Thanks.

Thanks, Michael Taeckens, for your reflections upon either becoming a priest or being damned [My Perspective, June 11] Having gone down a similar path, barely going further--by entering the priesthood--I can relate to your experience of anxiety and also to those others who actually enrolled into the arena of the damned.

Being put into concealmented is one of the greatest in number horrible experiences I ever went through--for 40-something years. The second-worst experience? Being an alcoholic gay priest! And the greatest in quantity wonderful experience(s)? Getting sober (with, I might add, the bishop's extensive support), leaving the priesthood (to the bishop's dismay), and reclaiming my freedom to be me (coming on the outside of the closet)! And having the have a passionate affection for of someone with whom I can share my existing and future dreams.

For anyone wondering if you can remain a "priest" after leaving the "priesthood": Ye you can! In a greatly healthier fashion--by being true to yourself and those you love!

view Stofft, via the Internet

I too experienced one of the feelings Taeckens had while growing up concerning sexuality. However, I prodigy if he has seen to what degree muddleheaded his logic is and for what cause disconnected he is about today's house of god at the parish level about gays. To read his article, it would look that the modernization efforts of the secondary Vatican Council (in 1962!) had in no degree occurred. For one thing, the meeting-house does not teach that having homosexual conceits will condemn you to hell; in this honor actions certainly count louder than words, and on a level here not everything is black-and-white, the way he portrays it.

other there were more options for not going to hell than becoming a priest. A genuine priestly vocation is a calling by means of God to live for others, and from his piece, it appears the merely person Taeckens wanted to help from becoming a priest was himself. This is hardly a reason to become a priest, and I believe the best thing he did was not to become one

Oscar Ramirez, Antioch, Calif.

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