Still Playing to Peoria: His Eminence Cardinal Dolan Slams Irish Seminary as "Gay Friendly"

As Fr. Joe O'Leary noted here in a recent comment about Christiane Amanpour's interview with Sr. Joan Chittister, the report by His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan to the Vatican re: the Irish College in Rome has been leaked to the media, and it's causing quite a furor.  As David Gibson reminds us in an article about this furor at National Catholic Reporter, Pope Benedict commissioned His Eminence in 2010 to lead a delegation of church officials that would investigate Irish seminaries after the Ferns Report, the Murphy Report, and the Ryan Report had uncovered the extent of abuse of minors in Catholic institutions in Ireland.

The Lies Keep Pouring Out: Gays as Pedophiles in Catholic Right Rhetoric

I’ve occasionally used this Bilgrimage blog to highlight conversations I’ve been having on other blogs, particularly when 1) those conversations have dropped to the bottom of a queue as new articles are posted, and/or 2) when the conversations seem to have an instructive value that goes beyond the parameters of the blog on which they’re being carried out.

Today, I’d like to track one such conversation. This is from the blog of the weekly national (U.S.) Catholic newspaper National Catholic Reporter (NCR). The conversation has to do with a report released by the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education on 12 January.

In this report, the Vatican Congregation, which is charged with oversight of seminaries around the world, announced that “difficulties” in American Catholic seminaries have been largely “overcome” because “homosexual behavior” is waning in seminaries (see Daniel Burke’s summary of the report at the NCR thread which began the blog discussion on which I’m focusing http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/3112).

The Vatican report is a follow-up to an order from Rome for seminaries to be investigated regarding their approach to gay priesthood candidates and to homosexuality in general. This investigation was ordered in 2002, the year in which news broke about how widespread was the crisis of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, and how the laity had been kept from knowledge of the problem by bishops and the Vatican, through procedures like hiding and transferring abusive priests, paying off victims to silence them, using legal tactics to prevent investigations and suppress news coverage, etc.

In 2005, the U.S. Catholic bishops responded to the call for investigation of the seminaries to assure that candidates with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" or who "support the so-called ‘gay culture’" were barred from the priesthood. Many observers of this crackdown on a purported “gay culture” in seminaries—including leaders of the community of survivors of clerical sexual abuse—maintain that this call for scrutiny of the seminaries is a scapegoating device to blame gay priests for the abuse crisis, and to draw attention away from those really to blame—the bishops and other high church leaders who have covered up and lied about the crisis for decades now.

When the report to which I have just linked was uploaded to the NCR blog site, the very first respondent was a blogger identifying himself/herself as CHAYNES. As anyone who googles this username and NCR or National Catholic Reporter can easily discover, this blogger is a regular on the NCR site. He/she has a tendency to blog in immediately when issues like abortion, homosexuality, or politics are under discussion. He/she also has a penchant for blogging immediately after these articles are posted, and thus framing the conversation on a thread. His/her political position is obvious, and it appears to determine his/her approach to the various religious issues discussed at the NCR site.

From the moment CHAYNES logged into the discussion about the seminaries, he/she was intent on doing more than blaming gay seminarians for abuse of minors in the Catholic church. He/she wanted to draw a clear parallel between homosexuality and pedophilia.

It’s for this reason that I am choosing to highlight this conversation at the NCR site. What the conversation demonstrates is the intent of those on the right to keep alive the bogus gay = pedophile linkage in our culture, as long as they can, and at whatever cost. CHAYNES’ comments on this blog suggest to me that if lying is part of the cost to keep alive this bogus linkage, then some folks on the right intend to pay that cost.

If distorting statistics and manufacturing data are necessary, then so be it: distortion and manufacture of “facts” there’ll be, aplenty. I have trouble getting my mind around the theological mindset of those who play such games. I certainly cannot judge any individual involved in these games. I do have the impression, though, as I watch this tactic from religious-right website to religious-right website, that there’s some belief system at work in which lying for the Lord is considered justifiable and even necessary, as one does the Lord’s work. After all, it's in a good cause, isn't it, and those about whom one is lying don't deserve any better treatment from Christians, do they?

Here’s CHAYNES’ opening salvo on this NCR thread. He wants gays kept from children altogether:

Sorry, pedophilia IS connected to sexual orientation. That's what the facts say.

