Was Michelangelo a Homosexual?

I was sitting in a little Italian bistro with my longtime friend, a Retired Big Shot in the NYPD whose marriage I witnessed and whose kids I baptized into the Body of Christ. While enjoying s bit of pasta and glass of Chianti, I found myself defending those historic figures (like Michelangelo ) who, for one reason or another chose not to marry. The assumption, in the mind of my friend, was that “non-married” translates into homosexual. Starting with Jesus, through Paul and the long line of saints, I argued that, while marriage is the right and ordered pathway for the overwhelming majority of the human race, celibacy can be a healthy option for some people. Being unmarried does not, ipso facto, necessarily indicate a same sex proclivity. It, in fact, might mean something else. But in certain walled off bubble cultures, it is thought that the Catholic priesthood, for example, means homosexual, and that the majority of priests have the same-sex orientation. “They simply are not interested in women, they have no feeling for marriage and hence they become priests.” This is so absurd that I would belly laugh if it weren’t so damaging. I know there are homosexuals in the Catholic priesthood. I know that most of the hurt from the scandals came from the repulsive behavior of homosexual priests. But I also know that the overwhelming majority of priests is striving for holiness with a sexuality attuned to God’s Will. My observations are confined largely to this slice of the population. So, these observations are basically to challenge the facile notion that “unmarried equals homosexual.”

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