Great Quote By Fr. Geoff

Those who read Sundog’s diary have heard of Fr. Geoff Farrow, a Catholic priest who has been suspended by his bishop for openly opposing Proposition 8 in California. In a blog post yesterday, Fr. Geoff commented that as part of the reason for suspending him, his bishop claimed that Fr. Geoff’s comments had brought scandal to his parish community and the whole Church. Fr. Geoff responded to that accusation beautfully:

A scandal is not created by speaking the truth. The real “scandal” is placing impossibly heavy burdens on the faithful, faulting them for an act of the Creator in having created them with same sex orientation and then, not lifting a finger to help them.

Fr. Geoff’s words are powerfully true and should be repeated often and emphatically. A scandal is not created by speaking truth. Speaking truth merely reveals scandals already in place. Those who accuse speakers of truth of creating a scandal are really complaining because their own dirty laundry has been exposed and they now lie vulnerable to scrutiny. It’s no wonder that those in power would want to penalize Fr. Geoff and those like him for that. No one likes to be exposed when they’re in the wrong. And retaliation is an all too human reaction when one is faced with someone willing to pull back the curtain and draw attention to the man behind it.

Fr. Geoff goes on to drive this point home in his next statement. He points out the real scandal, the painful truth that he has revealed and that his bishop (and his superiors, no doubt) would prefer to keep hidden.

Now, I’m not one to spend a lot of time arguing over the “nature vs. nurture” debate. To be honest, I don’t feel that my rights as a gay man should hinge on whether I was born gay or in some sense “chose” to be gay. Sure, I believe the former is true. But when it comes to my rights, the answer doesn’t and shouldn’t matter.

However, in this case, Fr. Geoff is right to bring it up. The Catholic church has been moving towards a belief that homosexuality is inborn. So Fr. Geoff is right to challenge the church to justify their continued vilification of gay people and demanding they follow harder standards of purity than are expected of their heterosexual counterparts in light of that belief. After all, if people were born gay — and therefore created that way by the Almighty Himself — one should ask, “They why is this grounds to treat them like second class citizens? I didn’t think God did that sort of thing. You know, that whole ‘no slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile, man nor woman’ thing…”

No, Fr. Geoff has not created a scandal. He has merely exposed one, a fact he clearly knows. And as is usual, he is being penalized by those who would be implicated by that scandal. May the gods bless Fr. Geoff for exposing them despite their retaliation.

Hat tip: Ann over at The Friends of Jake