Gays Barred from the Priesthood September 21, 2005 Jill Hate the sin, love the sinner. As long as he’s not anywhere near you. UPDATE: Neil has a pretty funny take on this whole thing.
Well, it kind of makes sense. Seeing as there are way too many men who want to be priests, they might as well knock some of them out of the running for no good reason. It’s not like there’s a catastrophic shortage of priests or anything. Oh, wait. I don’t understand how the Catholic church is going to continue to exist.
Hmm, bar the gays but keep the paedophiles: I see the Catholic Church is keeping up with its’ two thousand year history of exploitation & hypocrisy
You know, part of me thinks the Catholic Church is doing gays a big favor by encouraging them to drop out of the Catholic religion. I’d support this measure wholeheartedly if they combined it with a second rule barring straights from the priesthood. But maybe that’s just my Catholic upbringing talking.
Self-hating homos are the only people who are whack enough to choose a celibate life. Now where are they going to find priests?
Don’t any of you take seriously the sex abuse scandal that has been so featured in the media? Are you even aware of why it occurred? The Church exhaustively investigated the matter and concluded that it occurred in large part because of the permissive sexual attitudes of the gay culture that had taken root among the priesthood. No one, not even the NYT or other mainstream media detractors of the Church, has challenged this conclusion. They can’t because it is obviously true. Note, for example, that there was no concurrent scandal involving teenage girls. (FYI, those of who who think pedophilia was the main problem are misinformed. Very few of the cases involved young children. Nearly all the cases involved relationships between priests and teenager boys.) It is also undeniable that gay culture is very sexually permissive. Given what happened and why, if the Church is serious about preventing a recurrence of the sex abouse scandal, isn’t the safest course to root out the gay culture that spawned it? It is ironic that those complaining about the Church’s efforts to prevent a recurrence of the scandal are the same people who are the loudest in decrying the scandal itself. All that said, I think it is fair criticism to point out that the Church teaches that homosexual inclination is not in and of itself sinful. However, the problem the Church confronts is a practical one for which “absence of sinfullness” with regard to the issue arguably is not the standard to be applied.
The Church exhaustively investigated the matter and concluded that it occurred in large part because of the permissive sexual attitudes of the gay culture that had taken root among the priesthood. That’s funny, because other folks, including at least one grand jury, have exhaustively investigated the matter and concluded that it occurred because bishops were more interested in protecting the church from embarassment than protecting children from rape by priests. Given what happened and why, if the Church is serious about preventing a recurrence of the sex abouse scandal, isn’t the safest course to root out the gay culture that spawned it? I would say that the safest course is to address the culture within the hierarchy, which appears to dictate that protecting the church’s reputation is more important than behaving like decent human beings. It’s a lot easier to go after seminarians rather than bishops, and it’s always easier to scapegoat gay people. But the problem in the Catholic church is a problem about accountability, at all levels, and conducting a homophobic witch hunt won’t even begin to address it. I’ve heard suggestions that the Church is about to end the celibacy requirement and allow priests to marry. I’m beginging to think that may be true, because otherwise this is suicide. The Catholic church cannot survive without priests. There is an acute shortage of young priests, and this is going to boot out a significant portion of seminarians. At this rate, there aren’t going to be any priests in twenty years.
Maybe, just maybe, if the church got rid of its ridiculous insistence on priests being celibate it would solve the problem. You think, Dan? Good grief, what a farce to blame homosexuality.
I actually don’t think that getting rid of celibacy will solve the problem. There have been lots of instances of sexual abuse in churches that allow priests to marry. I’m not actually convinced that there were more abusers within the Catholic Church than in any other denomination. What was different, I think, is that the Catholic Church allowed many to continue to abuse with impunity.
