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Posted on Tue, Apr. 23, 2002 |   |
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Phila. policy is to screen for gays Inquirer Staff Writer As the sexual-abuse scandal buffets the Roman Catholic Church, some leading conservatives in the church have urged that all seminaries screen out homosexual candidates for the priesthood.
Such a policy has long been in effect in the Philadelphia Archdiocese. The archdiocese rejects candidates for the priesthood who acknowledge they are gay, even if they say they intend to remain celibate, archdiocesan officials say. Further, St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, the archdiocesan school for priests, summarily expels any seminarian found to be homosexually active. It was not immediately known how many dioceses across the nation have such a ban. But experts said the Philadelphia policy appears to be relatively rare. The "zero-tolerance" policy was a response to concern that gay seminarians might undermine an all-male seminary, distorting its mission, according to Msgr. Michael Burbidge, the director of St. Charles. The policy has been in effect for at least 13 years, since Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua became head of the Philadelphia Archdiocese. It does not reflect worry that homosexual men were more prone to sexually abuse church members, Msgr. Burbidge said in recent interviews. While the Philadelphia policy is not new, it puts the archdiocese in accord with powerful church conservatives who have been calling in recent days for all seminaries to screen out homosexuals. "People with these inclinations just cannot be ordained," Joaquin Navarro-Valls, spokesman for Pope John Paul II and one of the most powerful of the conservatives, said last month. Navarro-Valls suggested that ordinations of gay priests be nullified, as marriages are annulled. Gay-screening proposals will be on the agenda of the papal summit that begins at the Vatican today. Mary Louise Cervone, president of the gay Catholic group Dignity USA, disagreed with the Philadelphia policy. She and leaders of other gay-rights groups say that gays were being scapegoated by those who have linked abuse cases to homosexuality. The conservatives say that the much of the public debate over the scandal has erred in describing the abuse as cases of pedophilia. In fact, the conservatives say, pedophilia is the term for a sexual desire for prepubescent children. But they say that the scandal has primarily involved same-sex incidents with post-pubescent teenagers. This predominance, they say, is caused by the presence of gay priests. In a wide-ranging interview about St. Charles' screening and training methods, Msgr. Burbidge, the rector there, said the seminary's policy had been in effect since at least 1988, when Cardinal Bevilacqua became archbishop. Along with seeking to screen out gays, the archdiocese also attempts to identify personality traits. But, Phillip J. Miraglia, a psychologist who is St. Charles' screening consultant, said he was not certain he has ever weeded out a pedophile in his two decades of screening. "I'm a lot better at weeding out psychosis, depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, than I am at suggesting specific sexual distortion," he said. "The instruments just aren't good for that." Msgr. Burbidge said that priesthood candidates are asked early on if they are gay. Should a man answer unequivocally in the affirmative, he said, "then he would not be a candidate." Msgr. Burbidge said the bar applies even if a candidate said he intended to be chaste, or as the monsignor put it, "whether he's acting out or not." Most of the nation's 35 other Catholic seminaries do not have as stringent a policy, said Frederick S. Berlin, a Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist who is a consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He has discussed the issue with church officials around the country, he said yesterday. "The predominant feedback is that as long as it's simply an orientation and people are not acting on it, most don't feel it's an issue," Berlin said. Homosexuality is a delicate topic for the church, with many researchers agreeing that gays are widespread in the nation's priesthood. The church's catechism says that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered" because gay sex does not lead to reproduction. St. Charles has "zero tolerance" of homosexual activity, Msgr. Burbidge said, and his 162 seminarians are instructed to report any violations. "If we would discover anything like that, we would act on it immediately" through dismissal, the rector said. In addition, he said, Cardinal Bevilacqua tells the seminarians as a group "that if that is their orientation, they have an obligation to the church to come forward and say they are no longer a candidate." No one has come forward in his three years as rector. Nor is he aware of students reporting any infractions in that time. Much of the weeding-out of candidates, Msgr. Burbidge said yesterday, occurs during initial interviews with the Rev. Joseph Devlin, the archdiocese's director of vocations. "Someone might say, 'I'm gay, but I could be a good priest.' His response would be, 'You are not a candidate.' Without a doubt." Father Devlin did not return calls for comment yesterday. At St. Charles, Msgr. Burbidge said leeway would be granted to a seminarian who admitted to suddenly being attracted to a classmate - as long as he had not acted on it. "We might offer some insight-oriented counseling to see what it is," he said. "Because it may not be a homosexual-defined orientation. It just may be a confusion." "Or they can talk to me about it," said Miraglia, "It's private, in therapy. . . . There are a lot of ways to talk about this without having to run up a red flag before the administration." Miraglia said that in his 20 years of work with St. Charles, only "a low number" of seminarians had come to him for private counseling on gay issues, and none at present. Miraglia and Msgr. Burbidge made their comments earlier this month as they sat in the palatial main building of the seminary grounds in Wynnewood. Miraglia has been screening applicants for the school since 1983, conducting a battery of "multitrait, multimethod matrix" tests on at least 500 candidates in that period. In an interview yesterday, Miraglia said "probably less than 5 percent" of the applicants tell him they are gay, "but if they say, I always tell" the seminary. He said he's never gotten a directive from the archdiocese to zero in on homosexuality as a risk factor. The primary aim of his five-hour regimen of tests, he said, is to screen out people "with a lot of underlying conflicts," most of them heterosexual, and recommend "developmentally appropriate" candidates. In the course of his testing, Miraglia also asks directly about sexual attraction to children, or pedophilia. "I'll tell you, no one has said yes," he said. "But I am putting them on record as the consulting psychologist that this is important and we want to know about it. You've got to tell me the truth or lie to me, but it's in my records and notes." Miraglia said the psychological testing, done in addition to background checks, allows him to "make some inferences about how comfortable a person is with their general sexuality" and assess such traits as "psychosocial maturity, psychosexual maturity, impulsivity and tolerance for frustration." He said his review of one two-year period (1991-92) showed that he had recommended rejection of 16 percent of the 68 people he tested. Miraglia's battery - which Msgr. Burbidge called "pretty standard" among seminaries - was last revised in 1997 and will be evaluated by the professional panel that the archdiocese has convened to review its sex-abuse procedures. "Any new candidate we get from this point probably will be stronger than ever," said Msgr. Burbidge, who entered St. Charles in 1976. "Because they are not going here because everybody's applauding them for this decision. They will be looked on suspiciously, and in midst of that they are stepping forward. That takes a lot more courage than I needed."
Contact Jim Remsen at 215-854-5621 or jremsen@phillynews.com.
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