Boys are the victims in 50% child sexual abuse crimes, and 84% of the cases involving catholic clergy. The only other explanation would be that a very large percentage of all men and an overwhelming percentage of priests are homosexual.

This is further evidence that homosexuality is a disordered condition. People who suffer from it should be kept from children, although they might make great caregivers for the elderly. Recent experience has shown that it was unwise to risk allowing them to be priests.

To which another blogger, DGF (among others) responds, asking CHAYNES for empirical evidence to back his claims linking homosexuality to pedophilia:

Chaynes, I did some research to verify the statistics you used. I could not find any data to support what you said. What I did find was the following:

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/abuse/abuse12.htm
key figures from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice study titled "The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States 1950-2002." The study was released in Washington Feb. 27.

-- 4,392 priests/deacons were accused. Of these, 41 were permanent deacons.
-- Allegations were made against 4 percent of the 109,694 priests serving during the period.
-- Allegations were lodged on behalf of 10,667 people.
-- 75 percent of the abuse incidents occurred during 1960-84.
-- Total sex abuse related costs reported during the period were $573 million with $219 million covered by insurance.
-- 81 percent of the victims were males, and 19 percent were females.
-- 50.9 percent of the victims were 11-14 years old and 27.3 percent were 15-17 years old.

http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/plante.html
"a high proportion of homosexual priests do not increase the risks of sexual abuse of minors by priests. Sexual orientation does not predict illegal sexual abuse of children and minors in general. Homosexual men are not more likely to engage in illegal sexual behaviors with children and adolescents than heterosexual men"

What are your sources? The vatican? Then your source is invalid. Your premises are in error.

The vatican has been engaging in a hate campaign against homosexuals, using them as a scapegoat in a vain attempt to cover up the real problem, which is that the entire magisterial authority, including the pope, is corrupt to the very core.

Independently of DGF, and with no awareness at all that she/he had challenged CHAYNES’ data and asked for evidence to back that data, I posted the following:

CHAYNES, do you have a credible scientific source for your statistics about arrests for child sexual abuse? As I imagine you know, the bona fide research conducted in this field for many years consistently demonstrates that over 90% of those who commit sexual abuse on minors identify as heterosexual men, and the overwhelming majority of their victims are females.

The 1978 study of psychologist Nicholas Groth is classic and its findings have been repeatedly verified. He screened 175 men convicted of sexual molestation of children and found not a single gay man in this sample. (See A. Nicholas Groth and H. Jean Birnbaum, "Adult Sexual Orientation and Attraction to Underage Persons," Archives of Sexual Behavior 7[3], 1978, pp. 175-181).

Groth concluded, "]T]he adult heterosexual male constitutes a greater risk to the underage child than does the adult homosexual male."

You may also want to read Carole Jenny, Tom Roesler, and Kimberly Poyer, "Are Children at Risk for Sexual Abuse by Homosexuals?," Pediatrics 94(1), July 1994, pp. 41-44. These physicians reviewed every case of suspected child abuse at Children's Hospital in Denver for over a year. They found that of the 269 cases determined to involve molestation by an adult, only two of the perpetrators could be identified as gay or lesbian.

The researchers concluded that the risk of child sexual abuse by an identifiably gay or lesbian person was between zero and 3.1%, and that the risk of such abuse by the heterosexual partner of a relative was over 100 times greater.

Do we end up in a moral place when we deliberately distort scientific data to "prove" a malicious political agenda linking pedophilia and homosexuality? How can such use of lies be reconciled with our Christian commitment to seek and tell the truth?

In society at large, the vast majority of those abusing minors are heterosexual men. And their victims are usually girls.

CHAYNES has not yet responded to me, and it will be interesting to see if he does so. To DGF’s request that he provide sources to corroborate his data linking homosexuality to pedophilia, CHAYNES replies:

Dear DGF

You were able to confirm my data with your "81 percent of the victims (of priests) were males, and 19 percent were females." I had said 84% and 16%.
Our numbers are virtually the same, and I am grateful to you.

In arrests for child sexual abuse, almost 50% of the victims are males although homosexuals are thought to be less than 5% of the population.

These numbers suggest that homosexuals are more likey to be sexual predators, but perhaps you could offer another explanation for this data?

