Homosexuals and the Priesthood

Amy Welborn has devoted some serious thought to the question of admitting homosexual persons to seminaries.

Same sex attraction is a disorder and represents a risk to the Church which should be manifest to anyone paying attention. Homosexual acts are 80% of the clergy sexual abuse of minors.

I have gone to school with and worked with homosexual persons all my life. There's no question in my mind that some are good Catholics and living a life of grace. I think they would, if the opportunity presented itself, to suppress what the Church teaches on human sexuality.

Many priests, and many bishops have revealed themselves to be homosexuals and have been working for years or even decades to undermine Church teaching on human sexuality. Even if they were not caught with their pants down, they were betraying the Church in their obligation to teach what the Church teaches by omission and artful distortion of the truth.

Persons afflicted with disorders such as addictions to gambling and drugs don't form networks to undermine the Church's teachings in these areas.

If there's a climate of fear in seminaries today, it's the fear of men committed to celibacy and chastity from other seminarians and people appointed above them to accept (or tolerate in others) the lifestyle choice of unchastity.

I am be alone in believing this but I believe at the heart of the crisis is the abuse of discretion -- given any loophole, any rationalization to permit an sexual abuser priest to have access to children -- the bishop's discretion invariably was against the accuser, the witness, the whistleblower, etc. and for a brother priest.

A rule that permits exceptions in the area of excluding homosexuals from seminaries means that in practical terms, no homosexual will be turned away. It's parallel to the so-called health exception in abortion which includes psychological health, for example, a self-diagnosis of anxiety in allowing the unborn child to continue to live. Such an exception has the real effect of not restricting any abortions.

To borrow Amy's term of witch hunt. I think the witch hunt will be for the seminarians naive or bold enough to hold to what the Church teaches.