Secrecy, Sophistry and Gay Sex In The Catholic Church: The Systematic Destruction of an Oblate Priest [Paperback]

Rev. Richard Wagner Ph.D. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 11, 2012

For centuries homosexuals have been vilified and persecuted by the Catholic Church, but throughout all of its history the Church has had a very inconvenient secret. Many of its clergy and religious men and women, even those in the highest echelons of the Church, were and are homosexual. Little was known of the lives these religious people live until the publication, in 1981, of the groundbreaking, Gay Catholic Priests; A Study of Cognitive and Affective Dissonance.

I am the author of that study and I am a gay priest. But the media firestorm that erupted after its publication and the backlash within my religious community because of its publication eventually destroyed my public priesthood. The story of my 13-year battle with the Church to save my ministry exemplifies the spiritual isolation, emotional distress and ecclesiastical reprisals every gay priest most fears.
   
Secrecy, Sophistry And Gay Sex In The Catholic Church provides an intimate and disturbing look into the unseemly inner-workings the Catholic Church. It is primarily a story about how this institution deals with dissent in its midst, but it also shows to what lengths the Church will go to silence a whistle-blower. What I am about to recount happened between 1981 and 1994. It involves the highest levels of the Vatican bureaucracy, secret documents, corporate incompetence, canonical corruption, and institutionalized homophobia on an epic scale.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

The publication of my dissertation broke the seal on the Vatican's gay secret. The press dubbed me "The Gay Priest," but my research and what it implies made patently clear that I wasn't the only gay priest. In fact, there is a sizable segment of the clergy population that is gay and these men are forced to live duplicitous lives of repression in secret.
  
The Church's single-minded effort to quash the emerging story and silence me showed that I needed to be "dealt with" in the most severe fashion; an example had to be made of me. If other priests started coming out of the closet, demanding to be treated with dignity and respect it would certainly undercut the entirety of Catholic sexual moral theology--there is no place for non-reproductive sexuality in that paradigm.
  
The irony is that at the same time my story was unfolding an unimaginable scandal, involving hundreds of Catholic priests across the globe, was also brewing. Cardinals, bishops and provincials worldwide were, and still are, furtively shuffling pedophile priest from one crime scene to another. They were, and still are, involved in a massive corporate cover up of their own crimes and those of their brother clergy.
  
While I am being singled out for 13 years of Church vitriol, public character assassination and communal shunning--my superiors claim that they are simply trying to protect the Church from scandal--these same Church leaders and others are lying, prevaricating and sabotaging any effort to uncover the burgeoning clergy sexual abuse scandal that would soon rock the front pages of newspapers all over the world.
  
The public panic, among Church officials, exhibited toward me--a single up-front gay priest in their midst--is in stark contrast to their apathetic and anemic response to the systemic clergy sexual abuse that engulfs them.
  
I am confident making the comparison between my struggle and the clergy sex abuse scandal, because I have first-hand knowledge of this abuse criminality. I was repeatedly sexually molested as a 14-year-old boy in an Oblate seminary in southern Illinois.
  
My story is the story of a Church that will go to any length, even to violate its core principles--Gospel values that form the fundamental tenets of faith--to protect its public image. In other words, this is a story of a Church out of control.

About the Author

Richard Wagner, Ph.D., ACS -- Psychotherapist, Clinical Sexologist in private practice for over 30 years.

He is the only Catholic priest in the world with a doctorate in Human Sexuality. His practice includes a special outreach to survivors of clergy sex abuse and has had many opportunities to work with clergy offenders. He is available as an advocate for clergy abuse survivors -- as a consultant, expert witness and/or therapist.

He is currently working on a follow-up book detailing the sexual molestation he endured at the hands of his Oblate superior while a 14-year-old seminarian in Southern Illinois. And how all subsequent religious superiors he told about these incidences did nothing. The book will investigate the psychological and emotional trauma of clergy sex abuse and its impact on the psychosexual development of abuse victims.

Richard designs, develops and produces long and short-term seminars and workshops for healing and helping professionals including religious leaders. He has provided individual therapy and facilitated support groups for gay clergy of numerous denominations.

He's also been involved in many other sex education and sexual enrichment projects. He's been writing an online sex advice column for over 15 years. His column and weekly podcasts can be found at: drdicksexadvice.com. He also contributes to several other websites as a guest columnist.

He is developing a new site, gaycatholicpriests.org, which is a clearinghouse for news and information about gay clergy worldwide.