Clearly, CHAYNES is not going to budge from his belief (and that’s what it is, isn’t it, since it flies in the face of abundant empirical evidence) that “homosexuals are more likey [sic] to be sexual predators . . . .” One gets the impression, in conversations like this, that the CHAYNES of the world need to believe—they need to believe that gay human beings are wicked, lustful, capable of any and all treachery, intent on abusing children. They need to believe this about gay human beings because gay people construed as diabolical have a strong utilitarian value to those who want to promote a smorgasbord of political causes by bashing gays.

When one reads CHAYNES’ other contributions to the NCR threads, one sees that more is at stake than bashing gays. It’s also necessary to question the feasibility of investigating too closely the murders of Catholic nuns working for social justice in Latin America; to play abortion and racial justice against each other, as if one cannot simultaneously pursue racial justice and seek to curb abortions; to slam anyone who questions the alliance of the American Catholic church with Republican politics in the past several decades, etc.

It’s all of a piece. And it’s all nasty, all rather removed from what religion is supposed to be about—which is seeking and telling the truth, loving, healing, protecting and not further harming those susceptible to prejudice and abuse, bringing folks to the table and not shoving them away.

Why focus on these issues in the new day of the Obama presidency? Because CHAYNES’ persistence in offering his unsubstantiated lies about gay human beings on this thread clearly demonstrates that many members of the religious right do not intend to stop this demonization of gay folks, even with the new president.

And perhaps especially not now that Barack Obama is president. Look for a ratcheting up of the lies, at any point in this presidency at which Mr. Obama may move towards human rights for gay citizens. We who support gay rights cannot afford to be blind to the ability of the religious right to keep on keeping on its campaign of ugly calumny. As Pam Spaulding wisely continues to insist on her Pam’s House Blend blog, it is important for us to continue listening to what believers like CHAYNES say—and to keep countering the lies.

Rome and Gay Seminarians: No Wounds Need Apply

The new "Guidelines for the Use of Psychology in the Admission and Formation of Candidates for the Priesthood" released 30 October by the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education feature a novel new analysis of the danger of psychological “wounds” in seminarians. I haven’t seen anyone commenting on this aspect of the document, which calls for the exclusion of seminarians with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” who show themselves incapable of overcoming this “grave immaturity.”

The preoccupation of this document on priestly formation with psychological “wounds” is fascinating—and dangerous. It deserves attention. It does so precisely because it is dangerous language, volatile rhetoric likely to have unforeseen consequences for our understanding of what ministry is all about.

Today’s Clerical Whispers blog uploads the text of the new document
(http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/11/on-use-of-psychology-in-seminary.html). In the relatively brief text of the document, I count four explicit references to psychological wounds and the need of those forming priests to identify, assess, and help heal these wounds before a priesthood candidate is ordained.

On the face of it, this is a benign and even laudable approach to priestly formation—and one that has been going on for some time now. Thomas Merton wrote essays in the period immediately following Vatican II about the upside and downside of the use of psychological screening by religious communities. The use of psychological screening of priesthood candidates and the exclusion of those considered psychologically immature is nothing new at all in the Catholic church.

What is new in the current document is its strong insistence that gay seminarians are wounded, and must not be ordained until they begin addressing and healing their wound with the assistance of psychotherapy. The spurious psychology underlying this document, which links a gay sexual orientation to psychological immaturity, and thus to “woundedness,” moves with inexorable logic to the conclusion that gay seminarians who do not renounce (“heal”) their “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” will remain wounded in a way that makes them unfit for pastoral ministry.

In case anyone doubts that this is the analysis the document pushes, she/he should hear what Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Congregation that released the document, has to say about this matter. As Clerical Whispers reported several days ago, at a press conference following the document’s release, Cardinal Grocholewski “reiterated that even celibate homosexuals cannot be ordained to the priesthood” (http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/11/vatican-official-reiterates-that.html).

As he did so, he helpfully noted,

Therefore it [i.e., a “deep-seated homosexual tendency”] is a type of wound in the exercise of the priesthood, in forming relations with others. And precisely for this reason we say that something isn’t right in the psyche of such a man. We don’t simply talk about the ability to abstain from these kinds of relations.

“A type of wound.” “Something isn’t right in the psyche.” “Grave immaturity.” A wound in "forming relations with others." What the Vatican is driving at with its new document, the good cardinal suggests, is the long-debunked bogus psycho-developmental explanation of homosexual orientation as arrested development.

