Posted on 09/21/2005 5:34:27 AM PDT by marshmallow
Beginning early next month, teams of specially appointed Vatican investigators will visit Chicago area Catholic seminaries to determine whether priests are being trained properly and to what degree homosexuality is present on campus.
The Vatican has ordered "apostolic visitations," as the inspections are formally known, of all 229 seminaries and houses of formation for priests in the United States. The visitations have been anticipated for several years and are, in part, a response to the clergy sex abuse scandal that has rocked the American church since 2002.
While some church leaders insist the visitations are meant to examine how well priests are being trained spiritually and intellectually, others say the inspections are a thinly veiled attempt to root out homosexuals in the clergy.
"They are basically checking to see if we are in compliance with what the church has asked us to do," said the Rev. Thomas Baima, provost of Mundelein Seminary at the University of St. Mary of the Lake, the largest seminary in the United States. Nine "apostolic visitors" are to begin their examination of Mundelein's 205 seminarians and 40 faculty members the first week of October. The visitors will also interview about 100 men who have graduated from Mundelein in the past three years, Baima said. "The issue is, if we're training men for chaste celibacy, we want to make sure there's no sexual activity going on at all."
Awaiting a mysterious document
The Rev. Robert Silva, head of the National Federation of Priests' Councils, does not believe the visits are "witch hunts" for gay clergy, but he does think the Vatican is placing undue emphasis on homosexuality.
"We need not to focus on specific homosexuality, but we need to focus on the integration of our own human sexuality and the ability to live a deeply committed virginal life that is fully and wholly sexual," Silva said.
Of the 56 questions in the Instrumentum Laboris, a 13-page instructional document outlining how visitations will be conducted and the kinds of questions apostolic visitors will be asking, six questions are marked "must be answered." Only one -- "Is there evidence of homosexuality in the seminary?" -- explicitly mentions homosexuality.
The apostolic visitations are getting under way as Catholics await the arrival of a Vatican document addressing homosexuality in the priesthood. The document has long been rumored to exist, but some observers thought it might have fallen by the wayside in light of Pope John Paul II's death, said the Rev. Donald Senior, president of Chicago's Catholic Theological Union, where four apostolic visitors are expected to begin interviewing faculty in December. The visitors will return in March to interview some 170 religious-order seminarians enrolled at CTU.
It is not known what the rumored Vatican document will say, but some observers see hints in comments made recently by Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, the American prelate who is coordinating the apostolic visitations for the Vatican. "Anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity, or has strong homosexual inclinations, would be best not to apply to a seminary and not to be accepted into a seminary," even if the man has been celibate for more than a decade, O'Brien told the National Catholic Register.
Gay priest derides 'witch hunt'
Such remarks belie the true intent of the apostolic visits, according to one Chicago-area Catholic priest who is gay. "Flying in the face of reality and scientific evidence, rather than dealing with the real issue of psychic immaturity in priests who are either gay or straight -- which is clearly the problem for pedophiles . . . -- they are going on a witch hunt to get rid of all the gays," said the priest, who requested anonymity. "It would be funny if it weren't so sad.
"Why stop at seminaries? Why not deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops and cardinals? Are they going to be asked if they are homosexuals and if they are, be forced to resign their positions?" he said. "If that happens, there will be many empty offices, many empty parishes and many empty sees."
Good for the Pope. As someone who is not a Catholic I have always wondered why the Roman Catholic Church would continually tolerate people who are dedicated to tearing her down from within.
I do think that there might be too much of a focus on homosexuality, not that it is insignificant. I am in a seminary, and we seminarians are going to take the opportunity to discuss intellectual and moral formation with the Apostolic Visitors. We feel short-changed that our formal formation is impoverished and often contradicts the holy Catholic faith. We are very much more traditional than our faculty. The problem is not with the seminarians. It is with what our formators are trying to pass off as authentic catholic teaching.
The Novus Ordo will fall like the Soviet Union if they go after the poofters.
For someone who apparently thinks only the Tridentine Rite is valid, you don't seem to know very much Latin. You want either "Extra ecclesiam nulla salus" or "nullus sol" -- "nulla solis" is nonsense, which is also true of your disgusting slap at all faithful Catholics who do not join you in your sectarian narrowness. Decry homosexuality in the Church, certainly--I join you in that; but explain the Novus Ordo as a homosexual conspiracy--that undercuts everything else you say.
As far as the focus on homosexuality goes, I think it's probably a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. Abuse settlements have cost the Church millions and that cannot continue. It would be nice to think that the visitation has been inspired by purely spiritual principles but a multi-million dollar hemorrhage will get the attention of any business owner- even a spiritual business owner like the Church.
I'm inclined to believe, however, that the homosexual question is intimately tied up with the larger question of heterodoxy and watered-down Catholicism. You may find that if the lavender mafia is flushed from the seminaries, the formation issues which you raise may also significantly diminish. I've always had a hunch, based on no particular scientific data, that there is a tie-up between sexual and theological deviancy.
Conspiracies happen.
Yes, and millions more alleged conspiracies never happened.
Good analysis. I think the tie-in between "deviancies" is that contemporary sexual deviants now crave the approval of everyone else, and the only way to get this is to manipulate theology so that it can serve as a defense - or if not that, at least be rendered so weak and meaningless that it cannot be used to oppose their program.
I don't think this is conscious or a conscious conspiracy. It is simply that people who are attempting to justify a sin will automatically gravitate to theological views that make it easier for them to do so. And if they are in charge of teaching theology, which sadly seems to be the case in a number of venues, they are naturally going to build a program around "interpretations" that are favorable to them. This automatically rules out orthodoxy and leads to theology that is severely watered down at best and heretical at worst.
That "millions more alleged conspiracies never happened" is easy to say, impossible to prove. How many secrets do not exist?
But you, brilliant as you are, apparently believe that most alleged conspiracies are actual conspiracies and since it is impossible to prove that they do not, you choose to believe that they do. Fine. Believe what you wish. It's just foolish to do so.
No, you're missing the point I wish to make. An alleged conspiracy can be examined to be likely true or false, according to what is observable or known. If conspirators learn they are under examination, they change behavior, thereby proving "it's all nonsense." We will never see a successful public examination. I have come the opposite conclusion; far more conspiracies actually take place than are alleged. The nature of the critter is to remain invisible after the deed is done. My objection is the declaration: conspiracy = looney tunes.
"I have always thought that one of the things that has protected gay priests has been a cadre of gay (and I mean actively gay) bishops."
You are so right...they are known as the "lavender mafia" and they are powerful. We need to eliminate all of them from the church.
There's a great saying, possibly from St Athanasius (but don't quote me on that) that "most heresies start below the belt."
I don't think we will see a crackdown on convents because there just haven't been many cases of lesbian nuns sexually abusing female minors. In fact I can't recall any such cases happening in this country. I don't doubt that there are some lesbian nuns who are having sex with each other. But as long as they keep it to themselves and within their communities the problem will correct itself with time. Women's order that have embraced leftism and worse are dying out and are not attracting new vocations.
Very few loony people realize they are loony (being out of touch with reality constituting, as it does, one of the characteristics of insanity), so your denial that you are loony in seeing conspiracies under every bed, your protestation that you are the sane one because you believe in the prevalence of conspiracies even beyond what are alleged (do you realize how many conspiracies are alleged?), is what one would expect from someone over the edge. At least your screen name is appropriate. Cheerio!
The difference should be obvious, it comes from natural hygienic instincts. A man seeing 2 women can imagine himself joining in, a woman's first instinct on seeing 2 men is "if they're putting THAT THERE there's no way it's getting anywhere near HERE".
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