs is that any hack of blogger can convince him/herself of his/her poignancy and soical impact simply by pushing 'enter.'... "The story I published is about Father Sirico, but the response will tell more about the rest of us." I suspect this post, ahem story, like the so much of the blogosphere, is really about only one person. For the sake of his fragile ego, I hope someone noticed.

What was the purpose of this hit piece and its accompanying commentary? As noted, it wasn’t to expose Fr. Sirico as a “hypocrite” which the author recognizes Fr. Sirico is not. Fr. Sirico has never hidden the fact that he experienced a deep conversion in his life, one that was not only intellectual but moral.

What seemed to drive Mr. Winters in choosing to research and write these pieces was his claim that Fr. Sirico is “sanctimonious.” The author’s functional definition of sanctimonious is not “hypocritically pious or devout” or “feigned piety or righteousness” — dictionary definitions that would be ruled out by Mr. Winter’s own acknowledgement of Fr. Sirico’s integrity —but because Fr. Sirico had the gall to make strong moral judgments based on the Catholic faith. Mr. Winters believes that Fr. Sirico’s past should make him “less judgmental,” which seems to mean less judgmental about the issues Mr. Winters does not want to see judged negatively on the basis of the Catholic faith, like Senator Kennedy’s funeral, President Obama’s Notre Dame invitation, Sr. Keehan’s claims about the health care bill, or whether there would be a need for altar girls for Masses in a country with enough capable seminarians and an obvious need for more.

Mr. Winters states that he wouldn’t have had a problem if Fr. Sirico had merely given his opinion that such decisions were wrong or misguided, rather than objectively wrong and eschatologically dangerous. It’s the strength of such a conclusion, and the powerful tone with which it’s expressed, that Mr. Winters thinks should be out-of-bounds. Why? Because of Fr. Sirico’s past. Thankfully, St. Paul, who, like Fr. Sirico, once experienced a massive conversion, didn’t follow such a principle or he would have never brought the Corinthians and so many others to conversion. Thankfully Augustine, Dorothy Day, Bernard Nathanson and many other notable converts didn’t follow it either.

Mr. Winter’s detraction of Fr. Sirico is serious enough and — though I may risk being labeled sanctimonious or judgmental for saying so — clearly contrary to Catholic morals (see CCC 2447).

I think it’s matched in seriousness, however, by the calumnious suggestion that Fr. Sirico is unsympathetic to those who are struggling. As a friend of Fr. Sirico’s for more than 15 years and someone who has pastorally collaborated with him during conferences, on pilgrimages and even at the bedsides of those who are dying, I can testify that I have always found him a priest full of genuine compassion and kindness for those who are struggling to live according to the Gospel. He was ordained a Paulist Priest, after all, and as I believe Mr. Winters would readily corroborate, Paulists have a particular outreach for those who are marginalized, an outreach that, I attest, continues to influence Fr. Sirico’s priesthood.

It shouldn’t be left unsaid that Fr. Sirico’s past, as detailed in the article, would make him particularly sensitive to the type of well-meaning but false sympathy that he used to engage in before his conversion and that Mr. Winters appears to suggest that he recommence. This is the false compassion that thinks that genuine sympathy for those who seek, for example, to enter into same-sex unions means supporting them in this aim. True compassion, genuine sympathy, means to try to meet them where they’re at and guide them toward the truth, continual conversion and holiness, even if on occasion it may be done with the forceful language and firmness that John the Baptist and Jesus himself occasionally displayed. That’s the type of sympathy and compassion Fr. Sirico exercises.

Hit pieces like this are often boomerangs. Mr. Winters seems to be guilty of many of the same transgressions of which he accuses Fr. Sirico. He accuses him of “sanctimonious” statements regarding Sen. Kennedy, Sr. Keehan and Fr. Jenkins, but none of those strong statements by Fr. Sirico even approximates the detraction in Mr Winter’s article and the moralism in his accompanying blog commentary. He likewise accuses Fr. Sirico of lacking sympathy, but if he truly put himself in Fr. Sirico’s shoes, it’s impossible imagine he would have written such a story, especially since he himself was the object of an internet hit piece a year ago in defense of Archbishop Wuerl’s opposition to same-sex marriage in Washington, DC.