It is true that some Bishops bear responsibility for not turning in offending priests. This however does not however absolve the priests who entered into sexual relations teenage boys. Incidentally, contrary to what Sally states, the problem of institutions covering up for sexual abusers extends far beyond the Catholic Church. It was (and may in some instances still be) a widespread problem in major public school systems. We do not hear about this in the press because, frankly, the Church is a favorite target in a way that our schools are not. The celibacy requirement has nothing to do with the sexual abuse scandal, and no one who is educated about sexuality thinks it does. It also has nothing to do with the shortage of priests. Relative to church attendance, the number of priests in the Catholic Church has not changed. The fall in the number of vocations reflects the general decline of piety in our society. Celibacy by the way is something to be admired, not denigrated. The greatest saints all have been celibate — St. Augustine, St. Francis, etc. etc. This is not some sort of odd coincidence. As St. Paul wrote (I’m paraphrasing), “it is the way of the flesh to war against the spirit.”
Dan, put down the Rick Santorum talking points for a second. The “gay culture” is about sexuality expressed between adults. Pedophilia is about desire for and sex with children. The two are not the same. That most of the victims have been boys can be explained by the fact that most altar attendants are boys, and pedophiles are opportunists. The only children that the priests are likely to spend any time alone with are altar boys, therefore most of the victims have been boys. The victims have also been young, as in, not physically resembling adults. Not to mention, this kind of thing has been going on for two millenia in the church, long before there was any sort of “gay culture.” The difference is that now people are speaking out against the abuse instead of covering it up. It’s a scandal because it got talked about. It’s very easy to blame teh gay for this, because it allows the church to look away from its own complicity.
It’s not as much of a problem in public schools because public schools have enacted and enforced a zero-tolerance policy for abusers in cooperation with law enforcement officials. They’ve also instituted a rigorous screening process–again, in cooperation with law enforcement officials. The Catholic Church did none of that. It had a policy of moving abusers to different parishes so that they had more unsuspecting victims to molest. It covered up the abuse and stonewalled law enforcement officials who tried to bring the abusers to justice. And the screening process which it is only now instituting is set up to screen people for an entirely unrelated trait. That’s why abuse has been such a problem and why it will continue to be a problem. And if you want to argue on behalf of the Catholic Church, don’t argue for even a second that any of this media attention, shock, and moral outrage has been misplaced or disproportionate. The Catholic Church maintained abusers for decades after it knew there was a problem, after every other institution in the country which had adults in contact with children had woken up to the problem of abuse and planned accordingly. It used its moral, spiritual, and community authority to cover up the abuse, avoid responsibility, and shame the victims. Its actions were reprehensible, all the more so because the Church has set itself up as a moral authority in the lives of millions of people–insisted, in other words, that those people entrust the Church with their souls.
zuzu: You are laboring under the commonly held, but false, assumption that the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church involved mostly cases of pedophilia. It did not. Pedophilia is a disorder that involves sexual desire for pre-pubescent children. Only a very small percentage of the priest cases involved pedophilia. Most of the cases involved teenage boys. It is of course wrong for a man to have sex with a teenage boy. It is not however indicative of pedophilia. It is unforunately also true that older men often have sex with teenage girls. However, in in the Church the number of cases involving teenage boys vastly exceeded the number of cases involving teenage girls — I believe that over 90% of the cases involved homosexual sex. It is thus simply a fact that the scandal concerns a problem with homosexual priets. If you have facts to the contrary, please cite them. Your sarcastic remark about “Senator Santorum’s talking points” was provoked, I take it, by my comments about celibacy. Aside from being rude, the remark contributes nothing to the discussion.
No, Dan, I was referring to your laying blame at the feet of the “gay culture,” which is almost exactly what Santorum did when he blamed the scandal on Massachusetts and its liberal tolerance for gay culture. If you have support for that 90% figure, I’d love to see it. But I don’t recall from my days in the church very many altar boys over age 13 or so. And you haven’t addressed the fact that this kind of thing has happened for centuries, long before there was a “gay culture” to pin the blame on.
piny: I agree that the Church should be held to a higher standard than the public schools. The problem however did (and may still) exist in the schools. A recent study commissioned by the federal government concluded that in the public schools there was in fact an analogous problem of shuffling teachers accused of sexual misconduct from school to school within a large district. This rated only a tiny article in the press. This however is far from the only reason that I think the media has devoted disportionate attention to the scandal in the Church. Totally aside from the reporting on the sexual abuse scandal, it is not an understatement to say that it is shocking how bigoted and hateful attitudes toward the Church are accepted as being totally O.K. in the media. The Church is constantly attacked in the media on all possible fronts. Given this, one would have to be extremely naive to believe that general hostility toward the Church does not infect the reporting concerning the sexual abuse scandal. The sexual abuse scandal was in fact scandalous, in part because the Church preaches a strict morality. It is unquestionably terribly wrong for a priest to have sex with a teenager, male or female, and the Bishops often handled the problem poorly. But this genre of problem is by no means limited to the Church — it has been widespread in our society. You’ve never know this from the media. Why is that?
