Rebecca Hamilton Says Gay Men Are The Problem?

Rebecca Hamilton says that Cardinal Burke is wrong, women aren't to blame for chasing potential priests out of the sanctuary, homosexuals are.

At least, I think that's what she says, it's not very coherent:

As most Catholics over the age of 12 have probably observed, a good many of our priests are gay. Homosexuals are a much smaller pool of potential applicants than straight men. Also — get ready for this Cardinal Burke — straight adolescent boys don’t really want to spend their time with gay men. They just don’t.

Me, I think it would be a cryin' shame if she had her way and celibate, manly priests who suffer with same-sex-attraction were forced out.

Look, I don't like taking issue with Hamilton, this country needs all the pro-life Democrats it can get, but she seems a little shaky on some things:

Let’s consider, for a moment, why we have altar girls in the first place. The reason we have them is because the Church allows them.
Let me repeat that: The Catholic Church has altar girls because the Catholic Church allows altar girls.

Um.... no.

There's no logic there.

Because, (and I say this as someone who grew up a girl wanting and expecting to be a Roman Catholic priest so I was paying pretty close attention,) the Catholic Church "had" altar girls before the Catholic Church "allowed" altar girls.

(Maybe the scare quotes are around the wrong words - the "Catholic Church" had altar girls before the "Catholic Church" allowed altar girls?)

We had girls serving at the altar long before it was allowed, so their existence simply doesn't depend on their being allowed, (which, just to be clear, they of course are now.)
As a late-in-life convert, she may not have been aware of this.

But Hamilton also speaks much good common sense for whihc she should be applauded:

I believe that the reason we haven’t had as many vocations as we’d like — and I include vocations in front of the altar to family and childrearing as well as vocations to stand behind it [emphasis happily and gratefully supplied] — is that we haven’t been following the mission that Jesus Christ gave us, and our Church is wasting far too much of its energy dithering over itself instead of getting out there and bringing people to Christ.

The Catholic Church is a highway to heaven. It was not created for priests. Priests were created for it. And the purpose of both the Church and the priesthood is to be a certain, readily accessible conduit of healing grace and faithful teaching that will convert the world.

Yes. Just yes.

But:

[The Church] is hiding its light under the bushel of concerns about such things as ...is the liturgy just so...

No. Just no.

Because, um... Source and Summit.

The liturgy IS HOW She shines Her light, it is where it can shine its brightest.. And from whence She derives the strength to go out into the world to bring that Light to it.