Posted on 07/19/2004 7:21:58 AM PDT by Polycarp IV
Bishop urges gay ban in clergy Presses overhaul for screening priests By Meredith Goldstein, Globe Staff | July 19, 2004
Bishop John M. D'Arcy, who in private letters to other church officials as early as 1978 questioned the reassignment of priests accused of sexual misconduct, said yesterday that the church must improve its screening process for accepting seminarians and that homosexuals should be prohibited from being ordained as priests.
''We must be very careful of who we accept in the seminary and who we ordain as priests," D'Arcy told parishioners at Our Lady of the Presentation Church, the Brighton parish in which he grew up. ''It's time to ordain men of quality, not to just look for numbers."
During yesterday's 10 a.m. Mass, D'Arcy, now bishop of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese in Indiana, said the church must look for men whom children can respect -- ''men who would be good husbands, men who would be good fathers," he said.
In an interview after the service, D'Arcy acknowledged that his reference to ''good husbands . . . good fathers" conveyed his belief that only heterosexual men should be allowed to become priests. He said men in the priesthood must embrace celibacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Ping. (As usual, if you would like to be added to or removed from my "conservative Catholics" ping list, please send me a FReepmail. Please note that this is occasionally a high volume ping list and some of my ping posts are long.)
I would also suggest that seminarians spend more time studying theology and less time studying psychology and sociology. We have enough social workers; we don't have enough good priests!
bump
Nevertheless, by the time I left (late 70's), the wave was beginning to come in to our order as well. My novitiate incorporated some of these "new" communication techniques, and to my disappointment they sometimes took the place of more fundamental spiritual methods.
I am now a Lay Carmelite, and as such have an opportunity to see that at least with this order, there has been a renaissance of interest in spirituality - interestingly, most strongly among seminiarians from places like Vietnam and Korea.
Kudos to Bishop D'Arcy. In terms of the number of needed priests, the Catholic Church cannot achieve quantity at the expense of quality. We need real, God-fearing men among the clergy, not milquetoasts or sexual deviants. Add to that the need to restore solid orthodox curricula to our nation's Catholic seminaries.
Homosexuality is not the same as pedophilia? If a man lusts after (and molests) boys, wouldn't he be considered both a homosexual and a pedophile? Enough with the smokescreens!
Damn, it's about time.
According to liberal PC thought, a man that lusts after and molests a boy or young man is a Chickenhawk, it is only if he is wearing a Roman Collar that he is considered a pedophile.
Well, now Bp. D'Arcy has swung back. Hard to keep up with this guy, although having NotreDame in his backyard must make his life challenging...
Homosexual Agenda Ping - This is nothing more than the truth. It's insane for anyone to think that homosexuals belong in the priesthood. Even if they claim they can "control" themselves. Normal men only!!!
Let me know if anyone wants on/off this pinglist.
Bishop D'Arcy knows full well that that ban took effect in February 1961. What's needed are faithful, obedient Bishops who aren't homosexuals themselves and who will enforce the ban. Those Cardinals/Bishops/Priests/Deacons who thumb their noses at Rome and mock the Catholic faith should be publicly exposed and dismissed from the clerical state.
The question is NOT whether there are some good, chaste, homosexuals--there are some.
The question is whether it is PRUDENT to take the chance. It's like putting a paroled grand-larceny convict in the cash vault of a bank for a new job.
Later,I am going to go back and read the entire article,it surprises me that it was in the Globe,could it be that they are coming round to realizing that as a newspaper they have been remiss in reporting the all of story? It was rather startling to see "homosexual" in the context it was in,in the excerpt from the article.
BOSTON -- A former Boston priest says the church must improve its screening process for accepting seminarians to keep homosexuals from being ordained into the priesthood."We must be very careful of who we accept in the seminary and who we ordain as priests," Bishop John M. D'Arcy, now of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese in Indiana, said Sunday. "It's time to ordain men of quality, not to just look for numbers."
D'Arcy, who was in Boston to attend Mass at Our Lady of the Presentation Church, the Brighton neighborhood parish where he grew up, said he hopes the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will discuss screening policies for the seminary when it meets this fall, and will take a firm stance against homosexual men serving as priests.
The Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, spokesman for the Boston Archdiocese, said that although there has been some discussion among members of the archdiocese and the Vatican about the possibility of banning homosexuals from the priesthood, no decisions have been made.
"The main issue is celibacy," Coyne said, adding that D'Arcy's concerns about gay priests are not necessarily shared by others.
Coyne said that only 20 percent of the applicants for priesthood in the Archdiocese of Boston are accepted by the church.
"I don't see the need here in Boston," he said of a possible overhaul of the screening process. "I can say the process in Boston is a good one."
In an interview with The Boston Globe after the morning Mass, D'Arcy said that while only hetrosexual men should be allowed to become priests, they must embrace celibacy.
D'Arcy, who in private letters to other church officials as early as 1978 questioned the reassignment of priests accused of sexual misconduct, said that to put a gay man in the mostly male environment of the priesthood is unfair.
"We don't put these (hetrosexual) men in with attractive women," he said, referring to seminarians. "You're putting him in with men. It's not fair to him, it's not fair to them, it's not fair to the church."
D'Arcy said priests with the right temperament for the job will attract more good men to work for the church.
"If we ordain men with pathologies and difficulties, they will draw the same kind," he said. "Don't just pray for priests, pray for priests of good quality."
D'Arcy, the former auxiliary bishop of the Boston Archdiocese, has written previously about his concerns about the church's failure to remove abusive priests from the ministry. In one letter, written in 1984, he warned Cardinal Bernard Law about the Rev. John Geoghan's "history of homosexual involvement (with) young boys."
Geoghan was killed in prison, allegedly by a fellow inmate, last year. He was accused of abusing 150 children and was a key figure in the clergy sex abuse scandal that has engulfed the Boston Archdiocese.
I had to laugh when Fr. Christopher Coyne added in the little smackdown... although I will say that the current group of seminarians and newly ordained priests seem to be much more orthodox than their older brother priests. Please pray for perserverence for our new priests and current seminarians... most of them are swimming with sharks.
The new seminary rector, Dominican Father Farron, is very orthodox and coming under great pressure and fire from lots of our archdiocesan priests, but the seminarians really like him. Father Farren was appointed by Archbishop O'Malley almost immediately after he was appointed our archbishop. Father Farren has dispatched of a few of the pink theologians already. :-)
So what do you think the Globe is up to now?
Well I check in to see what's going on from time to time evert day, but the kids are home from school and my sister in law (who is terminally ill from cancer) requires a lot of help - more and more each day, especially since her kids are out of school as well. So I find myself short of time and the computer is the easiest thing to give up.
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