In the view of therapists who once “explained” a gay orientation as arrested development, the man or woman who fixates erotically on members of the same sex has not matured beyond what is an acceptable stage of psychological development for a budding adolescent, but is unacceptable in a mature adult. This “explanation” of the genesis of a gay sexual orientation was decisively repudiated by the American Psychiatric Association as long ago as 1973, when carefully conducted comparison studies of the psychological maturity of gay and straight men failed to show any correlation at all between psychological immaturity (or other forms of psychological pathology) and sexual orientation.

The 1973 APA rejection of this spurious arrested-development “explanation” of “wounded” gays in need of therapy has been repeatedly upheld by across-the-board consensus in all therapeutic and medical communities, until it is now considered incontrovertible. Except by the Vatican, apparently. And by right-wing evangelical Christians for whom biblical “evidence” trumps scientific.

It’s bad enough that the Vatican document seeks to resurrect bad science after over a quarter century of resounding rejection of that bad science among professionals qualified to judge whether the science is valid. In my view, however, what makes this document particularly dangerous is its insistence that a wounded priest must necessarily be a bad priest. For a religion founded on a bedrock principle that wounds are efficacious, this would appear to be a highly suspect line of thought to entertain.

By his wounds we are healed, and by his stripes are we made whole. Catholic churches around the world feature depictions of the open wounds of a Christ who is said to be the savior of humanity because blood flows from those wounds to those in need of healing.

Three times Paul asked the Lord to remove the thorn from his side, and the Lord replied, “My grace is enough for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). This led Paul to conclude that his effectiveness as an apostle was directly—genetically—related to his wound: “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

Over the course of Christian history, Paul’s text has consistently been used as the locus classicus to describe what apostleship and ministry are all about: it is the wounded who reach out to heal the wounds of others. It is through their own wounds that healers learn to see and care about the wounds of others.

Christian churches have historically been chock-full of wounds—of pictures, carvings, windows depicting people exhibiting wounds, of light emanating from wounded hands and feet, of saints holding gouged-out eyes on trays, of saints carrying their gashed-off breasts. Decapitated, boiled in oil, tied to the stake and relieved of digits one by one: we've got it all, and more aplenty. Being wounded is now a bad thing? An unholy thing? Something other than the premier path to sanctity, now?

I think that, were he still living, Dutch priest-theologian Henri Nouwen would find Rome’s new document—the Vatican’s novel attempt to shove all the negative “stuff” of a clerical system badly malfunctioning in the abuse crisis onto the backs of uniquely wounded gay priests and gay seminarians—shocking, indeed. Nouwen, whose identity as a gay man was not made public until after his death, wrote a book called the Wounded Healer in 1979.

In that book, he uses the rich bedrock theological, mystical, and iconographical traditions that I have just described to talk about the effective pastor as the wounded pastor. Nouwen employs Jung’s archetype of the wounded healer to suggest that the healer's wounds are an entry point to understanding and solidarity of those who are wounded.

In other words, being wounded in some essential respect, accepting this, and caring enough to reach beyond one’s own wounded condition, is a sine qua non to good ministry. Without wounds, we don't reach beyond ourselves.

Strange, indeed, isn’t it, that the Vatican should now try to convince the world that “wounded” gay priests and seminarians are unfit? Is it possible, I wonder, that the new document is seeking quite specifically to counteract a growing awareness among many layfolks that gay priests are often outstanding priests precisely because they are gay?

Nouwen makes the connection between his sexual orientation (which he struggled hard to accept and apparently never acted on sexually) and his efficacious ministry in journals that were not published until he had died. In the period following the publication of his Wounded Healer book and the posthumous publication of his journals, a virtual mystique has developed around the notion that gay priests who struggle to accept their sexual orientation while remaining celibate are among the finest priests in the church.

Rome seems discontent with that conclusion. It’s a conclusion that “legitimizes” homosexuality in that it implies that a gay sexual orientation is value-free, a given, a wound only insofar as it allows the one bearing it to understand and care about the unmerited suffering of others.

The Vatican doesn’t want that analysis. It opens the door for those who have not made vows of celibacy and who do not have to reject their “wound” by repudiating marriage to accept ourselves and seek healthy bonds of intimacy with others. Rome cannot and will not have that possibility, because entertaining the possibility would call for a reassessment of the whole house of cards of Catholic sexual teaching, with its lugubrious fixation on acts and not relationships.

