The Priesthood I Pursued and the Gay Identity I Discovered
Journeying from Religious Ambition to Self-Acceptance and Reconciliation With God
Inheriting Ideology
My family were what I’d call “issue people” — we defined ourselves by our stances on social issues. Faith shaped our views on just about everything. Conversations about God often turned into debates about politics.
My father saw religion as a set of beliefs you had to stick to. His side of the family loved to argue over church doctrine at the dinner table — they were smart, competitive, and always ready to defend their views.
For us, religion was all about the mind. At least, that’s how it felt to me as a child listening to my aunts and uncles debate ideas back and forth. They weren’t arguing with anyone at the table — just with some distant opponents who seemed to loom in the background.
Our shared beliefs brought us together, but they also felt restrictive. I grew up seeing faith as a set of rules that made you feel good when you defended them.
Lowering My Defenses
The benefit of such thinking is a sense of clarity. But in my experience, it only takes one moment of vulnerability— an illness, a divorce, or a loss of some kind — to knock the house of cards down. For me, that moment came when I faced what felt like an all-or-nothing decision. While actively discerning a vocation to the Catholic priesthood, I was also confronting the fact that I am gay.
The vocational discernment process involves a lot of self-reflection. The challenge was that I saw my own identity and life as an issue. Given that I viewed the world through this narrow ideological lens, I felt like I had two options: celibacy or the opposite of celibacy.
A vocation director for my diocese saw I was paralyzed by the extremes. He suggested that I slow things down and sent me to see a spiritual director, a man who I’ll call Lou.
Meeting Lou
Lou lived in a retreat house that had once served as the novitiate for a religious community in the days when they received hundreds of novices each year. A grandiose gate led to a long lane that winded up a hill towards the large, mostly empty building.
It smelled like a library. I sensed the need to get quiet and speak only in whispers, which made me precious about my thoughts and feelings. I wanted to write each word in a journal and savor it like an amateur poet. It could have only been a retreat house, a novitiate, or a mental institution.
I met Lou in a small room. I waited for him to talk, but he seemed mostly interested in listening. The silences in the conversation were full. I told him how I had been pointed to him by the vocation office. I told him I was thinking of the priesthood while I was struggling with my sexuality.
Lou had a gentle way of listening to me that I had not experienced before. He never instructed or demanded. He simply said, “You’re a good person, Sean.” His words were like water on a dry sponge. I had spent so much time fighting unsuccessfully against what I had labeled sin that I failed to see anything else.
Lou asked me to meditate on a verse from Isaiah. He told me to read it slowly, to let the words steep in.
But now, this is what the Lord says —
he who created you, Jacob,
he who formed you, Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
Since you are precious and honored in my sight.
-Isaiah 43: 1–4
I read the passage every day. I chewed on the words slowly. They seemed to put me in touch with my body more than my mind. I thought about my DNA being shaped over time.
While meditating, I imagined my name being spoken as a friend would speak it — casually, intimately. I found this intimacy to be radical but surprisingly accessible.
The God I had grown up with consisted of generalities that seemed distant from the granular aspects of my life. This verse suggested the divine knew and understood my concrete particularities, what Franciscan philosopher John Duns Scotus called my “thisness.” My fires, my floods, my hell. I wrote in my journal, “Christ knows me — and loves me anyway.”
God was becoming relational and personal. I learned that while I could not love an idea, I could embrace a Presence. I could sense something in the quiet, right here and now. God was a mystery to be pondered, not a topic to be argued about.
The Examen
Lou practiced Ignatian Spirituality, a spiritual framework rooted in the work of Ignatius of Loyola, a 16th-century soldier turned priest who is sometimes referred to as “the first psychologist.” His spirituality demonstrates a strong understanding of human internal life and provides practical tools for finding God in the everyday.
A basic tenet of Ignatian spirituality is that God can be found in all things. Eighteen years of Catholic school and this idea had escaped me! My limited understanding of the divine was that you had to walk through a church door or pick up a rosary to experience God.
