David Virtue is laying it out there, but if it’s news, there are a lot of ambiguities. It really sounds like the real news is that Father Reid was the victim of a tabloid journalist’s entrapment.
As a few commenters on the other site said, if the tabloid story is true, it would come as no surprise about St. Clement’s. As I had earlier written, there has been a wide diversity at the parish, and, if you don’t really know beforehand, you can be really surprised.
Where I distinguish myself from Virtue, though, is that a lot of this “news” was already read-between-the-lines about Clem’s—apparently for a long time–and I’m not sure it was right, fair, or Christian, for Dr. Virtue to spell it out like that, even though I see where he is coming from. If the guys there are not out on the prowl for other guys who are really just there for the services, then I don’t think that it’s fair to make whatever the situation had been with Father Reid (who I have never met) into an issue. As I said, I don’t think the rector of St. Clement’s could honestly minister to some in the congregation if he didn’t have a certain insight into, well, gay men issues.
As people who read the Philadelphia news and watch TV know, the Roman Catholic Church has had much more serious, actual legal problems, with bad things going on—not involving consenting adults. All that Virtue is reporting is that, according to yet someone else years and years ago, the Father Rector was hip in his private life. But for St. Clement’s, this should not be a surprise.
Hoofin 