Better to continue asking gay people to consider ourselves "wounded," "intrinsically disordered" in our very personhood, regardless of whether we commit "intrinsically disordered" acts or not. Better to continue calling on gay Christians to bear the cross in a unique way that transcends the call to cross-bearing issued to all Christians. Better to keep on representing gay people as unique signs of the fallen state of postlapsarian creation.

More’s the pity, in a church founded on the bedrock insight that the healing of a fallen world begins in wounds and that wounded healers are effective healers.

Singing the Vatican Blues (Again): Demonization of Gays (Again)

Recently, the National Catholic Reporter (Kansas City) published an article by John Thavis entitled, “Vatican Says 2000 Document Applies to All Seminaries” (http://ncrcafe.org/node/1830#comment-22371). The article comments on a 17 May Vatican “clarification” regarding a 2005 document entitled “Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations With Regard to Persons With Homosexual Tendencies in View of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders."

The 2005 “Instruction” announced that seminaries could not admit gay candidates for ordination. At the time of the 2005 “Instruction,” attention was focused largely on seminaries in the U.S., due to the clerical abuse crisis, whose ramifications began to be more and more evident from 2002 forward, as the Boston cases broke open stories of such abuse hidden by bishops throughout the nation.

One of the responses of the Vatican to the abuse crisis was to call for scrutiny of seminaries, on the (astonishing and totally unsubstantiated) ground that, starting with seminary formation, clerical life in the U.S. was now dominated by a “lavender Mafia” that had caused the abuse crisis.

Never mind that many abuse cases involved abuse of girls by priests, or that the cases about which we began to learn in 2002 had occurred largely before the “lavender Mafia” is alleged to have “taken over” the priesthood—indeed, they occurred in a time in which the Catholic church made it almost impossible for priests or seminarians to identify their sexual orientation as gay, in a time in which the sexual lives of seminarians and priests were rigidly regulated.

The 17 May “clarification” of the “Instruction” states that the prohibition of gay candidates from seminaries applies to all seminaries everywhere.

When the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education issued its “Instruction” in 2005 not long after the election of Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy as Benedict XVI, there was an uproar in the media. Press coverage of the Vatican document was largely negative, and focused predominantly on the claim that the Vatican (and the U.S. bishops) were scapegoating gay priests to avoid owning responsibility for their own abuse of pastoral authority for years, as predatory priests were shunted from parish to parish without any attempt to inform parishioners, and as victims who came forward with stories of their abuse were re-victimized by being blamed for speaking out.

Now that the Vatican has renewed this conversation with its recent “clarification,” I think it is appropriate to revisit the commentary generated by the 2005 “Instruction.” Fortunately, at the time the “Instruction” was issued, I kept a file of various editorials, articles, and press statements reflecting on the “Instruction.”

I sometimes suspect that those in authority in both church and society who wish us to overlook their abuse of authority, and to scapegoat marginalized groups as a diversionary tactic, count on us to have short memories. They count on us to forget what has happened even recently, what has been published even recently, in our soundbite culture.

As a contribution to the conversation the Vatican is now re-opening with its “clarification” of its 2005 “Instruction,” I am offering the following excerpts from articles, editorials, and press statements that appeared in the wake of the 2005 statement. The arrangement is chronological, and all quotations are direct quotes from the piece abstracted:

▪ Ann Hagan Webb, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) Press Statement (2 Dec. 2005):

“The sexual abuse crimes of Catholic priests were perpetrated by adult, supposedly celibate men against minor children and vulnerable adults. Sexual orientation was a non issue. All adults know and have known for generations that minors are off limits sexually. For priests, everyone is supposed to be off limits.”

▪ Kathleen M. Dwyer, SNAP Press Statement (2 Dec. 2005):

“The hierarchy of Catholicism knows our culture well and is skillful in manipulating prejudices and fears. It uses them not only to exonerate themselves and preserve their power but to support their agenda in the secular community as well. Since 2002 when their own documents revealed the horror the hierarchy had both supported and perpetrated, they denied, rationalized and/or minimized what they did by blaming other people, places and things for what they are responsible for. We've all heard their claims – ‘it was the Sixties’ or ‘It's just Catholic bashing again’ or ‘It's the homosexuals’.”