He often writes and speaks in the public forum on policy issues related to religion, human sexuality, aging and death and dying. He has been a keynote speaker and/or presenter at numerous conventions and symposia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: Nazca Plains (April 11, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1610982126
• ISBN-13: 978-1610982122
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,071,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard Wagner, M.Div., Ph.D., ACS -- Psychotherapist, Clinical Sexologist in private practice in Seattle, WA. He's been a practitioner of Sex Therapy and Relationship Counseling since 1981. He is the only Catholic priest in the world with a doctorate in Human Sexuality.

He has been working with terminally ill, chronically ill, elder and dying people in hospital, hospice, and home settings for over 30 years. He facilitates support groups for care-providers and clinical personnel, and provides grief counseling for survivors both individually and in group settings.

He founded Paradigm Programs Inc, an innovative nonprofit organization with a mission to be an outreach and resource for terminally ill, chronically ill, elder and dying people.

He was honored with the prestigious University of California San Francisco Chancellor's Award for Public Service in 1999 for his work with sick, elder and dying people.

He designs, develops, and produces long and short term in-service training seminars and workshops for helping and healing professionals.

He often speaks in the public forum on policy issues related to religion, human sexuality, aging, death and dying, surviving chronic illness, and moral development.

He is involved in numerous sex education and sexual enrichment projects. One such outlet is his online sex advice column that he's been writing for nearly 20 years. During that time it's been syndicated on a number of sites. Now his column and weekly podcasts have a home of their own: drdicksexadvice.com. He is also a guest columnist on several other websites.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Vocation Destroyed August 27, 2011

By seadick

Format:Paperback

This is one of the most compelling stories I've ever read about the Church's abuse of power. They simply didn't care if they destroyed a vocation. All they cared about was saving face and keeping the truth from the public.

I commend Richard for his courage and strength. And I am so glad that he included his long out of print doctoral thesis. This is the seminal work in this field and it is finally available to the general public.

A must read!

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Relevant to more than you would think. September 15, 2011

By Michael D. Cawdrey

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

As a former Catholic priest, I thought that I would find some similarities in what I went through in my departure process with Richard's story. I did not leave for the same reasons. Well, not exactly. But Richard's written sharing of his experience resonated with me as a human being, and as a former Catholic, and a former Priest. He is almost overly kind, tolerant, and forgiving of the mean-spirited bureaucrats of his own order as well as with the Church Hierarchy. His experience is remarkably similar to the treatment experienced by lay Catholics going through the struggle of their lives. It is my view that even the term "lay Catholic" is symptomatic of the attitude and practice of the clergy and hierarchy in their self-serving sense of superiority. As painful as it was to be brought so close again to the self-satisfied, mean, even inhumane way Catholics are treated this book made me realise just how much so many Catholics are despised by those in power. So, just because you might not be a priest, former priest, Catholic or even gay, Richard's shared experience will touch your heart as you share the confusion, disbelief, pain and resolve he has been through. I loved this book.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Review August 29, 2011

By Victor H. Hoff

Format:Paperback

One of the challenges of reading a book that is so perfectly stitched together - as we find here in Dr Richard Wagner's searing indictment of the Catholic Church and his role in it, is finding the choice morsels to highlight the the gripping twelve-plus-years of human degradation that pulled a one-time member of the Oblate community into sharper focus:

What follows then is the one-hundred-plus page accounting of one of the most damning indictments of the Catholic church as seen from the eyes of a single man - Dr. Richard Wagner - whose life, beliefs, everything he stood for and continues to stand for, because fodder for a corrupt church hell-bent on destroying him after producing a seminal work on the sexual nature of celibate priests entitled, "Gay Catholic Priests: A Study of Cognitive and Affective Dissonance," which not only earned him the label of pariah among the church hierarchy but the title of Clinical Sexologist, the first and only kind in the world.

It is the commitment to truth, this un-blinding allegiance to that which is known that lead Wagner down a thirteen year journey of obfuscation, lies, cover-ups and other tools in the Catholic hierarchy bag of tricks that would force Mr. Wagner to have to constantly weigh whether he was going to do the right thing or do the thing that would protect his interests. And, yes, at every step of the way, knowing his faith in the Church was implacable, he choose to do the right thing and paid the highest price of all for it:

The non-fictional re-telling of the book reads like an international murder-mystery complete with a rogue cast of characters who will stop at nothing to bury Wagner's truth, all while hiding beind a cloak of church dogma - pulling and pushing Mr. Wagner until, at times, believing his future among the church was secure, only to find out soon after that that was not the case.

This is an academics book. And by that you will need to hone up on your Catholicism and the characters and systems in place that populate this cloistered world if you are to make the most of this fascinating tell-all. Richard Wagner has gone to great lenghts to paint a picture of malfeasance at the very core of the Catholic Church as you would be, as a a reader, doing yourself a great disservice by not educating y0urself on the lingo and terminology that pepper the book throughout.

One of the three or four best books I've read this or any year. A must read.