Edge (Boston)
Thursday Jun 3, 2010
by Kilian Melloy
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In the wake of the pedophile priest scandal that has rocked the catholic church globally, U.S. Catholic seminaries are doing their best to ensure that the priesthood is free of… gays.
Although research indicates that more than 90% of pedophiles identify as heterosexual, the Vatican has pronounced gay seminarians and clergy as suspect. All priests are expected to be celibate, but the Vatican has targeted gays for screening and seminaries in the United States are excluding them under the rubric of screening out future “molesters.”
But a June 1 article in the Toronto Star says that Canadian seminaries are taking a more comprehensive approach, weighing the personal qualities of potential seminarians with an eye to accepting “healthy, well-adjusted” candidates rather than simply denying a place to every gay applicant the screening process identifies.
Catholic doctrine holds that gays and lesbians do not “choose” their sexuality, but also says that intimate relationships between consenting adults of the same gender are “intrinsically disordered,” and teaches that it is God’s will that all gays and lesbians should be celibate–not just the ones who have entered the church’s clerical ranks. The church also regards sexual contact outside of heterosexual marriage to be sinful.
Those attitudes inform what is essentially a view that homosexuality is a pathological condition. Church psychologist Msgr. Stephen Rossetti boiled the screening process down in a way that laid bare the church’s fundamental view of GLBTs. Said Rossetti, “We are looking for two basic qualities – the absence of pathology and the presence of health,” UK newspaper the +Mail+Online)|Daily Mail reported on May 31.
The Daily Mail reported on the sorts of questions that U.S. seminaries require seminary candidates to answer, including extremely personal inquiries about the private lives of would-be clergy. “When did you last have sex?” is one such question, along with, “What kind of sexual experiences have you had?” and “Do you like pornography?”
The questions also ask about the candidates’ relationships with their parents, their sexual fantasies, the reasons for failed romantic relationships, and ask whether the person being subjected to the questions “likes children,” as well as being subjected to medical tests (such as testing for HIV) and psychological evaluations designed to determine whether candidates might be transgendered–or depressed. The screening process arose from a 2008 Vatican directive that said that, “”It is not enough to be sure that [a seminarian] is capable of abstaining from genital activity. It is also necessary to evaluate his sexual orientation.” The Daily Mail article said that the Vatican’s directive that seminarians be screened for homosexuality applied only to the United States.
The de facto ban on gay priests in the United States was essentially confirmed by Fr. Kevin Sweeney, who serves as the director of vocations for the Diocese of Brooklyn, who said that the effective ban on gay priests “has to do with our view of marriage. A priest can only give his life to the Church in the sense that a man gives his life to a female spouse.” Added Sweeney, “A homosexual man cannot have the same relationship. It is not about condemning anybody. It is about our world view.”
Canadian Focus: Overall Health, Adjustment
By contrast, seminary candidates in Canada are screened according to their overall health and suitability, without homosexuality serving as an automatic disqualifier, the Toronto Star reported. Rector Steve Wlusek of the London, Ontario St. Peter’s Seminary told the media that, “What we are fundamentally looking for (are) healthy, well-adjusted young men who will truly serve the needs of the church and will care for those, especially the vulnerable, in our communities.”
Added Wlusek, “If somebody has been sexually active, whether it would be in heterosexual or homosexual fashion, within, say, the last three or four years before applying to the seminary, that would mean they would not be suitable . . . because they haven’t had that sufficient time to live in a celibate commitment.”
Seminarians are screened at different points throughout their seminary years, and the questions they face are less sharply intrusive, meant to invite discussion rather than determine suitability based on a yes-or-no approach. Canadian seminarians are asked about their feelings toward their own sexuality, their general dating and relationship history, and whether or not the seminarian might have been “approached sexually by another male,” either in accordance with or “against your will.”
“We would explore their sexual activity in the past and the nature of their sexual relationship with others,” said Wlusek, “especially if it is male and if it’s part of your life and does (reveal) a same-sex tendency that is deep-seeded within you.”
Meantime, in the States, the Vatican’s directive–which does not require in so many words that all gay candidates be turned away, but which results in an effective ban on gay seminarians–has had an effect: “We have no gay men in our seminary at this time,” the Diocese of Brooklyn’s Dr. Robert Palumbo told the New York Times in a May 30 story. “I’m pretty sure of it.”
“A criterion like this may not ensure that you are getting the best candidates,” the Harvard Divinity School’s Mark D. Jordan told the New York Times. “Though it might get you people who lie or who are so confused they do not really know who they are.” Some experts have claimed that the Catholic clergy might be as much as 50% gay, which leads to what Jordan identifies as one of the situation’s “ironies:” Jordan notes that “these new regulations are being enforced in many cases by seminary directors who are themselves gay.”
The Times noted that there is no credible evidence that gays are more likely than straights to molest anyone, but according to the Times, the church claims that 80% of the abuse is “homosexual,” and not “pedophilia,” meaning that the victims were predominantly young male adults. Another church study purports to show that 30% of the abuse cases involved young women, with 60% of the abuse cases involving young men, and only 10% involving children.
Critics of the interpretation of the clerical sex abuse scandal being a matter of gay priests preying on male teens and young men point out that the abusers often had easier access to unsupervised time alone with boys and young men than with girls and young women.
Moreover, the dividing line between “children” and “young adults” may be questionable. Last fall, the Vatican’s U.N. observer, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, told the press that the scandal did not involve pedophiles, but rather “ephebophilia,” a sexual attraction to adolescents. Tomasi, however, categorized victims as young as 11 as adolescents, rather than children, telling the media, “Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17,” reported Catholic Culture.org in a Sept. 29, 2009, article. Wikipedia lists ephebophilia as a sexual attraction for adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19, citing the scholarly publication Archives of Sexual Behavior.
The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DMS)-5, however, lists “pedophilia” as a sexual attraction to children younger than age 11, though another classification–hebephilia–is used for those who are attracted to children ages 11-14.
Late last year, a study undertaken by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice indicated that sexual orientation did not factor into the abuse crisis, reported Box Turtle Bulletin on Nov. 17, 2009. Researcher Margaret Smith told the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that, “the idea of sexual identity [should] be separated from the problem of sexual abuse. At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now.”
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.