Why was this piece written? If the real aim were a screed against sanctimoniousness in general or Fr. Sirico’s putative sanctimoniousness in particular, there would have been no need to rehash the details of a life from which Fr. Sirico sincerely and thoroughly converted three-and-a-half decades ago. If Mr. Winter’s problem was with Fr. Sirico’s judgments or Fr. Sirico’s tone in expressing those judgments, Mr. Winters certainly has the writing abilities to address those on their own merits. To engage in such a superfluous detraction of Fr. Sirico as a pretense for condemning alleged sanctimoniousness suggests a decision on Mr. Winters’ part, sadly and shamefully, to go ad hominem, to try to disqualify or undermine Fr. Sirico’s adult ideas with which Mr. Winters disagrees by bringing up irrelevant issues from decades ago.

I hope Mr. Winters and the NCR will recognize this piece this detraction and distraction for what it is, remove it from their website out of Christian justice, and do all they can to remedy it.

I had the good fortune to work for Fr. Sirico for a summer at the Acton Institute, and this and the past article are both pathetic. Either the article is written in evidently bad faith, or the author is a terrible writer.

"Father Sirico, clearly, had a conversion experience and changed his mind about same-sex issues. He is entirely entitled to do that. Father Sirico’s statement is evidence of integrity, not its lack, no matter what you think of his earlier activities or of his present stance on the issue of same-sex marriage."

"Everyone loves a convert, but one would think that having taken such a circuitous route to the Catholic priesthood, Father Sirico might be less judgmental towards those whose paths do not meet his current standards of orthodoxy. Instead, he regularly rails against those who deviate from the church norms he deems important. He took issue, for example, with the eulogies at the funeral of Sen. Edward Kennedy, noting that the General Instructions of the Roman Missal do not permit eulogies. He recently accused the local hierarchy in the UK of an “agenda” for having female altar servers at Masses during Pope Benedict’s recent visit. He called out Sister Carol Keehan for reaching conclusions about the health care bill that were different from the conclusions reached by the U.S. bishops’ conference."

In the first place, Fr. Sirico's loyalty to the Church and her teaching, his Catholic integrity, for which you supposedly have such great respect, dictates a number of things:

That it should be no surprise that he wants the GIRM enforced, even as the Holy Father wished in promulgating it;

That since the Holy Father himself has in the past expressed displeasure at the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms, among which are altar girls, that he should be consistent with the Vatican in opposing their widespread positioning;

That, being in union with the Catholic Social Teaching and working with the bishops often, it should not be surprising that he actually wishes that their edicts, which are for the good of the Church, be accepted in that spirit.

But let's be HONEST, here. This piece is not for the purpose of good faith. After all, if it were, you would ask an impartial observer to comment on his behavior, perhaps from the point of view of someone not actively opposed to Fr. Sirico's work and everything he stands for. But alas! it must have been too much trouble, for who should show his face but the chairman of the organization that received all of the Acton Institute's ire for going against that same social teaching in every possible respect, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good?

“For someone to be so sanctimonious about an appearance by the President of the United States speaking at Notre Dame's graduation, while he's got such skeletons in his own closet, is baffling,” Fred Rotondaro, chairman of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, an organization that supported Notre Dame’s decision to honor the President, told NCR. “You would think he might be a bit more sympathetic with people and their own conundrums given the complicated way he seems to have left and re-joined the Church.”

"Complicated" would be an understatement...if one were describing the sheer lack of journalistic ethics it takes to expect one representing the polar opposite of Fr. Sirico's organization to comment objectively on his character! Fr. Sirico deserves an apology for this absolutely disgraceful waste of bandwidth. There is nothing "distinctly Catholic" about dredging up someone's past, using it to accuse them of some frivolous precursor to a homophobia accusation and then corroborating it by citing their intellectual and political adversary as a competent witness against them.

This article disgusts me.

This campaign by Winters and the NCR isn't going to sway many who have come to know and love Fr. Sirico through his 20-plus years of work with the Acton Institute.

