Firing of Seton Hall Priest Highlights a Catholic Debate on Gay Believers

By ALAN FEUER
MAY 29, 2015

When the Rev. Warren Hall called a reporter for the gay sports website Outsports.com last week to discuss his firing as director of Seton Hall University’s campus ministry, there was a certain logic to his move.

Father Hall was, after all, both a sports fan who had ministered to student athletes and an advocate for tolerance who had posted messages on Twitter about current events like Indiana’s religious-freedom law and the Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner’s decision to make the transition from man to woman.

But during the conversation about how Seton Hall, a Roman Catholic institution in South Orange, N.J., had fired him this month, Father Hall dropped a bombshell: He declared that he was gay.

“I said, ‘You do know that you just told a reporter you were gay — and it wasn’t off the record,’” the reporter, Cyd Zeigler, said. “He said, ‘I understand. It’s O.K.’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/nyregion/ouster-of-seton-hall-priest-points-to-catholic-soul-searching-on-gay-believers.html?_r=0