Popular priest tells parish he's gay but celibate

Deciding he had to practice the honesty he preached, a popular priest in Thibodaux, La., had told his family, his bishop, and the people in his parish that he is gay.

The Reverend Jim Morrison said he had been working since October on the letter that he sent early this month to 300 members of the congregation at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church and 200 members of the student ministry. He mailed the letter and handed his bishop a copy on January 2, about a month after the Vatican released a policy statement saying people with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" should be kept out of the priesthood.

Saturday evening, the pews at St. Thomas Aquinas were full. As pastor, Morrison told the congregation, "I ask you constantly to trust me. I ask you, come to me with your life, all the blessings, all the struggles. But it's not a one-way street."

Morrison said he told his parents, four sisters, and two brothers before he mailed the letter. "I wrestled with talking to my parents," he said. But, he said, the family talks were "very positive."

In the letter he said that for years he had counseled people struggling with their sexual orientation to be honest about it with people they love. "I have come to realize that while I was encouraging others to be honest, I was not putting these words into practice in my own life," Morrison wrote. He said he wasn't looking for attention or approval but trying to be truer to himself, God, and those he serves.
"I thought it took a lot of courage," Winnie Faucheux of Thibodaux said after the Saturday evening Mass. "I love him. I think he's a wonderful person. I think the community's going to grow from him being honest."

Morrison said he has kept his vows of celibacy and is not in any romantic or sexual relationship. Being celibate and gay is not against Catholic doctrine, so he does not plan to resign, he said. Nor is he being asked to, said Louis Aguirre, spokesman for the diocese of Houma-Thibodaux. "He's not being asked to do anything but to continue his ministry," Aguirre said.

In a written statement Saturday, Bishop Sam G. Jacobs said the Roman Catholic Church makes a clear distinction between homosexual actions and orientation. The Vatican's statement says homosexual acts are intrinsically immoral, but people don't choose their sexual orientation and should not be discriminated against because of it, the bishop wrote. And, he wrote, people should be judged by their acts.

Morrison, a priest for more than 18 years, has been pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church at Nicholls State University for more than three. Students often drop by to chat, drawn by his warmth and wit. He has led three other churches in Houma and Chauvin and has been director of vocations and seminarians for the diocese of Houma-Thibodaux. He also helped found a school for at-risk Terrebonne youths and created a benefit event to support that school. He has traveled to Nicaragua to minister, mentored youths hoping to become priests, and won awards for his service.

After Hurricane Katrina, Morrison welcomed storm evacuees with pets to the St. Thomas Aquinas Center when some other shelters wouldn't allow animals. "As Jesus says, one judges a tree by the fruit it bears. A good tree does not bear bad fruit, and a bad tree does not bear good fruit," Jacobs wrote. "In my short tenure as bishop of Houma-Thibodaux, I have known Father Jim Morrison to be a compassionate and energetic priest who has provided good pastoral ministry to the people he has served. Unless I discover otherwise, as with all of our priests, I support him in the good that he does for our people." (AP)