I don’t think Zuzu was complaining about the equating homosexuality with pedophilia as the term is properly used, but with the equation of “tendency towards sex with adult men” with “tendency to rape minors.” That’s what the Church is doing: it’s saying that being homosexual is enough reason to assume that someone will sexually abuse male minors. And like she said, much of that disparity can be explained by opportunity and by a much higher incidence of gay men in the priesthood than in the general population. In most institutions, the incidence of SS/OS abuse has the opposite ratio. Do you think straight men should be screened out of the public schools?
zuzu: I looked it up, the figue is actually 80% — not “over 90%” — so I slightly overstated it, but only slightly. The 80% figure comes from the John Jay Report. You can find it on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop’s website. Why do you think it is that 80% of the cases involved homosexual sex? Should the Church stick its head in the sand and ignore this fact, out of deference to political correctness? Is it not true that gay culture promotes extremely permissive attitudes toward sex? Is it impossible that gay culture is in some ways disordered sexually? The average gay male has over 1,000 partners in his life. A culture that includes sexual activity at that level is clearly inconsistent with the culture that the Church seeks to promote. It should thus not be shocking or scandalous to anyone that the Church seeks to root out gay culture.
piny: As to your last question — should men be screened out of public schools — my answer is “yes, as a practical matter with regard to pre-pubescent children.” I have two young children and I do not let them alone with a male, period, because I don’t trust them with children. Like most parents, I would, for example, never dream of having a male babysitter. Even if it is true that most of the sex with teenagers in the Catholic Church is homosexual due to access — and I seriously doubt this — isn’t that still a reason to bar gays? The access issue isn’t going to change. Incidentally, priests interact with girls just as much as boys. From what I can see priests meet children through Catholic schools and youth groups, both of which include girls in at least equal numbers to boys. For many years now there also have been alter girls. I am still of the view that the Church should accept a homosexual man as a priest if the man is demonstrably committed to celibacy. However, given the magnitude and nature of the sexual abuse scandal, I think it is understandable that the Church might want to be “better safe than sorry.” As one of the priests noted in the NYT article, there is no civil right to be a priest.
Why do you think it is that 80% of the cases involved homosexual sex? Should the Church stick its head in the sand and ignore this fact, out of deference to political correctness? Is it not true that gay culture promotes extremely permissive attitudes toward sex? Is it impossible that gay culture is in some ways disordered sexually? The average gay male has over 1,000 partners in his life. A culture that includes sexual activity at that level is clearly inconsistent with the culture that the Church seeks to promote. It should thus not be shocking or scandalous to anyone that the Church seeks to root out gay culture. First of all, even if those statistics were true they’re probably not true of gay men who seek out and join the priesthood. Those gay men have committed themselves to a life of celibacy, a life without any sexual contact with other men, a life under rules that aren’t sexually permissive in any way. Those gay men are not part of “gay culture” of any kind, any more than the behavior of young heterosexual seminarians may be extrapolated from the sexual activity of most young straight men. Second, absolutely not. “Gay culture” is not permissive when it comes to child rape. We take child abuse very seriously, make no mistake. Permissiveness between consenting adults–you’ll see that word, “consensual,” a lot when you look at writings by sex-positive activists–has nothing to do with violating the trust of a minor. Conflating the two is sort of like saying, “Well, you have lots of sex with your wife, right? So you have lots of sex with other women, too, don’t you? Same difference.”
Yup, the suspicions I had based on my life and the life of every other gay man I have ever encountered are correct: you’re wrong. Even NARTH doesn’t go that far: http://www.narth.com/docs/marriage.html When do they make up the extra nine hundred plus? Is that why they’re called the Golden Years?