Indeed, this attack and the others from several years ago have the opposite effect of what seems to be intended. Rather than finding himself shunned by faithful Catholics for his past sins, Sirico is embraced all the more for whom he is today; a remarkably talented and courageous defender of the Church and its teachings.

Forgiveness and redemption are wonderful things.

Does any one else see the irony here? Is the author sanctimoniously chastising this priest for being sanctimonious?

"Third, the lesson, it seems to me, these revelations raise is one of sanctimony. Everyone loves a convert, but one would think that having taken such a circuitous route to the Catholic priesthood, Father Sirico might be less judgmental towards those whose paths do not meet his current standards of orthodoxy."

You're right Michael Sean. Given Saul of Tarsus' route to becoming St. Paul, his "judgmental" epistles should be substantially discounted. What a sanctimonious brat he was!

Thank you for pointing out to those of us less attuned to matters of humility than (of course) you are.

[For the record, I happen to disagree with many of Fr. Sirico's ideas as well, just not those that are a direct reflection of magisterial teaching of the Church. On the other hand, while I may and do agree with many of your ideas, Michael Sean, that does not mean that you have one shred of humility or are in the position to raise lessons of sanctimony. It's the pot calling the kettle black from my seat.]

MSW:

Are you up front about your *present* homosexual relationships?

As Donohue has pointed out, this is not new territory - it was trod in 2007 by Thomas Herron in the anti-Semite E. Michael JOnes' Culture Wars magazine.

Was that your inspiration?

There is something chilling, even ghastly, about this attack. All the writer's assurances that this isn't really an attack are just cover for what is apparently a political agenda of this bottom-feeding blogger. This stuff occurred 35 years ago. Are you guys attempting to revive the spirit of the Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and other intolerant frenzies in American history? I wasn't surprised that the right-wing Culture Wars hit Fr. Sirico, but National Catholic Reporter?

By the way, Fr. Sirico wrote for the National Catholic Reporter in 1999, a wonderful piece warning economic sanctions on Iraq could lead to another war. See for yourself:

http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/1999c/092499/092499p.htm

"We’ve known since Athens’ embargo against Megara in 431 B.C. set off the Peloponnesian War that sanctions are no way to conduct international policy. If we want a world where human rights are respected, the path of peace and trade is to be preferred to a path of ongoing belligerence. Rather than being harassed by the Clinton administration, Pope John Paul II should be praised for setting an example of political independence in the face of a misguided U.S. policy against so many countries."

This is an independent mind at work. I gather that this "researcher" was too enamored with the salacious material from the 1970s to notice this.

The fact that Father Sirico is a priest at all raises serious problems about the seminary selection process. There are potential seminarians out there, with less baggage than Father Sirico,who are being denied seminary admission, in a time of clergy shortage. In Canada, an ex-drug/ex-male prostitue is now not only a priest, but a member of the Quebec provicial legislature.

The documentation on the homosexual career of Sirico is provided free of charge in The Sirico Brief at http://www.newengelpublishing.com/index.php?pr=Articles and at http://www.romancatholicreport.com/id119.html [no photos].

Given Sirico's troubled life as a homosexual activist with plans to "marry" another man, and the 1961 Vatican regulation in place at the time which strictly prohibited the ordination of homosexuals, he never should have been ordained by the Paulist, but he was.

Today, Sirico earns a six-figure salary plus perks as President of the Acton Institute, a 40-hour-a week job. His Saint Philip Neri House, an oratory where young men go for spiritual discernment has been "in formation" for 12 years, but has never received official recognition from the Oratorians. He spends little time at his parish, but manages to pontificate on EWTN and travel world-wide.

Sirico is a sad commentary on the state of the priesthood today.

Randy Engel, author, The Sirico Brief and The Rite of Sodomy

I couldn't be any more delighted MSW is finally being seen for what he is.

MSW has his own homosexual controversies both in and out of the seminary. I have often wondered why he doesn't come out of the closet to declare his sexual preferences, it always had the stink of shame.

His shame should really be focused on the stink of sulfur coming from his soul.