Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/289

 world over, are far less often scandalized by homosexual episodes than the Roman priesthood. There is certainly a considerable proportion of more or less distinctly uranian pastors in Protestantism. Occasionally some individual case in manifested. One such has been recently before both the English and the American public. But the Protestant clergyman is freer to square his homosexuality, if he have it, with his general moral convictions, education, and religious ideas, without reference to a rule of eclesiastical [sic] celibacy, built up against the force of Nature, such as adds to the problem of sex for the Catholic priest.

Remarkable homosexual personalities and dramas are met in the history of the English Church. One painful instance in that of the distinguished Bishop John Atherton (1598-1670) of Waterford, Ireland, and later also associated with Dublin. Pew British churchmen have been more conspicuous for their intellect, their lofty spirituality of life, their social influences, and for a passionate philanthropy of the most practical sort. The downfall of Bishop Atherton, because of a homosexual scandal, in which he was hopelessly involved, and for which he suffered death, was almost'an incredible religious tragedy, according to English notions at the time. Great efforts to save his life were made; but in vain—the more so as he had admitted the charge, and said that he desired to expiate it. A curious detail of Atherton's case was his preparation, while in prison, of a long and learned study and defence of homosexual instincts, which document he nevertheless refused to utilize, and burned, before his appearing in court. He met his fate, in fact, in a state of abject contrition that much edified the religious world about him.

Even more dramatic is the history of another great Irish churchman, Bishop Jocelyn, of the See of Clogher, in the early part of the nineteenth century.