“Rather than role modeling a moral, supportive and loving way to address sexual abuse, the hierarchy, from the Pope on down, continues to cover up and blame others in order to protect themselves, their power and their money. But now, they are more focused and have settled on blaming Gays for all the abuse, even though countless studies indicate that most child molesters are heterosexual and/or are characterized as fixated -- being attracted to children, not to men or women.”

▪ David Yount, “Vatican’s New Directives Are Flawed,” (Scripps Howard, 3 Dec. 2005):

“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 straight, gay or bisexual.”

▪ “The Vatican’s Real Scandal,” (Los Angeles Times editorial, 4 Dec. 2005):

“The guidelines allude only briefly to the sexual abuse scandal as the ‘present situation’ that made the new policy an ‘urgent’ matter. A more urgent issue for the Catholic hierarchy to consider is this: The public astonishment and outrage at the scandal was directed not only at the molestations — there are pedophiles in all walks of life — but even more at church leaders who protected the molesters and stonewalled their victims.”

▪ Eileen McNamara, “What About Girl Victims?” (Boston Globe, 4 Dec. 2005):

“Where is the long-awaited Vatican policy that would protect women and girls from priests who cannot control their ‘heterosexual tendencies?’

Where is the plan to evaluate every heterosexual seminarian to ‘'assure that the candidate does not have sexual disorders that are incompatible with priesthood?’

Where is the National Conference of Bishops' Un-Holy Activities Committee to ensure that no man is ordained a Roman Catholic priest who has not ‘'clearly overcome’ anything more than a 'transitory’ sexual interest in the opposite sex?

Where, in short, are the witch hunters for the girls' team?”

▪ Mark D. Jordan, “New Gay-Priest Ban Raises Another Level of Problems for the Church to Solve” (Newsday, 4 Dec. 2005):

“Affirming gay men in the priesthood would open a door on a roomful of disconcerting questions about how church hierarchy has functioned in the past. Male homosexuality may be denounced as the epitome of sexual self-indulgence, but the deeper anxiety it provokes has to do with church power.”

“But the illusion - or the spin - conceals more. The ‘abuse scandal’ was not in the end about a few pedophiles having gotten into the priesthood. The scandal was that their bishops or religious superiors protected them after they had abused children. Victims and their families were silenced one way or another; congregations were deceived; perpetrators were reassigned. The cause of the scandal was not in seminaries or seminarians. It was in the church hierarchy and its insistence on authoritarian secrecy.”

▪ Brenda Power, “Pope’s Instruction Is Perversion of Truth,” (Sunday Times [London], 4 Dec. 2005):

“But it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this new Vatican instruction is aimed at scapegoating homosexuals within the Catholic church for all the scandals. If only we’d done this years ago, runs the text between the lines of the controversial istruzione, we’d never have had all that bother.”

"In a nutshell, the Vatican believes that homosexuality is a perversion that is treatable, reversible and, given the then Cardinal Ratzinger’s description of it as an 'intrinsic moral evil', freely and willfully chosen by licentious degenerates. And if in future such immoral and disordered types might hang themselves, or have their heads kicked in by drunken but otherwise upstanding heterosexual members of the community, it will be a challenge for the Catholic church to work up a convincing head of indignant steam."

▪ Kane Webb, “Return of the Enforcer,” (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 4 Dec. 2005):

“This policy also sends a strong message to homosexuals who aren’t interested in the priesthood but who are Catholic, maybe devout. The message is simple and brutally clear, if indirect: These church doors are closing on your kind.

Regardless of your innate (homo)sexuality and your ability and desire to control it, you are, if not un-save-able, then unworthy of serving as a spiritual father in the Catholic Church.”

▪ Kenneth Zamit Tabona, “Panic Prevention and No Cure” (Times of Malta, 4 Dec. 2005):

“We have, during the last 30 odd years, witnessed the Church's veil of mystique and inviolability being torn away and no echelon of its hierarchy has been left unscathed. It has cost the Church millions of dollars but even worse it has opened a can of worms that has wreaked untold damage to its reputation. Despite this, the Catholic Church still refuses to countenance the reintroduction of a married priesthood and, while praying for vocations that dwindle annually, has put yet more deterrents in the path of any young man who may be remotely interested in priestly life. I will not cite examples from Church history as I will definitely be accused of raking up mud and my space is perforce limited, so anyone interested can do so by using one's ever so useful and efficient internet to read all about it and judge for oneself.

