I've been wanting to say this for a long time but I'm not articulate enough to do so. I'm glad Mr. Lawler is.
By Phil Lawler
Two new episodes in the festering sex-abuse scandal have called attention to a facet of the problem that has long been understood (at least by some analysts), but routinely neglected if not actively suppressed: the connection between sexual abuse of young people and a widespread homosexual culture among the clergy.
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been removed from ministry because of one credible report of misconduct involving a teenage boy. But the Newark archdiocese confirmed that in the past, two other complaints against the cardinal had been resolved by out-of-court settlements. And the news of his suspension brought out dozens of reports about his inappropriate behavior with seminarians: young men who were presumably legal adults.
From Rome came the report that a former Vatican diplomat, recently stationed in Washington, DC, had been found guilty on charges of child pornography. The “children” in this case were teenagers.
Which priests sharing pornography? What disciplinary action, if any, has been taken regarding the priests involved in the infamous “St. Sebastian’s Angels” network? Who were the prelates who protected Cardinal McCarrick? Isn’t it time—in fact, isn’t it long past time—to acknowledge the corrosive power of the homosexual network in the Church?
These are not new questions. They are questions that I raised ten years ago, in my book The Faithful Departed. (I don’t mean to imply that I was alone in raising them; there were certainly others.) As a reminder—and for the benefit of those who may have missed this argument the first time around—here are a few excerpts from Chapter 17 of that book, entitled “The Wrong Explanations.”
The crisis that has stricken the Catholic Church in America is often described as a pedophilia scandal. That characterization is not accurate.
Pedophilia—a profound psychological disorder involving the sexual desire for young, pre-pubescent children—is fortunately rare. A few of the most notorious American clerics involved in the scandal, such as James Porter and John Geoghan, might be accurately classified as pedophiles. Because they molested scores of children, and because their cases came to prominence in the early days of the crisis, these deeply disturbed men were taken as emblematic of the larger problem in the American priesthood. But they were not typical.
Among the thousands of complaints lodged against American priests during the early years of the twenty-first century, the vast majority involved sexual relations with teenage boys. In some cases, to some extent, the boys may have appeared to be willing partners in the sexual activity. Since the teenagers had not reached the age of consent, and since the priests were exploiting their positions of authority and trust, the relationships were certainly abusive. But they cannot be classified as instances of pedophilia.
In a thorough study of sex-abuse complaints that was commissioned by the USCCB, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice issued a sweeping report in 2004 that covered more than 5,000 incidents. Of these, 81 percent involved priests with young male victims. Of those male victims, 90 percent were teenage boys.
Faced with that statistic, some analysts began to say that what had been seen as a crisis of pedophilia was really a matter of ephebophilia. (The term “ephebophilia”—which does not appear in standard diagnostic manuals for psychologists—refers to sexual attraction toward adolescents.)
Pederasty might be a better word.
Some commentators took comfort in using this new term. Other less pretentious observers concluded that the statistics proved what many Catholics had long suspected: the sex-abuse crisis was a crisis of homosexuality in the priesthood.
For several years Catholic scholars had been debating whether or not homosexuals should be ordained to the priesthood. A 1961 Vatican document addressed to the superiors of religious orders had said that men with a known homosexual inclination should not be admitted to seminary training. (That policy, which had fallen into desuetude (disuse, like that word), was reaffirmed by the Vatican and applied to all candidates for the priesthood in a new teaching document of 2005.) But many liberal Catholics argued that a homosexual who maintained a celibate lifestyle could be a fine priest. “Unless proven otherwise, there is no reason to believe that homosexual priests are any less likely to keep their promises of celibacy than heterosexual ones,” wrote Father James Martin, a Jesuit journalist, in a November 2000 article in America magazine. That argument was central to the case in favor of ordaining men with homosexual impulses.
Even if homosexual priests are no more likely than heterosexuals to violate their vows, however, it stands to reason that if and when they do engage in sexual activity, their partners are more likely to be male. Thus the sex-abuse scandal had serious implications for the debate on homosexuality. Yet the National Review Board, in its first major report on the crisis, did not shrink from the obvious conclusion. “That 815 of the reported victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy were boys shows that the crisis was characterized by homosexual behavior.”
If gay priests are no more likely to break their vows than straight priests, then the fact that 90% of priest's victims are male must mean that 90% of priests are gay. Does that make sense to anyone but me? It's either that or gay priests are far and away more likely to break their vows. Or, perhaps they cross their fingers when they say them. Or, perhaps they don't even really believe in God to begin with.
…..
Vatican officials had been alert to the question of homosexuality from the earliest days of the scandal. When Pope John Paul II summoned the leaders of the American hierarchy to Rome in April 2002, one of the key points on the agenda for discussion was the influence of a homosexual culture in the American seminaries. The joint statement released by the participating bishops at the end of that Vatican meeting also called for new emphasis on the moral teachings of the Church regarding sexuality, a message that could be read as a mandate for the American hierarchy to be more forceful in condemning homosexual behavior. But as we have observed, that aspect of the discussion in Rome was quietly dropped from the bishops’ agenda before the Dallas meeting.
In Dallas the USCCB concentrated exclusively on the sexual abuse of minors. The final document produced at that meeting was awkwardly entitled a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in a tacit acknowledgement that the victims of abuse could not all be classified as “children.” The Dallas norms set out disciplinary standards for priests who were involved in any sexual relationship with people, male or female, under the age of eighteen. But the bishops did not discuss, and the norms do not address, sexual misconduct by priests involving partners over the age of consent. When a priest pursues a sexual relationship with a psychologically vulnerable parishioner, he is guilty of abuse, even if that parishioner is an adult. And a priest who engages in consensual sexual contact with another man is guilty of grave misconduct, even if it is not abusive. But in Dallas the US bishops did not consider these sorts of clerical misbehavior; the scope of their attention was restricted exclusively to the abuse of “children and young people.”
I'm not sure I like the word 'misconduct', as used by Mr. Lawler here. It is flat out sin! So is a priest who has taken a vow of celibacy who has consensual sex with a women. Those vows are made before God and He expects us to keep them. Sex with a woman is an affront to God. Sex with a man is an abomination as God has said many, many times. It's disturbing how little concerned the Vatican seems to be with this. It's disturbing how many articles like this I have read regarding priest's sexual abuse and Bishops covering them up, and never see God's name mentioned or even referred to obliquely. There are a lot of ordained Catholics who will be extremely uncomfortable when they stand before Jesus Christ.
Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org.
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