AUSTRALIA
Online Catholics
By Alan Gill
About eight years ago a former British child migrant, who had been raised in the notorious Christian Brothers’ orphanage known as Boys’ Town, Bindoon, sent me a clipping from a Perth newspaper which he clearly found shocking, and expected me to be suitably horrified as well.
The article told the story of a priest, then working among AIDS sufferers and other disadvantaged people in the north-western corner of the state, who had “outed” himself as gay.
I was, indeed, surprised by the article, though not quite in the way my correspondent intended. On glancing at the photo which formed part of the clipping I recognised the features of a man whom I not only knew well, but had formally received me into the Catholic Church – after 40-odd years as a moderately high church Anglican – some three or four years earlier.
The article took pains to say that the MSC priest was celibate – indeed, it quoted him as saying he had not had sex for 15 years; all of which my correspondent in Perth seemed to have overlooked.