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  The Vatican's New Directives

By David Yount
Scripps Howard
November 28, 2005

The Vatican's new directives on seminary reform, if followed strictly, will discourage capable gay men from studying for the priesthood. Worse, the directives fail to confront the church's real problem, which has bankrupted dioceses and cost many millions of dollars paid to victims of child abuse by clergy.

That problem is pedophilia, which must not be confused with homosexuality. Pedophiles are sexual predators, attracted to boys, girls or both. A pedophile can be either straight, gay or bisexual.

By contrast, ordinary gays and straights are capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. They have consciences. Whereas pedophiles are sociopaths, blissfully unaware of doing any harm. They can be almost infinitely patient, "grooming" an intended victim for many months before molesting the child.

A tendency toward pedophilia is not easily unmasked or tested. Pedophiles suffer from cognitive dissonance, a distorted view of reality, producing simultaneously held beliefs that are inconsistent, producing conflict between belief and behavior.

There is no indication that there are more pedophiles entering the Catholic priesthood than exist, proportionally, in the general population.

Happily, the new Vatican directives do not attempt to weed out homosexuals who are already priests. All priests, whatever their sexual orientation, are expected to be celibate. That doesn't simply mean that they are denied marriage. It means they commit to no sexual activity whatsoever for a lifetime.

Until now, the Catholic Church has followed a "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward candidates for the priesthood, on the premise that, whatever the seminarian's sexual proclivity, straights and gays alike commit themselves to a life without sex.

Is such a life possible? It is, for the great majority of priests, including those who might be inclined to marry if wedlock were allowed them. Protestants accept that marriage does not immunize their clergy from adultery, divorce and promiscuity. It is estimated that there are, proportionately, as many gays (and pedophiles) among ministers as among priests.

What is different between priests and ministers is that the latter have wives, children and intimate congregations that make it more difficult for them to stray undetected sexually. Whereas the priest is essentially a bachelor, living in a room in a rectory, whose spare-time activities are largely unsupervised and who lacks a supportive social cohort. Moreover, the priest is called "Father," and is typically revered as such by children.

Life within a Catholic seminary is more socially restricted than in a Protestant school of theology. Even if there is no overt sexual activity among them, gay seminarians can create subversive subcultures, which deserves dissolution. But no good purpose will be served by spiritual directors and confessors who are now obliged "to dissuade" candidates "who show deep-seated homosexual tendencies" from studying for the priesthood.

 
 

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