An Italian Catholic newspaper earlier today published the "officially leaked" version of the Vatican document on homosexuals in the priesthood set for release next week. As the document has been in draft for years and small leaks have been proliferating over the past couple of weeks, the contents come as no surprise.
What is a surprise, though, is how the highly educated gentlemen of the Vatican Curia can be so ignorant about biology, psychology, and human nature in the 21st century.
For those of you who haven't heard the details of the new homosexual priests policy, the Catholic Church is going to allow existing gay priests to continue in their priestly service. However, seminarians who 1) are actively gay, 2) have deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or 3) support gay culture will not be eligible for ordination to Holy Orders. Men who have "experimented" or had "transitory" homosexual "tendencies" can be ordained if they have been celibate for over three years and they have "clearly overcome" those "tendencies."
The new policy is fraught with problems as to interpretation and enforcement.
No one denies that homosexuals have been very competent and capable priests, bishops, and even popes over the two millennia of Catholic history, and noone denies that there are homosexuals currently serving as good priests, bishops, and even cardinal archbishops (some authorities estimate that as many as 40% of American priests are gay). Those homosexual clerics, just like the heterosexual ones, take vows of celibacy, and the vast majority of priests, gay and straight, abide by their vows.
The Church, though, is still reeling from pedophilia scandals in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and other countries, and many ill-informed cardinals are trying to lay the blame for the scandals at the feet of homosexual clergy.
Well, let me take a moment to explain my background: I have taught criminal justice at the university undergraduate and graduate level at two different schools, so I am not speaking as a "pro-gay" rabblerouser. We know from academic sociological research that pedophilia is a sexuality all to itself, and that the children victimized are selected primarily because of access and availability, not because of gender. The great majority of pedophiles are men who identify as heterosexual, not homosexual, and most of those men are married with children. We also know that pedophiles are not gender exclusive. They may molest a little girl today and a little boy tomorrow—it makes no difference to them because the object of their sexual desire is simply "child." Further, there are some scholars who suggest that pedophilia develops in men and women (women can be pedophiles, too; recall the current case of Debra Lafave and previous newsmaker Mary Kay Letourneau) because of sexually repressed atmospheres during their childhood and adolescence, while others suggest that a major factor in pedophilic behavior is a history of childhood incest or molestation.
We know certain things about the pedophiles and the Catholic priesthood. First, boys were not the only children molested; there are a lot of reports of girl victims, as well, and in reading Church case studies, school children of both genders often knew to avoid being alone with Father X. We also know that the incidence of priest-pedophiles is not widespread; we hear of huge numbers of victims, but we should note that an uncontrolled pedophile typically has dozens of victims (former Boston priest John Geoghan had at least 86 victims who sued the Archdiocese). Of the priest-pedophiles who have been caught, some identify as homosexual and some identify as heterosexual. And, while it hasn't made the headlines like the vast numbers of child victims, there are a few notorious priests who've made the rounds of the high school and college girls in what can only be thought of as less than consensual sexual contact, and still other priests engage in consensual adult homosexual and heterosexual actitivity in breach of their vows.
Contributing factors? Well, everyone immediately points to the Church's antiquated rule requiring clergy to take vows of celibacy. While celibacy contributes to the sexual oppression of priests' natural sex drives, it isn't really that big of a deal. The sexual oppression blame can be placed with Saint Paul, the Jewish convert to Christianity in the years after Jesus' death who decreed that all Christians should strive for celibacy, but those who were "weak" could marry and have sex, but solely for procreation, and only if they didn't enjoy it. Catholic parochial schools have certainly played their part in carrying on St. Paul's wish, though I think it's the girls who get the brunt of the antisex pressure, not the boys, and Catholics certainly aren't the only Christians to have to deal with sexual Victorianism.
The bigger factors, though, have to do with Church jurisprudence and the simple fact that Catholics believe too strongly in God and his potential micromanagement of mankind. Over the centuries, separate systems of jurisprudence evolved for clergy and for laity. During the Middle Ages, it was quite common for members of the nobility to arrange to be ordained to the minor Holy Orders so they would be subject only to Church tribunals and not to civil authority; the Church only used capital punishment for heresy, unlike the civil system where all felonies were originally capital crimes. Rome has gotten used to handling criminal matters internally, and that tradition butted heads with modern American jurisprudence in many unfortunate ways, not least of which was Rome's secrecy. The other issue is the Catholics' belief in the power of confession and absolution; a similar concept often voiced today by Protestants is "With God, all things are possible." The Catholics felt that if an errant pedophile was truly contrite and confessed his sins with the intention not to sin again, God would forgive him and heal him of his illness. It was this blind faith in God's active benevolence that led well-intended bishops to forgive their pedophile priests and then place them in a different parish, where, as we saw all too well, temptation again reared its ugly head. Unfortunately, too many bishops believed in serial forgiveness and kept posting and reposting and reposting men who had no business in the priesthood.
So, the Vatican's new homosexual policy is going to do very little to solve the problems which led to the pedophile scandals. In fact, I believe that the policy will markedly increase the risk of additional problems. Why? Because the most sexually repressed people are those who are insecure in their sexuality and trying to hide it. If a man is devout and struggling with his sexual urges, gay or straight, he may create that very environment of repression which breeds pedophilia. And, if the man's urges border on the homosexual, the politics of the new Church policy is bound to make potential seminarians deny to themselves their urges, if not lie about them altogether to others, and in both cases, keeping them from getting the psychological counseling they need. And the policy is certainly not going to help the victims of those pedophiles whose "opportunity" will come from being around little girls.
With this atmosphere of hostility, I'm sure the Church will lose a lot of very good gay priests who are celibate, who are not pedophiles, and who are wonderful pastors for their parishioners; they know they are not welcome, and they know their opportunities for advancement in the Church will be thwarted. Many potentially good priests who are gay, bisexual, or questioning in their orientation, however celibate and chaste, will never seek to serve the Church. Sadly, new gay priests will continue to be ordained, but they will be forced into a medieval ecclessiastical closet, living a lie to themselves, their bishops, and their flocks, often compelled to act in prejudicial ways against gay Catholic laity to help bolster their alleged heterosexuality and show their conformity and obedience with anti-gay Church politics.
With as much as the Church demands of us in beliefs and financial commitment, we deserve better.
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