Gay Jewish convert wrote first draft of Nostra Aetate, later left priesthood

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Gay Jewish convert wrote first draft of Nostra Aetate, later left priesthood
A primary drafter of Nostra Aetate, Jewish convert Gregory Baum later admitted concealing his homosexual life 

while serving as a Catholic priest and Vatican II 'theological expert.'



Stone relief behind Pope John XXIII statue depicting bishops of the Second Vatican Council in assembly
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Sep 17, 2026
(LifeSiteNews [Slightly adapted - not all hyperlinks included from original]) — In the immediate wake of a controversial new document proceeding from the Vatican on the 1965 declaration Nostra Aetate, some voices on social media have found it appropriate to remind the public that one of the primary contributors to the conciliar document’s drafting was Jewish convert Gregory Baum, who was a homosexual and later left the Catholic priesthood.

Baum was born in 1923 to a Jewish mother and Protestant father who emigrated from England to Canada during World War II. He reportedly converted to Catholicism after reading St. Augustine’s Confessions in 1946 and then entered the Augustinian order — the same order as Pope Leo XIV — just one year later in 1947, being ordained a priest in 1954.

Gaining access to the role of a peritus (theological expert) at the Second Vatican Council, Baum authored the first draft of Nostra Aetate on the Church’s relation to non-Christian religions, including Judaism.

Baum later recalled that when Cardinal Augustin Bea sought a volunteer, “I came forward after everyone left and said I had some experience in this area” and was given the job.

Nostra Aetate, Vatican II’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, has been criticized for its ambiguity regarding important concepts such as it lacking a clear definition of “antisemitism” as well as initiating a trajectory of religious indifferentism that was condemned by all the popes from Pius IX to Pius XII.


First Catholic theologian to publicly defend ‘ethical status of homosexual love’

In his 2016 memoir The Oil Has Not Run Dry, Baum wrote that he was 40 years old when he had his first sexual encounter with a man in a London restaurant in 1963 during the period of the Council.

He said he kept his mortally sinful homosexual activity private because “such an act of honesty would have reduced my influence as a critical theologian.” He added that he wanted to be heard as a theologian “committed to social justice, liberation theology, and global solidarity.”

Baum left the priesthood in 1974 and was laicized. In 1978, he married former nun Shirley Flynn, who died in 2007. After moving to Montreal in 1986, he began a relationship with a former priest named Normand, who, Baum wrote, “is gay and welcomed my sexual embrace.”

Dubbed a prominent “voice for modernity in the Catholic Church,” Baum called himself “the first Catholic theologian who publicly defended the ethical status of homosexual love.”


‘Black shadow’ behind Canadian bishops rejecting Humanae Vitae

Additionally, he was one of the most outspoken critics of Pope Paul VI’s 1968 seminal affirmation of the Church’s constant condemnation of contraception in the encyclical Humanae Vitae, even to the point of rallying opposition to this teaching based on God’s natural law.

In this regard, Baum played no small part in the outcome of the Canadian bishops adopting a position of open dissent from Humanae Vitae two months after its release.

In their September 27, 1968, revolutionary “Winnipeg Statement,” the bishops opened a door for couples to use contraception, stating that if a couple has “tried sincerely but without success to pursue a line of conduct in keeping with the given directives, they may be safely assured that, whoever honestly chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience.”

Monsignor Vincent Foy, who was known until his death as the foremost expert on the Canadian bishops’ dissent in Winnipeg, wrote that Baum’s influence over the bishops’ proceedings at that time cast a “black shadow.”

“If it had not been for the black shadow of Baum over Winnipeg, his influence over some Bishops, the Canadian theological establishment and pressure groups, the Winnipeg Statement of the Canadian Bishops on Humanae Vitae would not have refused to endorse the teaching of the encyclical as it did,” he wrote.


Incalculable negative impacts of dissent on Humanae Vitae

The negative impacts of the broad use of contraceptives in modern societies cannot be overstated. Discussing these dynamics, Pope St. John Paul II demonstrated how a society that normalizes the use of contraception will naturally be inclined to demand legal abortion as a backup.

When such illicit methods are employed, “the life which could result from a sexual encounter thus becomes an enemy to be avoided at all costs, and abortion becomes the only possible decisive response to failed contraception,” the pope wrote in Evangelium Vitae.

In Donum Vitae (1987), Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) applied the same logic to in vitro fertilization and embryo research. Dissociating the conjugal act from its natural end of openness to life serves to rationalize scientific means of procreation apart from the marital embrace, leading to in vitro fertilization and embryo research.

Techniques that produce and discard “spare embryos” treat nascent life as an object rather than a gift, violating the dignity of the human person and procreation.

Other gravely negative effects include impacts on women’s health, disruptions in relationships increasing the divorce rate, negative outcomes for children raised in broken homes, the abortifacient results of hormonal contraceptives, and even pollution of the environment which mutilates and otherwise wreaks havoc on wildlife.

Given the extremely high numbers of destroyed human lives from the “contraceptive mentality,” the negative consequences of this major dissent from natural law, fostered by Baum, remains incalculable.


Advocate of liberation theology, ecumenism, devolved power from Rome

Touted by some as a theologian “who let the Holy Spirit – rather than the institutional church – direct his restless, curious mind,” the homosexual author was cheered for his acceptance “of liberation theology in the face of condemnation from the Vatican,” for his strong support for Vatican II’s endorsement of ecumenism, and his campaign to change the Catholic Church and “let power devolve from Rome.”

In 2017, Baum died at age 94, an occasion for which LifeSiteNews encouraged prayers for the repose of his soul.