Wanting this to be preserved for my own reference, I am posting this Wall Street Journal article (from January 22, 2019) to my Blog. I am especially proud of Mr. Rocca’s reporting of the John Jay conclusions; to wit:
“Researchers said they had found no evidence that homosexual orientation was a risk factor for abuse and suggested that the high proportion of male victims was at least in part a function of their greater availability, especially in the period before girls were allowed to be altar servers.”
So, here is the article, copyright belonging to the WSJ:
By Francis X. Rocca
Since last summer, the Catholic Church has been roiled by accusations that retired Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C., molested male minors and sexually harassed adult seminarians and priests over more than two decades. The case has reignited a long and tense debate among Catholics over the question of homosexuality in the all-male priesthood. Some bishops, other clergy and laypeople have cited Archbishop McCarrick’s rise to power, despite widespread rumors of sexual misconduct, as evidence of a “homosexual subculture” in the hierarchy that they blame for allowing sex abuse and covering it up.
“These homosexual networks, which are now widespread in many dioceses, seminaries, religious orders, etc., act under concealment of secrecy and lies with the power of octopus tentacles, and strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations, and are strangling the entire church,” wrote Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Vatican envoy to the U.S., in a manifesto published last August.
At a November meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco cited a study by the Rev. D. Paul Sullins, a sociologist at the Catholic University of America, positing a correlation among the incidence of allegations of sexual abuse, the proportion of Catholic priests describing themselves as homosexual and the reported existence of a “homosexual subculture” in some U.S. seminaries. The archbishop ruled out a “direct causal connection” between homosexuality and abuse but called for further study to explain the correlation.
Others in the church have denounced such statements as the scapegoating of gay priests. Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, one of the organizers of a summit on sex abuse that Pope Francis has called for next month at the Vatican, has dismissed any link between homosexuality and sexual abuse, which he says is rooted instead in “privilege, power and protection of a clerical culture.”
A study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, commissioned by the USCCB and published in 2004, found that 81% of the reported victims of sex abuse by priests were male. In a follow-up study in 2011, John Jay researchers said they had found no evidence that homosexual orientation was a risk factor for abuse and suggested that the high proportion of male victims was at least in part a function of their greater availability, especially in the period before girls were allowed to be altar servers.
Those alleging a connection between sex abuse and a homosexual subculture in the priesthood often cite the work of the late A.W. Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and pioneer in the study of clerical sex abuse. In an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, Mr. Sipe wrote that he had heard “from many priests about their seduction by highly placed clerics and the dire consequences in their lives that does not end in their victimization alone… This abuse paves the way for them to pass the tradition on—to have sex with each other and even with minors.”
Mr. Sipe also wrote that “sexual abuse of minor boys by priests must not be confused with a homosexual orientation…This is patently clear when a 35-year-old man abuses a 13-year-old girl. Heterosexual orientation is not blamed.”
The Rev. James Martin, author of “Building a Bridge,” a book about the church’s relationship with gay Catholics, dismisses talk of a “gay subculture” in the priesthood as malicious mythology. “There’s as much a gay subculture as there is an Irish subculture or a sports subculture. In a sense, it’s natural that gay priests and religious would congregate,” he said. But he denies that gay priests somehow control the hierarchy: “The notion that someone would be shut out of being a bishop or religious superior because he is straight is ridiculous.”
One point that all sides in the debate seem to agree on is that the priesthood today is a disproportionately gay vocation. Of the 37,000 priests in the U.S., Father Martin estimates that gay men make up anywhere between 25% and 40%. Janet Smith, a professor of moral theology at a seminary in Detroit who has called for “eradicating…homosexual networks” in the clergy, believes the proportion of “active homosexuals” varies widely but constitutes as much as 50% of the priests in some U.S. dioceses.
Why are so many priests gay? An oft-cited reason is that, before the growing social acceptance of homosexuality in recent decades, clerical celibacy was the respectable alternative for Catholic men who had no desire to marry. “Coming out as a gay man in a religiously engaged and conservative environment was just not an option, so entering the priesthood made perfect sense,” said Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University. “You could live in a community of men in seminary and after. It was a perfect scenario, perfect cover.”
Another factor seems to have been the tumultuous change in the church in the decades following the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), when some 20,000 men left the priesthood in the U.S., most of them to marry. “Their absence, it can be argued, has dramatically changed the gay/straight ratio,” wrote the Rev. Donald Cozzens in “The Changing Face of the Priesthood” (2000).
The Catholic Church teaches that “homosexual tendencies,” while not sinful in themselves, are “objectively disordered” as an inclination to sinful acts. In 2005, a Vatican document said that the church “cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’”
Pope Francis has shown greater openness to homosexuality than his predecessors, and the most famous statement of his pontificate was a reference to gay priests: “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?” Yet he approved a 2016 document reaffirming the 2005 ban, which he restated in his own words in an interview published last month. “In the consecrated life and the priestly life, that type of affection has no place,” the pope said. “For that reason, the church recommends that people with that ingrained tendency not be accepted for the ministry or the consecrated life. The ministry or the consecrated life is not their place.”
The pope didn’t call for the expulsion of gay men already in the priesthood but said that they must be “exquisitely responsible, taking care never to scandalize either their communities or the holy faithful people of God by living a double life.”
Some argue that the clerical life poses an unreasonable challenge for gay men. “It’s just not a good place for people with same-sex attraction to be in a same-sex environment,” said Msgr. Charles Pope, a pastor in Washington, D.C., who has written on the subject for the National Catholic Register. “If an alcoholic came to me and said, ‘I’m sober and I’m going to get a job working in a bar,’ I’d say, ‘That’s not a good match for you.’”
Father Martin agrees that “people who cannot live celibacy should not be clergy” but says that there is no reason to think gay people are less equipped to do so. “The catechism says that celibacy is what all gay people should do, so gay priests are following the catechism to the letter,” he said. “If you’re saying that gay men can’t be celibate, you’re saying that the catechism can’t be lived.”
