It's based on several different questionares sent to Priests. If gay priests were represented in the church in the same percentages as in society, it wouldn't be an issue, would it?
The percentage of gay priests will be considerably augmented in those dioceses run by liberal bishops who make the selections of candidates. This is especially true in NYS where at least two bishops were appointed by Archbishop Jadot whose agenda was to increase the number of homosexual priests and eventually see them elevated to the College of Cardinals. He also supported the ordination of women to the priesthood. Mercifully, Jadot's bishops are now aging and will some day be replaced with shepherds in full agreement with Church teachings.
The statistics you cite appear in an article from today's edition of (a NY daily), excerpted below.
"A pending Vatican instruction barring homosexual men from the Roman Catholic priesthood even if they are celibate is provoking fury and fear among some priests in New York and Long Island, who worry that good men will be scapegoated and the ranks of priests decimated." />
The instruction, which has not yet been published, is said to "grandfather" gay men who have been ordained. Nevertheless, some men who described themselves as chaste homosexual priests say they are considering speaking against the document, or even resigning.
"Do you want to work for an organization that barely tolerates your existence and says that people like you can no longer be accepted?" asked one New York priest who described himself as homosexual and chaste. "What kind of self-hatred is necessary to continue in a place like that?"
While the church has long recommended against ordaining men "affected by the perverse inclination to homosexuality or pederasty," many prelates acknowledge there is a higher percentage of gays in the priesthood in the United States than in the general population - anywhere from 30 percent to 50 percent, according to some estimates - despite the church's teaching that homosexuality is an "intrinsic evil."
Conservatives have tended to blame the priestly sex-abuse crisis on a priesthood riddled with homosexuality, while liberals point to a clerical culture of secrecy. But even some conservatives expressed reservations about a blanket ban.
"For the Catholic Church not to take seriously that there has been a gay subculture in the church would be totally irresponsible," said William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. "On the other hand, I don't support a flat prohibition. I think it would demoralize those priests I know who are gay and who are celibate and who are good men.
"While it is true that most of the molesters have been gay, it is also untrue that most gay priests are molesters."
Many priests oppose the targeting of homosexuals.
"I don't think it will solve the problem," said the Rev. Andrew Connolly, pastor of St. Frances de Sales Church in Patchogue. "It seems to paint all homosexuals with the same brush and say they cannot control their sexuality, which I don't think is true."
Experts in sexual abuse also expressed skepticism.
"You can't really screen for homosexuality," said Dr. Martin P. Kafka, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "Unless they're going to do visual sexual arousal testing, I suspect that all this is going to do is drive this underground."
Kafka, who was part of a panel of experts brought to the Vatican two years ago to discuss scientific findings about molesters, said that while homosexuality is a risk factor for molestation, it is not a cause. The great majority of homosexuals are not abusers, he said.
Spokesmen for the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which run seminaries, declined to comment until they have seen the document. Both of those seminaries will be inspected as part of a Vatican-ordered review of seminaries looking for evidence of homosexuality and at how seminarians are prepared for lives of celibacy.
Of course the good news is that those heterosexual men called to the priesthood, can now accept that calling. Many of these good men were either turned away by some of the bishops or preferred not to spend their seminary years amongst the gay seminarians.