Even if it is true that most of the sex with teenagers in the Catholic Church is homosexual due to access — and I seriously doubt this — isn’t that still a reason to bar gays? The access issue isn’t going to change. Incidentally, priests interact with girls just as much as boys. From what I can see priests meet children through Catholic schools and youth groups, both of which include girls in at least equal numbers to boys. For many years now there also have been alter girls. Just from talking with parochial-school friends, altar boys are the kids most likely to be alone with priests or under the supervision of one priest. Catholic schools and youth groups tend to have a lot more supervision and transparency: more kids, more adults. And why just pre-pubescent children? If sex with a minor of the same gender may be equated with normal, consensual adult homosexuality, why can’t sex with a minor of the opposite gender be equated with normal, consensual adult heterosexuality?
piny: I don’t know anything about NARTH or the reliability of the statistics it quotes. I don’t have a citation for you either for my “1,000” stat, but I believe it to be reliable. I am certainly dubious that statistics taken from a group of exponents of “gay culture” would demonstrate any indication of sexual restraint. Further, regardless of statistics concerning average number of partners, promiscuity is unquestionably a characteristic of gay culture. Do you deny that? The culture that the Church seeks to promote is the antithesis of “gay culture.” Again, however, I think the Church should not reject out of hand a homosexual that rejects “gay culture” and demonstrates a commitment to celibacy and the rest of the Church’s teachings. Whew, this is getting tiring defending my dear old Church against you all. I think I’m going to declare myself the winner and call it quits for now.
No cite? Where did you obtain it, then? NARTH is a center dedicated to reparation therapy. Its purpose is to dissuade people from homosexuality–it has to, since its advocating a therapeutic course rejected by the APA for thirty-odd years. It therefore has an incentive to portray homosexuality in the worst possible light. If any group could be said to inflate statistics on the number of partners homosexuals have during their lifetimes, it would be NARTH. If anyone could be said to have an interest in agreeing with your figure, it would be NARTH. You’ll notice as well that NARTH doesn’t use its own members as a measure; the source is a “national survey” of gays, lesbians, and heterosexuals. And again, promiscuity between consenting adults is not the same as raping children. Sexual permissiveness in terms of consenting adults is not the same as sexual permissiveness towards people who rape children. You are, I assume, in a monogamous relationship with your wife. Would you approve of a monogamous relationship with a thirteen-year-old? Moreover, you did not bring up promiscuity in general as something the Church would want to weed out of its priests. You said that promiscuity is a good indicator of whether or not someone would commit statutory rape. Ergo, homosexuals are more likely to rape adolescent children. If you want to take that back and apologize for it, feel free, but don’t pretend that you were referring to gay promiscuity between adults as a subject unrelated to abuse of minors. Finally, I dispute that gay culture is monolithic, any more than there’s no difference in straight cultures between, say, Amanda’s and yours. I know lots of monogamous gay people, and plenty of straight people who screw around. These stereotypes do nothing to further the discussion, as you yourself put it, and they make you seem like a bigot with a hateful axe to grind against gay people who are no more child abusers than you are.
Here’s the study you were talking about, Dan: http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/incident3.pdf You’re moving the goalposts. Your original claim, to rebut my argument that pedophilia is a different animal that adult homosexuality, was that 80% of the male victims were in their teens: However, in in the Church the number of cases involving teenage boys vastly exceeded the number of cases involving teenage girls — I believe that over 90% of the cases involved homosexual sex. This is wrong. 80% of all victims were male, not male teenagers. In fact, half the male victims were between 12 and 14, with an average age of all victims of 12.6. Are you making the argument that a 12-1/2 year old is an adolescent and therefore a legitimate object of desire for an adult?
