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.
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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 ...
By the same token, it is sinful and disordered to be in a sexual relationship of any kind that is outside the bonds of marriage. The ONLY sin-free and ordered use of sexual activity is between a man and woman who are married.
A widely discussed forthcoming Vatican document on homosexuals in seminaries will not create an absolute ban, a senior Vatican official told NCR Oct. 7, but it will insist upon a "prudential judgment" that gay candidates should not be admitted in three cases:
If candidates have not demonstrated a capacity to live celibate lives for at least three years;
If they are part of a "gay culture," for example, attending gay pride rallies (a point, the official said, which applies both to professors at seminaries as well as students);
If their homosexual orientation is sufficiently "strong, permanent and univocal" as to make an all-male environment a risk.
In any case, the Vatican official said, whether or not these criteria exclude a particular candidate is a judgment that must be made in the context of individual spiritual direction, rather than by applying a rigid litmus test.
This language is in contrast with earlier news reports that had suggested a much more sweeping ban on gays in the seminary.
The senior Vatican official spoke with NCR on background, after an Oct. 7 report in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera listed the first two, but not the third, of the conditions noted above for exclusion of gay candidates.
The Vatican official said that given the ambiguity of the concept of "homosexuality," meaning the difficulty of providing a precise definition of the term, an "absolute policy" is impossible.
The official said the document is expected to appear in early November.
The pope gave his final approval, this official said, in a Sept. 15 audience at Castel Gandolfo with Archbishop William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Archbishop Angelo Amato, the secretary of that office; and Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education.
The document will likely be approved in forma specifica, the official said, which means that although it is a document of the Congregation for Catholic Education, the pope has nevertheless imparted his personal authority to it.
"The pope wants to sound an alarm bell," the official said, "in part because of perceptions that some American seminaries are predominantly gay."
The Vatican official emphasized that the document is not concerned with "sacramental theology," and hence does not express a theological judgment that homosexuals are unworthy of the priesthood. In fact, this official said, Vatican officials are aware that there are a number of gay priests who live celibately and do fine work.
The document, he said, has nothing to do with priests who are already ordained.
Instead, the official said, the document reflects a "prudential judgment" that in the three cases noted above, admission of a homosexual candidate to a seminary constitutes an unwise risk.
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The document above references specific sources. John Allen is in Rome, as is his source. The link you provide is the assertion of a Canadian priest, who would seem to have no sources actually in Rome. This is his opinion.
As to the statement by Joaquin Navarro-Valls, that, also, is his opinion. He did not speak for John Paul II when he made it.
It would seem that this paragraph from Allen's article is the important one:
The Vatican official said that given the ambiguity of the concept of "homosexuality," meaning the difficulty of providing a precise definition of the term, an "absolute policy" is impossible.
How do you determine who is homosexual?
He rejects the true nature of his gender and the purpose of the gender designed by God for the perpetuation of the species.
Who is to say that celibate priests are burning with lust? If they have focused themselves properly and truly made a committment to their calling then they are burning with a passion to accomplish the worthy goals of the priesthood.
Agree. It is the abuse of chastity by heteros that has give the gay lobby its opening to destroy secular society and try to destroy the church.
Since when did the concept of homosexuality become ambiguous? It is certainly not ambiguous in the Church documents that I have seen posted here on FreeRepublic. That in itself makes me suspicious of this unnamed Vatican spokesman.
Also, you have not addressed the 1961 ban, nor the overturning of 2000 years of Church teachings.
A simple yes or no answer. Its called telling the truth. Do you have a known homosexual orientation? If not, do you feel sexually attracted to the same sex? Psychological testing can reveal more and usually does. As Christians we are expected to tell the truth.
Of course, there will be those who lie. The question is, what else will they do once admitted to the seminary? Simple fact Sink is that these people have been given a pass in the past, and it was long before Vatican II, otherwise, why the Vatican statement rejecting the formation and ordination of homosexuals in 1961?
You ask.
Rejection can only be done by someone who consciously makes a decision.
You assume that a homosexual chooses to live as a homosexual; there is a considerable amount of scholarship which says that he does not make a conscious choice.
There is evidence that homosexuals have served in the priesthood since the time of the Early Church. The fact that there were chaste or celibate homosexuals in the priesthood does not overturn 2000 years of Church teaching.
The 1961 ban simply reinforces the teaching of the Church, but there was not any sort of test instituted to determine who was, and who was not homosexual.
We'll just have to wait on the document to see what it says.
You did not answer my question. You said:
"Unmarried priests is idiotic, and a blaspheme against the God [...]"
It this context what you said implies that the abuse caused by the homosexual priests is causes by the fact that they are not married.
So I asked if you support gay marriage for priests. Other alternative is that you are proposing heterosexual marriage for gay priests. I am not sure how the second will prevent the abuse and how will you compel both parties (homosexual man and woman) into this?
The fact that it has taken this long to issue some sort of document about homosexuals in the priesthood would seem to indicate that there will not be an absolute ban.
But, we'll just have to see.
This statement would seem to contradict your previous one. I assume these prior homosexual priests were not open about their orientation.
We'll just have to wait on the document to see what it says.
Agreed.
Those priests I would call "avowed homosexuals."
It is my fervent hope that the PROTESTORS leave on their own. To protest is to disagree with church teaching and leave things as status quo. I would not be surprised that bishops would be requesting a stay on this ban. There are actively gay bishops, as recent events have revealed, who would be quite embarrassed to deal with this issue that has festered in the church for so long. It would put them in the position of being "outed".
Yes, Sink, we'll have to see. But I am more and more discouraged about this. The Holy Spirit runs the Church...but He allows free will...and we have seen what scandal has done to the Church over the centuries. Best to cut the cancer out.
If you want on/off the ping list let me and little jeremiah know.
Celibacy with the help of the Holy Spirit is one thing. Celibacy by a pagan is another. More than a few in Christian work sites are phonies - hell-bound human toads.
My argument assumes that every person who engages in consensual sex makes a decision to engage in consensual sex. Surely someone who decides to engage in consensual sex with someone of the same gender has already noticed that most people are paired off according to the mommy/daddy formulation. Therefore it is a decision to participate in consensual gay sex. This decision, however compulsive, should, on reflection, cause repentance and a desire to understand God's purpose for the genders.
A) The overwhelming majority of pedophiles are men
B) The overwhelming majority of their victims are boys.
The reasoning/conclusions that should follow those facts is not nuclear science.
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