Meanwhile, the Church, true to form, has decided to clamp down on the homosexual world - I say world because statistically it is one in five - and make it their scapegoat.”

▪ Andrew Sullivan, “The Vatican’s New Stereotype” (Time, 4 Dec. 2005):

“There is a simple principle here. The message of Jesus was always to ignore the stereotype, the label, the identity--in order to observe the soul beneath, how a person actually behaves. One of his most famous parables was that of the Good Samaritan, a man who belonged to a group despised by mainstream society. But it was the despised man who did good, while all the superficially respected people walked on by. Jesus consorted with all of society's undesirables--with tax collectors, collaborators with an occupying power, former prostitutes, lepers. His message was that God's grace knows no boundaries of stigma, that with God's help, we can all live by the same standards and receive the grace that comes from his love.

The new Pope has now turned that teaching on its head. He has identified a group of people and said, regardless of how they behave or what they do, they are beneath serving God.”

▪ James Carroll, “The Basilica of Denial” (Boston Globe, 5 Dec. 2005):

“Last week’s Vatican ‘instruction’ restricting admission to the priesthood to heterosexuals was an exploitation of prejudice about homosexuality aimed at drawing attention away from the real crisis facing the Catholic Church.

If any one group ‘caused’ the priest sex-abuse scandal, it was not gays, but rather the bishops themselves, who now scapegoat gays.”

“What the scandal reveals is the moral bankruptcy of the entire Catholic clerical culture, but in order to deal with that, basic questions about celibacy, women's ordination, the role of the laity, and repressive authority would have to be asked. Obviously, those are questions the Vatican is desperate to deflect, and that is the purpose of this new ruling.”

▪ Keith Swain, “Sex and the Church” (Denver Post, 6 Dec. 2005):

“As a therapist, there's no one I have more respect for than a client who understands a problem, deals with it and takes responsibility.

Sadly, it seems the Catholic Church doesn't have the same strength of character. In a weak attempt to address the problem of child sexual abuse by the clergy, the Vatican last week issued a dictum. Was it a call to action against sexual abuse of children?

No. The church has decided to blame someone else for its problem, namely gay men. The truth is the Catholic Church does not have a problem with gay men. It has a problem with sex - in particular, with pedophilia and chastity.”

▪ Gerard J. Ahrens, “Don’t Forget Female Victims of Clerical Sexual Abuse” (Cincinnati Inquirer, 7 Dec. 2005):

“At the recent national convention of Voice of the Faithful, I was privileged to hear the witness of Barbara Blaine. A woman of incredible courage, she is a founding member the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests who, at the age of 12, was sexually abused by a priest.

In our own Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area, there are women of comparable courage who have survived such an incomprehensible physical, psychological and spiritual assault. What does homosexuality in any way have to do with their suffering, the silent suffering of other women who have not come forward, or the potential suffering of possible future female victims?

The answer, of course, is nothing. Nothing. Which is, for the most part, what the hierarchical church has done for women historically, and apparently is continuing to do.”

▪ Tim Louis Macaluso, “The Vatican Jumps from Sex Scandals to Sex Documents” (City Action [Rochester, NY], 7 Dec. 2005):

“In targeting gays, the Vatican deflects attention away from the real problems, says Thibodeau. The bigger issue for him has been the way the Vatican responded to criminal acts within its ranks.

‘But equally important, and for my mind, more so,’ says Thibodeau, was ‘the criminal behavior of a handful of bishops who covered up and enabled this transgression. We would never allow a superintendent of a school district to just move a teacher into another school after doing this, but that is essentially what happened.’”

▪ Ami Eden, “The Clothed Demonization of Gays” (Forward, 9 Dec. 2005):

“Both Anatrella and the Congregation for Catholic Education included calls for tolerance, respect and sensitivity. But such calls cannot paper over the fact that the Vatican has effectively jettisoned its hate-the-sin-but-not-the-sinner approach. Through their recent pronouncements, the Vatican and Anatrella demonized gays, painting them as a force that threatens to undermine the church and destabilize society.”

And my own words: Preach it, brother. Preach it, sister. In season, out of season, speaking truth to power even when power tries to bash us into submissive silence over and over again. Somebody somewhere is listening. And God never stops listening.