Since the last verbal assualt was directed at me personally, rather than the Church, I guess I should respond. There is nothing bigoted in observing that gay culture is characterized by promiscuity. It is a simple fact. It is no doubt true that most gays think that sex with minors is wrong but I think that extreme promiscuity does reduce the barriers. Most of the sexual abuse in the Church was committed by a relatively small number of priests. They may well have been a fringe group not respresentative of gay culture as a whole, but the fact is they were overwhelmingly homosexual. Your charge that I “seem” bigoted is totally unfounded. I do not hate — or even dislike — gays, period. But I think promiscuity is very wrong and I do stand up for the Church when it is unfairly attacked, as it very often is. None of this is bigoted or hateful in the least. I would note that the angry and hostile personal attacks in this blog exchange have been directed at me by others, not the other way around. I have often noted that the charge of bigotry is advanced by persons who are engaged in their own bigotry.
So how do you explain the 20% of victims who are female? And how is getting rid of queers going to help them?
There is nothing bigoted in observing that gay culture is characterized by promiscuity. It is a simple fact. It’s really not. It is not, for instance, a “simple fact” that there is a single, unitary gay culture, any more than there is a single, unitary straight culture. Nor is it a “simple fact” that promiscuity with adults lowers barriers for abuse of children. You may very much believe that to be true, but that doesn’t mean that other people take it for granted.
zuzu and Sally: As for the 20% of the cases involving heterosexual sex, the usual safeguards are all you can do — zero tolerance, etc. There is no cure all for all the evil in the world. Note though that if there had been 80% fewer cases in the past, the scandal would not have been anywhere as grave as it was. The claim that there is no such thing as a “gay culture” is hard for me to understand. It seems to me undeniable that there is a quite distinct gay culture with quite distinct characteristics. Compare, for example, a gay pride parade and a small town 4th of July parade. They are radically different because they reflect radically different cultures. The difference between the sexual attitudes the Church promotes and the the sexual attitudes gay culture promotes is as distinct — indeed, more distinct — then the difference between the parades.
Note though that if there had been 80% fewer cases in the past, the scandal would not have been anywhere as grave as it was. One raped child is too many, Dan. And the reason there is a scandal in the first place is that the only “usual safeguards” put in place by the Church were for its own benefit — they simply transferred pedophile priests to another parish or diocese, where the abuse could happen all over again. Where was the zero tolerance when Father Geoghan was raping little boys for years? Zero tolerance is a policy put in place only AFTER the scandal broke. The John Jay study looks at 30-plus years of sexual abuse. This has been going on for years, for centuries, for millenia, and the Church is only now addressing it because parishoners decided to stop tolerating it. And if zero tolerance is good enough to protect girls from priests, why is it not effective to protect boys from priests?
If screening men out of public schools is a good idea to keep underage children safe from abuse in public schools, then why not replace the male priesthood with a female one? Note that I’m not granting the essentialist assumptions at work here, that women are naturally nurturing, would never hurt children, etc. I’m just saying.
Since the last verbal assualt was directed at me personally, rather than the Church, I guess I should respond. There is nothing bigoted in observing that gay culture is characterized by promiscuity. It is a simple fact. Unbelievable. You make horrible generalizations about me and people like me–more inclined as a class towards child-rape–and I’m not supposed to find that offensive or bigoted. But if I say that making broad generalizations causes one to sound like a bigot, it’s a verbal assault. The “seems like” a bigot was me giving you the benefit of the doubt based on whether or not you would stick to your statement. You did. So you don’t “seem” like a bigot. You are one. And again, don’t confuse this issue. You did not merely say that gay people are more promiscuous as a class–although that, too, is bigotry. You said that gay people are more permissive towards child abuse, and more likely as a class to engage in it themselves. That’s much worse. It is no doubt true that most gays think that sex with minors is wrong but I think that extreme promiscuity does reduce the barriers. Based on what evidence? An increase in child sexual abuse to my parents’ generation from their parents’? A greater incidence of child sexual abuse among gay people in the general population? A correlation between the amount of sex you have and a tendency towards child rape? A lack of interest in issues of consent in sex-positive literature? A greater incidence of child-abuse in areas known to be gay-friendly? Or a group of people not connected to “gay culture,” not immersed in “gay culture,” and not promiscuous sexually abusing children of the same sex? Because the