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	Meeting the Crisis D'Arcy to Join Bishops in Vote on New Program of Priestly Formation By Sara Toth South Bend Tribune [South Bend IN] June 9, 2005 The Most Rev. John M. D'Arcy, bishop of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Roman Catholic Diocese, speaks at a news conference in 2003 about clergy sexual abuse of minors. SOUTH BEND -- Bishop John M. D'Arcy is preparing to attend a U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting next week in Chicago, where the American bishops are scheduled to vote on a new program of priestly formation and to renew the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, the document written in response to the clergy sexual abuse scandal. The issue of homosexual-oriented men in the priesthood and how that may relate to the abuse also may emerge at the meeting being held Wednesday through June 18, according to D'Arcy, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend. The two documents up for review are "critically" connected, D'Arcy said. "A massive failure of vocational discernment," D'Arcy said, contributed significantly to the abuse that by 2002 many Catholics had begun referring to as "the crisis in the Church." Many of the abuse incidents would not have happened if moral and psychological standards for ordination had been tighter, D'Arcy said. No matter how much a seminarian wants to be a priest, a man with "pathologies" should not be ordained, he said. "Grace will not put in what nature leaves out," D'Arcy said. Bishop of the diocese for 20 years, D'Arcy has been outspoken about his belief in improved priestly formation. After the crisis emerged in the news in 2002, he began to speak and write publicly on the need for closer scrutiny in seminaries. He wrote seven op-ed pieces on this issue that were published in The Tribune in the spring of 2002. The diocese collected these writings into a booklet, available to the public. D'Arcy's interest in priestly formation goes back further than his days in Fort Wayne and South Bend; in the 1970s he was part of a group of bishops who wrote a pastoral letter on this topic. D'Arcy was serving as auxiliary bishop in Boston at the time and also had been working for about 10 years as spiritual director at St. John's Seminary there. "He's been a crusader for this for a long time," said Illinois Appellate Justice Anne Burke, who for a time headed the national lay review board that investigated the sexual abuse scandal in the church. The board, which was formed to monitor the church's compliance with the Charter, interviewed D'Arcy as part of its investigation. However, D'Arcy said priestly formation has been "a very small part," of his work in the diocese. He said he has invested most of his energy in improving Catholic schools. "But priestly formation is very important," he said. "A priest is going to be here long after John D'Arcy is gone." "The best thing a bishop can do is give a parish a good priest." Gays and the priesthood One way to produce quality priests is to not admit gay men to seminaries, D'Arcy said, adding that he knows not everyone agrees with him. Homosexual-oriented men should not be in seminaries because of the close living quarters with other men, he said. Seminaries also are closed places, and the presence of homosexual-oriented men may drive away heterosexual-oriented men, he said. Unlike a heterosexual man, a homosexual man does not give up marriage to a woman to become a priest, he said. "The priesthood is supposed to be a sacrifice," he said. "It's not that kind of sacrifice for a homosexual person." In addition, D'Arcy said he cannot ignore the fact that about 80 percent of victims in the clergy abuse scandal were male, according to a USCCB-comissioned study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Any possible relationship between homosexuality and the recent sexual abuse is one of the topics that needs further study, according to "A Report on the Crisis in the Catholic Church in the United States," issued last year by the USCCB and conducted by the national review board. The bishops may vote to fund a study on this issue at the meeting, D'Arcy and Burke said. Further discussion about the ordination of homosexual-oriented men may also surface at the meeting if there is any word yet from Rome on the issue, D'Arcy said. The Holy See is supposed to release a document on the presence of homosexual-oriented men in the priesthood some time this year, he said. "That really needs to be studied some more," Burke said. "It's going to take some time." Steve Nani, moderator of the Michiana chapter of the group Call to Action, a group working for equality and justice in the church and society, said that there are gay priests serving in the diocese who remain celibate and "do wonderful ministry." D'Arcy is having trouble accepting this, and there need not be a difference between celibate homosexual priests and celibate heterosexual priests, Nani said. "There's a lot of fear in talking about the issue," he said, adding that other denominations are also struggling with the idea of gay clergy.
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