Ignatius offered a tool called The Examen to help people notice where God is at work in their lives. I like to think of this practice as “praying your day.” One simply plays the day back like a movie and asks for the grace to notice patterns of consolation (moving towards God’s active presence in the world) and desolation (moving away from it).
When I began to do this every day, I developed a kind of observer self that noticed patterns in what drew me towards God and what drew me away.
My childhood framework started with a clear understanding of God and filtered the world through that lens. As I began to pray with my experiences, I felt pulled to find God in other people, often while listening to their stories. Following this internal movement, I left my job and went to graduate school for counseling.
School of Prayer
My encounter with a new form of prayer deepened my relationship with God and others. I began to go on retreats, put myself on a path towards service-oriented work, and engage more deeply with local church communities. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was accepted to join Lou’s religious order of priests.
A novitiate is like a spiritual boot camp. Essentially, you “try on” religious life for two years of prayer, community, and service to the community’s mission. In the process, you discern if you are called to take vows.
The novitiate offered a life-altering change of pace. Most of us had transitioned from busy professional and academic lives. Life slowed down in our little community. There were periods of silence, daily liturgies, and regular spiritual direction.
Each day, I would walk to the main house of our community to get a coffee. On my way to the kitchen, I would stop and look at the calendar that hung on a corkboard in the hallway. It told us the schedule for the day and assigned responsibilities, such as who was responsible for dinner or in charge of leading morning prayer.
Some might find the structure of surrendering to a calendar written by an authority figure confining. I found the structure freeing. I had no need to plan or make decisions. I simply had to stop and look. This left a lot of inner space for other pursuits, which, I have continued to discover, is a gift that routine has to offer.
For two years, I prayed for an hour every morning. It became as habitual as a morning coffee or a trip to the bathroom.
I learned to manage my expectations of prayer. In the beginning, I’d expect magic or insight. In time, I learned to accept what came and to be gentle with myself either way. On some days, I might feel peace and connection. On others, I would feel boredom or simple dryness. Both were data for discernment.
I’ve heard many writers describe the importance of sitting down to write every day. Lightning may not strike every time, but you’ll never be there to capture it when it does if you’re not at the desk with a pen in hand.
The same is true of prayer. In many ways, what happens is beyond me. What matters is showing up.
That was the great gift of my two years in the novitiate. I learned the habit of showing up and getting quiet — then trusting God to take it from there.
Leaving Religious Life
Learning to pray taught me so much about God. I felt like I knew more and less at the same time. I needed to walk around with this new understanding for a while, so after two years, I chose not to take the next step of taking vows and studying philosophy.
When I left the novitiate, aspects of religious life stayed with me. Though the corkboard with our schedule on it was gone, I still woke up an hour before work to spend an hour in silent meditation.
I prayed not in prayer rooms and chapels but near the window of my little apartment, looking out into a sleepy parking lot that faced the back porches of a small slice of suburbia full of lawn chairs, lawnmowers, and squabbling couples. God was there, too.
From Opinion to Practice
I now work as a mental health counselor. I’ve noticed in my office and life that when many people talk about religion, it’s shortly followed by an opinion about a social issue. Given my family background, I understand why.
But I don’t recognize my own faith in this framework. I no longer see my faith as an opinion. I view it as a practice.
My practice grounds me and feeds my relationship with God, but it does not give me all the answers.
In my prayer, I’ve never received clear instructions on how to vote or ethical guidelines for complicated moral issues. Prayer has never given me marching orders on how to be gay.
Prayer has rattled me out of my own binary thinking and shifted my focus to embracing the reality of my body with grace. It has helped me to turn selfish desires into others-oriented relationships.
Prayer has given me the grace to be patient with my loved ones who struggle to accept my relationship. It has helped me to disagree with love.
And I’ll take that over being “right” any day.
