Andy Warhol, Gay and Catholic Too

PATHEOS 
By Marc

NYC gallery installation of Warhol's Last Supper series

It is considerably frustrating that Mr. Warhol was an ardent, believing, and practicing Ruthenian Rite Catholic. Such an immense failure of the intellect makes him impossible to idolize in precisely the manner we wish to idolize him: As a new-age, secular artiste, champion of unexamined homosexuality and all things hip, enemy of the repressed, the medieval, and the ancient. Now truly, Mr. Warhol was openly, undeniably gay, a laudable feat in a time less friendly to men with same-sex attraction. But to fashion the Wigged Wonder into our 21st-century, objectified caricature of a homosexual does him violence. According to the wonderful book "The Religious Art of Andy Warhol", by Jane Daggett Dillenberger, the man remained celibate, a fact revealed by his own declaration of virginity and at his eulogy, where it was recalled that “as a youth he was withdrawn and reclusive, devout and celibate, and beneath the disingenuous mask that is how he at the heart remained.” [link]