Posted on 10/17/2005 3:56:56 PM PDT by tuesday afternoon
If the Catholic Church wants to prevent sexual abuse by priests, several abuse experts said, there are better ways to do it than by trying to bar gay men from the clergy.
The church recently began checking American seminaries for ''evidence of homosexuality," and the pope is widely expected to ban actively gay men from taking holy orders.
But it will be tricky to cull gays from the priesthood, the abuse experts said this month. And it would be more effective -- and more humane -- to target likely abusers rather than all gays.
''There's no adequate way to screen out homosexuality," said Martin P. Kafka, a psychiatrist at Harvard's McLean Hospital. ''We don't have any lab tests."
-SNIP-
Still, when adults molest children past puberty, they tend to follow their sexual orientation. When the victims are older, straight men tend to molest girls and gay men molest boys. According to one survey, two-thirds of the victims were 12 or older when the abuse began.
-SNIP-
Furthermore, he said, he argued, ''If you have a policy of excluding homosexuals, all the applicants to the seminaries who are homosexual will just lie."
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And in current-day America, he added, gay people are much likelier to acknowledge and accept their sexual orientation, so they may present far lower risks than the repressed types of the old days
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Whoops, not denominations, should be diocese.
A predatory homosexual by any other name is still a pervert.
While that may be a motivation, (not historically accurate as to why the church in western rites does not sanction marriage of priests) your oppinion is really irrellevant.
At one point and time the Catholic Church was the single most powerful geopolitical force on the planet.. After Rome fell the Church picked up the pieces. You seem to forget some brutal realities... there was a time when an individual Priest could stand up to emperors without fearing death because the Emporers knew that if they harmed that priest their empire would be done.
By not having wives or children, Priests could not be influenced by threats against them. There were a lot more practical reasons for the policies of no wives or kids than simply the theological arguments for being Chase.
And for the record, those who become priests through the Eastern Rites, can indeed be married.... There is also an exception for Spiritual leaders of other faiths who are ordained and married, but convert to Catholicism may remain married.
Remaining unmarried is not a law of God... (forget the terminology... but its a structural rule of the church, not a divine law of God.. that ruling could change if the church felt it needed to.)
Does a bear crap in the woods? Not saying that most gays are childmolestors, because the aren't but if you are into one form of sexual deviance, you are more likely to be into another than someone who is sexually normal.
So, let me see, if you were a young Chinese man, vastly outnumbering all the available females for marriage and the perks thereof, and couldn't find a wife or sex partner, you would naturally start lusting after young men just to get your rocks off? Give me a break, use your brain and quit blaming celibacy for the moral abomination of homosexual rape of teenage boys by Catholic priests
This is not the teaching of the Catholic Church. Homosexual acts are sinful, but not the orientation itself.
The worship of God is a spiritual thing, not physical. To remain faithful does not require the ability to handle snakes, drink poison, or remain secluded apart from the rest of mankind(all extreme examples). I don't see how forgoing a family and wife makes one closer to God. It is self-delusional.
John had a specific commission, as did Jesus. The easiest and the biblical way to raise a new generation of priests is to have them born and raised by those that dedicate their lives to the cause.
Hmm, to be a sinner is not sinful. Interesting polemic you've got there. These are the types of logical acrobatics Christ referenced when He talked about straining at the gnat but swallowing the camel.
If you are saying that all men are sinners, regardless of orientation, then, yes. But I was specifically responding to someone who said that a homosexual had to confess the fact that he is a homosexual, since the state itself is sinful.
That is not the teaching of the Church.
Christ Himself had the need to fast, pray and remove himself from society from time to time, nothing wrong with that. St. Paul and experience teaches us that married clergy are often divided between family and congregation, often serving one, the other or both poorly. It has become a cliche that the children of clergy are often the most out of control persons in the church. I work with a minister's daughter now and if people knew what she was doing, I think it would cause a great scandal in their church.
The only thing delusional here is your strange contempt for chastity.
1. Scripture condemns homosexuality in no uncertain terms.
2. The Church upholds the ethos and teachings of Scripture and also recognizes homosexuality as sinful.
3. In addition to being sinful, the Church recognizes that homosexuality is contrary to both God's Law and natural law, hence disordered.
4. Pope after Pope has recognized that homosexuals in the priesthood are a problem and have stated explicitly that it should be avoided.
5. You who are the Almighty Papist when it comes to matters liturgical now do not seem too swayed by what the Pope has to say on the matter. Very telling, that.
That's okay, liberals like yourself are the great enablers of the worst in our society; just as they were apologists for the communists in the mid-twentieth century, now they are the apologists for the homosexuals in the brave new millenium.
Please point out specifically where homosexual orientation is, in itself, an actual sin.
"despite the fact that all literature shows that more heterosexuals than homosexuals are pedophiles. The fact that a homosexual is far more likely to be a pedophile than a heterosexual is,is beside the point."
It is exactly to the point. 98% of men are heterosexual and only 2% are homesexual. So of course the majority of pedophiles will be heterosexual. However that slim 2% of homosexual men manages to commit one third of all child sex offenses.
Which is why the wink and nod routine at homosexuality in the priesthood has caused a child sex abuse scandal.
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