Posted on 04/09/2002 9:11:52 AM PDT by Slyfox
Court documents released Monday in the case of a Massachusetts priest accused of sex abuse provide rare insight into the early efforts of the Archdiocese of Boston to keep gays from entering the priesthood.
In a 1979 letter to the Vatican, the late Cardinal Humberto Medeiros expressed alarm at the burgeoning gay rights movement and disclosed he had spent five years weeding out homosexuals from area seminaries.
``The danger in seminaries, your eminence, is obvious,'' Medeiros wrote to Cardinal Franjo Seper in Rome. ``Where large numbers of homosexuals are present in a seminary, other homosexuals are quickly attracted. Other healthier young men tend to be repelled.''
Medeiros noted that some priests had publicly revealed they were gay and were asserting that ``homosexual acts'' may not be sinful. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that engaging in gay sex is wrong.
The cardinal, who died in 1983, wrote that he had encouraged seminary spiritual directors to ``exercise their influence to remove from the path to the priesthood young men who are homosexuals.'' The cardinal proclaimed the effort a success.
``We have a seminary which has now - within a five-year period - become almost fully transformed into a community of healthy, well-balanced young men,'' Medeiros said. ``Our numbers are much smaller but now we will attract more young men who will be the right kind of candidates.''
The issue of gays in the priesthood remains a pressing concern among Catholics.
Estimates of the number of gays currently among seminarians and the more than 45,000 Catholic clergy in the United States vary dramatically, from 10 percent to 50 percent.
``The atmosphere of seminaries is so gay that the few heterosexuals entering the seminary feel the culture and environment of the seminary is alienating,'' the Rev. Richard McBrien, a theologian at the University of Notre Dame, said in a recent interview.
``It is an extraordinarily convenient occupation for someone who will never marry. It gives respectability to the unmarried state.''
Medeiros' letter was written in response to Vatican questions about the Rev. Paul Shanley, who is accused of repeatedly raping a boy in the 1980s. The Boston Archdiocese knew Shanley had spoken in favor of sex between men and boys at a 1979 meeting that apparently led to the founding of a national group advocating the practice, according to court documents.
Medeiros lamented that some of the men he rejected for the priesthood in Massachusetts had been accepted in seminaries elsewhere. The cardinal said he was working with U.S. bishops to ensure seminaries nationwide were aware of the problem.
Seper congratulated Medeiros for his attention to the issue.
``Your perceptive analysis would seem to indicate the need for specific measures on the part of the American hierarchy, especially those in urban centers similar to your own,'' Seper wrote.
Demmocrats Show Gay Priest Concerns
I figured they would be protesting that there were not enough of them !
While you were championing his analysis, did you notice that his entire argument is predicated on one study, done 24 years ago, on a sample of only 175 Massachusetts men? Boy, that's rigorous and scholarly. Kind of like Kinsey's statement that 10% of men are sodomites because 9.3% of the 181 prison inmates he interviewed in one Indiana facility engaged in sodomy.
Have you read Dr. Paul Vitz of NYU? Oh, of course you haven't, because Dr. Vitz challenges the homosexualist orthodoxy of modern liberal psychology.
He isn't invited on NPR either, even though he's done serious clinical research, unlike Herek.
Your inability to refute my argument stands. Not surprising from someone who gets his political ideology from Larry Flynt.
In the past there were more surplus men who knew they wouldn't have the financial prospects to raise children. Many of them were orphans who were raised in the church. They didn't enter the priesthood for the most noble of reasons, but were generally good people who wouldn't stand for one of their colleages banging the altarboys. This kind of institutional priesthood has disappeared with affluence.
The other thing is that the celebate priesthood hasn't been around for nineteen centuries. The celebacy requirement came about in response to an earlier nepotism crisis. And later on still, pedophelia in the priesthood wasn't much of a problem when it was generally assumed that priests would have mistresses from time to time.
Homosexuals and homosexual pedophiles enter the Protestant ministry and the rabbinate as well. They take jobs as coaches, daycare workers, teachers, even ride operators at Disneyworld.
There are clerics from all religions who abuse their positions in order to get sex. But this still doesn't explain the peculiar tendency towards homosexual abuse in the Catholic Church that is not evident in other religions. When Baptist ministers or rabbis seduce a young teen, it is usually a female.
Before 1963, these problems were almost unheard of. There is a good reason for this.
These problems were heard of, just not spoken of. We are now hearing of grown men who were molested back in the '40s and '50s who are coming forward. When I was younger my dad warned me he heard stories about these kinds of things when he was growing up.
In short - Freud is wrong, not St. Paul.
Indeed, Paul is not wrong. In fact, he stated in one of his epistles that church leaders should have only one wife, which clearly supports the idea of a non-celebate clergy.
For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.
1 Corinthians 7:7-8
He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.
1 Corinthians 7:32-33.
Which tells us that St. Paul recommended celibacy, and that the noncelibate clergy represented a compromise, a legitimate nod to human weakness.
In any event, there are hundreds of married Catholic priests who are loyal to the Pope and in good standing with him.
They just aren't part of the Latin Rite, which is only one of the eleven Rites that comprise the Catholic Church.
They just aren't part of the Latin Rite, which is only one of the eleven Rites that comprise the Catholic Church.
This is something I have been wondering about. What are the prospects for Eastern Rite priests in the United States? I mean, I assume that there are no seminaries for them here, but if a married Catholic layman wanted to go the Ukraine and study and then come back and become a priest, would that be permissable?
Excuse me?
Do you think Eric Liddle (Chariots of Fire) who died in prison in China wasn't compassionate? (never mind that the actor who portrayed him died of AIDS)
Do you think Jim Elliott who was speared to death by the Auca Indians wasn't compassionate? When he was 22 he wrote in his journal "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep for what he cannot lose."
Do you think Stuart Royster who died from a poisoness snake bite in the jungles of Columbia wasn't compassionate?
Giving yourself in a life of service to the God of the Ages is one of the most masculine things a man can do.
There is one study from a Denver emergency room - 269 persons and no data on whether "orientation" was self-reported or not.
Finally there is one study cited where persons who self-reported their own orientation were shown or listened to child porn. People who volunteer to participate in sex surveys, especially ones with such a disturbing premise, are an extremely skewed group to begin with.
He admits that both the latter (possibly due to their highly self-selecting nature) are unable to establish his position "scientifically". Therefore he is clearly depending on the first study as his proof. It comes down to one study with a sample size of 175.
If science is defined as shaky data taken from tiny samples and evaluated by biased researchers in such a notoriously "soft-science" field as psychology, then sure.
If by science you mean data externally verifiable and repeatable by experiment or instrumental observation, then you have neither religion nor science - just random opinions.
Please notice,I said that I have heard,can anyone confirm or shed any light on things. Also does anyone know which Congregation is responsible for assigning the Nuncios,it would seem that person and his "friends" have had a lot of influence on this mess if my information is correct. It would certainly help us in figuring out which bishops are lying. The "enemy" finds nothing wrong with lies after all his patron is the "father of lies" and Jesus warned us about him.
I am a regular reader of The Wanderer, probably the most conservative Catholic newspaper in the nation. I read quite frequently about all this stuff throughout the 1980's. Just because the major media decides to cover it doesn't mean it's been hidden away. Alot of this stuff started fomenting after Vatican II when the lid was pulled off the discipline in many orders and seminaries. Pope Paul VI called it 'the smoke of Satan entering the sanctuary', and JPII is on record warning his bishops to get their houses in order. What needs to be remembered is that it has been foisted on us by the radical liberals, the very same ones who call Bill and Hillary their best bud's.
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