former five statistics simply don’t exist, and the latter simply doesn’t serve as evidence of that allegation. If you want to talk about a culture permissive towards child abuse, look at the Church itself. It wasn’t homosexuals who permitted ongoing abuse. It wasn’t homosexuals who covered up the abuse. It wasn’t homosexuals who moved known abusers to other parishes so that they could prey on new, unsuspecting victims. It wasn’t homosexuals who shamed survivors into staying quiet. It wasn’t homosexuals who refused to admit for decades that child sexual abuse was a problem. And it’s not a homosexual senator or homosexual pundits who denigrate the importance of the abuse now. What does that say about Catholic culture, or the culture of the priesthood that gay culture would supposedly corrupt? Most of the sexual abuse in the Church was committed by a relatively small number of priests. They may well have been a fringe group not respresentative of gay culture as a whole, but the fact is they were overwhelmingly homosexual. Most sexual abuse in the general population is committed either against girls or by people otherwise straight. Does that mean that straight culture condones child abuse, or that straight people as a class are more likely to engage in it? I do not hate — or even dislike — gays, period. Wow, really? Personally, if I believed that someone was part of a culture more permissive towards child sexual abuse, and I knew that they actively supported that culture, and refused to admit to the greater tendency of its members towards child sexual abuse, I would find it very difficult to remain friendly towards them. My abhorrence of child sexual abuse is just that strong. You don’t have to hate gay people in those narrow terms to be bigoted towards them. You believe horrible things about them as a group. Those beliefs have no basis in fact. That makes you a bigot: someone irrationally biased against a group of people. If you were to say, “I don’t dislike black people, I just think they have a greater tendency towards rape,” you’d be a bigot. If you were to say, “I don’t dislike Catholics, I just think Catholic culture condones wife-beating,” you’d be a bigot. I don’t care how kind you are to your gay acquaintances, assuming you have any; you are prejudiced towards them. Compare, for example, a gay pride parade and a small town 4th of July parade. They are radically different because they reflect radically different cultures. The difference between the sexual attitudes the Church promotes and the the sexual attitudes gay culture promotes is as distinct — indeed, more distinct — then the difference between the parades. Except, of course, that most gay people come to Fourth of July parades wherever they are, that not all gay people–particularly those who live in small towns–attend Pride parades, and that the overwhelming majority of the people at Pride celebrations are not committing sodomy in feather boas but eating chicken salad on blankets in the sun. This, too, is an inaccurate assertion on your part. And here you are also engaging in generalizations that are nonsensical in context. A Church that engaged in such a massive institutional coverup of child sexual abuse cannot be referred to as wholly unpermissive.
piny, given the tone of your comments, I am not going to prolong this discussion. Suffice it to say that things you have said about me and what I have said are untrue, and that I find your arguments unsupported by facts and, therefore, unpersuasive.
One recurring aspect of this debate that I find grimly hilarious is the proposition that doing away with the celibacy requirement for Catholic priests would first, somehow help reduce the number of child rapes by clergy and second, be any kind of improvement that matters at all. The Catholic priesthood is a segregated institution. Segregation (…”now and forever!” — Anybody else old enough ot remember who I’m quoting?) has been deemed the next thing to an ex-cathedra article of basic faith for Catholics. Given that bit of weenie-worship, why would it matter what these privileged knob-polishers are officially allowed to do to or with the statutory lower class? It’s like debating whether the KKK would behave better if its members could wear flowered sheets.
Point out where my arguments–essentially, up to this point, you can’t make unsupported generalizations about gay people and it doesn’t make sense to blame the abuse scandal on gay priests or punish them accordingly–are unsupported by evidence. Then, for extra credit, provide some evidence of your own. You have failed to do so. You have said that gays as a class are more promiscuous and that people who are more promiscuous are more likely both to condone and commit child sexual abuse. Ergo, gays, because they are more promiscuous, are more likely to condone and commit child abuse. That’s not an inaccurate interpretation of your statements. You have not provided any evidence of a link between sexual abuse of minors and either promiscuity or homosexuality; your assertions are therefore unsupported. If you continue to cling to your beliefs in the absence of any supporting evidence, and in the face of a great deal of evidence to the contrary, you will continue to be a bigot.
Finally, saying horrible things about people in polite terms still qualifies as saying horrible things. It doesn’t pass for courtesy or respect, and I’m not about to pretend otherwise.