Posted on 09/21/2005 5:34:27 AM PDT by marshmallow
Beginning early next month, teams of specially appointed Vatican investigators will visit Chicago area Catholic seminaries to determine whether priests are being trained properly and to what degree homosexuality is present on campus.
The Vatican has ordered "apostolic visitations," as the inspections are formally known, of all 229 seminaries and houses of formation for priests in the United States. The visitations have been anticipated for several years and are, in part, a response to the clergy sex abuse scandal that has rocked the American church since 2002.
While some church leaders insist the visitations are meant to examine how well priests are being trained spiritually and intellectually, others say the inspections are a thinly veiled attempt to root out homosexuals in the clergy.
"They are basically checking to see if we are in compliance with what the church has asked us to do," said the Rev. Thomas Baima, provost of Mundelein Seminary at the University of St. Mary of the Lake, the largest seminary in the United States. Nine "apostolic visitors" are to begin their examination of Mundelein's 205 seminarians and 40 faculty members the first week of October. The visitors will also interview about 100 men who have graduated from Mundelein in the past three years, Baima said. "The issue is, if we're training men for chaste celibacy, we want to make sure there's no sexual activity going on at all."
Awaiting a mysterious document
The Rev. Robert Silva, head of the National Federation of Priests' Councils, does not believe the visits are "witch hunts" for gay clergy, but he does think the Vatican is placing undue emphasis on homosexuality.
"We need not to focus on specific homosexuality, but we need to focus on the integration of our own human sexuality and the ability to live a deeply committed virginal life that is fully and wholly sexual," Silva said.
Of the 56 questions in the Instrumentum Laboris, a 13-page instructional document outlining how visitations will be conducted and the kinds of questions apostolic visitors will be asking, six questions are marked "must be answered." Only one -- "Is there evidence of homosexuality in the seminary?" -- explicitly mentions homosexuality.
The apostolic visitations are getting under way as Catholics await the arrival of a Vatican document addressing homosexuality in the priesthood. The document has long been rumored to exist, but some observers thought it might have fallen by the wayside in light of Pope John Paul II's death, said the Rev. Donald Senior, president of Chicago's Catholic Theological Union, where four apostolic visitors are expected to begin interviewing faculty in December. The visitors will return in March to interview some 170 religious-order seminarians enrolled at CTU.
It is not known what the rumored Vatican document will say, but some observers see hints in comments made recently by Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, the American prelate who is coordinating the apostolic visitations for the Vatican. "Anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity, or has strong homosexual inclinations, would be best not to apply to a seminary and not to be accepted into a seminary," even if the man has been celibate for more than a decade, O'Brien told the National Catholic Register.
Gay priest derides 'witch hunt'
Such remarks belie the true intent of the apostolic visits, according to one Chicago-area Catholic priest who is gay. "Flying in the face of reality and scientific evidence, rather than dealing with the real issue of psychic immaturity in priests who are either gay or straight -- which is clearly the problem for pedophiles . . . -- they are going on a witch hunt to get rid of all the gays," said the priest, who requested anonymity. "It would be funny if it weren't so sad.
"Why stop at seminaries? Why not deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops and cardinals? Are they going to be asked if they are homosexuals and if they are, be forced to resign their positions?" he said. "If that happens, there will be many empty offices, many empty parishes and many empty sees."
For someone who apparently thinks only the Tridentine Rite is valid....
Reread my post you thug and don't ever post to me again.
Who gave you permission to tell me not to post to you? You have a marvelously pious way with words. You shame your namesake.
Thanks for the link.
It will be useful making my points.
Requests to not receive posts are done openly ... the next one will get a abuse report to the moderator.
Child-sex book canceled after WND report
Haworthpress is also the publisher of The Journal of Homosexuality and was going to simultaneously release the book and the journal. I don't know if they've decided against publishing the latter.
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