It is said that in South Florida you’ll find an
ex-priest in every gay bar. Each has his own sad story of disappointment
with his church, but there is one Roman Catholic priest who, at the age
of 85 is not among them, and who has never stopped speaking and writing
about the unconditional love of his God for gay people. In Hollywood,
close to the Seminole casino, lives that priest, Father John J. McNeill,
with Charlie Chiarelli, his devoted lover of 45 years.
On June
11th, Father McNeill, a veteran who served under General George S.
Patton, was captured at the Battle of the Bulge, imprisoned in a Nazi
POW camp, and received the Purple Heart, will place a wreath in a
ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery as an outstanding member of the
American Veterans for Equal Rights (AVER) when that organization
celebrates it’s 20th anniversary. The event is part of the annual
Washington DC gay pride weekend where Father McNeill will also be
honored at the headquarters of the Human Rights Campaign (HCR) at a
fund-raiser for the completion of Brendan Fay’s documentary about his
life entitled “Uncommon Jesuit.” Lest he be given any time to rest in
the course of that weekend, the Catholic LGBT organization Dignity will
host a book-signing featuring Father McNeill, the founder of Dignity New
York, who has written five books that constitute the definitive and
authoritative voice of Catholic theology that compassionately and
intelligently dismantles thehomophobia of the bishops, cardinals and
popes who would prefer him silent.


There must have been
something in the holy water of the Catholic churches of Syracuse, New
York that produced not only the maverick Father McNeill but also those
stellar renegade anti-war priests, the Berrigan brothers. John, born
into a traditional Irish clan, lost his mother at the age of four. His
father then married his mother’s sister, according to custom, so that he
and his siblings would be cared for. His stepmother/aunt, saddled with
the obligation of raising her sister’s large family in a sexless
marriage was bitter, and provided John with his first taste of the
unreasonable authority that would mark the hierarchy’s treatment of his
ministry to gay Catholics. “My stepmother wanted me to become a car
mechanic. She did not like the fact that I loved to read. Every night
she would inspect me for books that I might have taken out of the
library. She insisted I apply to a trade school, but when the school saw
the list of what I was reading, they refused to accept me, sayingthat
their school was better suited to illiterates.”
There was
thankfully another mitigating Irish tradition that kept John from
becoming a mechanic, the need for each family to produce at least one
priest or nun. His stepmother had been unsuccessful at recruiting any of
his older brothers, but John, having returned from his military
experience and having realized he was gay, jumped at the possibility,
thinking that it would offer him an appropriate life. He took a vow of
chastity to which he remained faithful for 14 years.
“I was in
graduate school in Europe when I began to act out sexually and
compulsively. I found myself at the point of suicide because of this. I
was miserable and desperate. One night, I was about to throw myself into
the Loire River, when a message came over me— maybe it was Jesus or the
Holy Spirit—saying ‘Hang on. This doesn’t make sense to you now, but it
will. This is preparation for your ministry’. When I returned to the
states, I became a teacher and began to study homosexuality. I read an
article by a fellow Jesuit who condemned homosexuality as a serious
illness and said that homosexuals are guilty of spreading that illness
to their partners. I began to write the opposite. I also decided that I
was going to find myself a lover.”
In the course of the years to
follow, Father McNeill built a landmark ministry to gay Catholics with
the remarkable support of the superior of his order, Pedro Arupe, until a
certain cardinal by the name of Ratzinger who is now Pope Benedict XVI
engineered the deposition of Father Arupe and demanded that Father
O’Neill be silenced and that his gay ministry be driven from the
Catholic Church. In 1988, when Father McNeill refused, he was expelled
from the Jesuits.
Today, Father McNeill writes a magnificent blog
(johnmcneillspiritualtransformation.blogspot.com) that offers
encouragement and hope for Catholics who fear that their church will
always hate them. He feels that the Catholic Church is on the verge of
another council that will be led by the laity who will transform the
church, bringing it where the hierarchy is afraid to go. His message is
informed by the highest level of scholarship and provides a strong
antidote to the nonsense spewed by anti-gay Christian leaders. In his
recent and fifth book about gay sexuality, Sex As God Intended: A
Reflection On Human Sexuality As Play, Father McNeill shows us how the
patriarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has gotten sex all twisted up
with work, when really, God intends it to be play. He is also convinced
that this sad patriarchy is in its final days, and that the
revolutionary progress being made by the gay community will usher in a
reborn and rectified Christianity restoring thefeminine/masculine
dialectic that is now sorely missing.
When I asked Father McNeill
if he has ever felt himself to be outside the Catholic Church, his
answer was simply “Never.”