Shifting the blame: the Vatican's campaign to purge gay men from Catholic seminaries is an attempt to shift the blame for the sexual abuse scandal away from the bishops.

THE "INSTRUCTION CONCERNING the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders," published on November 29 by the Vatican, is a continuation of what Mark D. Jordan, the Asa Candler Chair of Catholic Studies at Emory University, has described as "the squandering of vocation [and] is reflected in a squandering of truths...."

The document is a smokescreen designed to detract attention away from the church hierarchy's culpability for the sexual abuse scandal, in the US and elsewhere, and an attempt to pin the blame for the scandal on homosexual priests.

There is, however, little new in the document. The Vatican has repeatedly spoken of the offense of homosexuality to Christian values, and this has been rehearsed in the press by Catholic bishops and by Vatican officials in public statements. In the (1986) "Letter to Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons," then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger coined those infamous phrases "intrinsically disordered" and "an intrinsic moral evil" to describe homosexuals. And before the most recent document, the Vatican had ordered a visitation to every US seminary with the apparent aim of rooting out homosexuality.

We need to ask ourselves: How does the "offense" of homosexuality compare to the hierarchy's record on the sexual abuse of minors? What is "intrinsically disordered" is a system that fails to take responsibility for its own failures and shifts blame from itself to innocent gay priests. What is "an intrinsic moral evil" is the failure to assume institutional responsibility for the sexual abuse scandal and for not protecting Catholic minors and families.

It hardly needs saying, but for the last several decades, Roman Catholic bishops and major superiors of religious orders in the United States have dealt with the sexual abuse of minors by moving the clerical perpetrators around from one parish or school assignment to another. There was no compassion or concern for the abused children, or indeed for the perpetrating priests themselves. The hierarchy did not hold priests accountable for their sexual abuse, nor force them to seek psychological help. In the last 10 years, the American media has aired hundreds of narratives from the sexually abused victims of Catholic priests. In settlements, court-directed or otherwise, victims have received hundred of millions of dollars in compensation. Bishops are now scurrying to divert their financial assets so that they may escape payment. Dioceses are selling off church property to meet settlements while Catholic parishioners are dismayed and horrified. And the bishops' aim of avoiding responsibility for the scandal by shifting the entire blame onto gay priests is apparently well under way.

We should note that there have been several high-profile critics of the Vatican's anti-gay campaign. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said (before the "Instruction" was officially released), "You don't write off a candidate for the priesthood simply because he is a gay man," and the Rev. Gerald Chojnacki, head of the Jesuit order in New York, wrote asking bishops to tell Vatican officials "of the great harm this will cause many good priests and the Catholic faithful." Having attended several funerals of gay Jesuit clergy, he continued, "I find it insulting to demean their memory and their years of service by even hinting that they were unfit for priesthood because of their sexual orientation."

However, the American bishops seem to suffer from a trickled-down notion of infallibility. How can they take moral responsibility for their criminal actions when they understand the institution to be infallible? How can they apologize to victims and their families when they do not consider themselves to be at fault? How can they resolve the problem when they seek to lay the blame at the wrong door?

If the Vatican really wanted to understand the priest sexual abuse crisis, it would start by investigating itself, the diocesan and religious bureaucracies, the personnel and management policies and the circumstances that led to the hierarchy's failure to protect children and the further victimization of sexual abuse victims and their families. The problem is the Catholic hierarchical system, not gay men attempting to answer God's call to priestly ministry. As Jesus pointed out, "How can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye' while the log is in your own eye, and then you will see clearly." (Matthew 7:4-5)

VISITATION OF US SEMINARIES

As part of the blame-shifting process, the Vatican has appointed visitors to inspect and interrogate the faculty and students in nearly three hundred Catholic seminaries in the United States. By doing so, it apparently seeks to solve the sexual abuse scandal by purging the seminaries of all disloyal priests, faculty and gay men preparing themselves for the priesthood.

What can we expect from these visitations? In short, we can expect more of the same, behavior consistent with the patterns of the last decades, when, under the influence of Cardinal Ratzinger, the Vatican silenced theologians, removed moderate priests and nuns from pastoral ministries to homosexual Catholics and issued harsh public documents condemning gays and lesbians, their unions and their families. The Vatican has continually taken punitive measures against any moderate or compassionate care for gay and lesbian Catholics and we can expect little compassion in the current process of visitation, interrogation and expulsion.

The compulsory elements of the questionnaire reveal the core concern and focus of the visitation.

1) Do the seminarians or faculty members have concerns about the moral life of those living in the institution? (This question must be answered.)

2) Is there evidence of homosexuality in the seminary? (This question must be answered.)

And, while the questionnaire does raise questions about orthodox theology, correct education and doctrinal and moral conformity with the Vatican, it is mainly concerned with the issue of homosexuality. It seems that Pope Benedict, who has been obsessed with this issue for most of his career at the Vatican, considers that doctrinal laxness, pluralistic theologies, moral ambiguities and the Catholic appeal to individual conscience contribute to "homosexual subcultures" within seminaries.

Several presuppositions that underlie the visitations are false.

First, all social scientific studies of the sexual abuse of minors have shown that the majority of sexual abuse takes place within families and is usually perpetrated by a heterosexual male. Gay priests are no more liable to molest adolescents and children than heterosexual priests. (See sidebar.) It is merely convenient for the Vatican and Catholic bishops to blame gay priests for the sexual abuse.

Secondly, the Vatican and American Catholic bishops too readily blur homosexuality with pedophilia.

Thirdly, an ecclesial culture filled with religious homophobia and misogyny ignores the clerical sexual abuse of young females. Why have the Catholic hierarchy and the American press ignored the abuse of young girls? Why are abused boys more important and valued than abused girls? Rampant misogyny and homophobia form the context for the above presuppositions, and they are certainly operative within Vatican thinking.

The Vatican seems to have forgotten, or more likely never acknowledged, that there have been many distinguished college presidents, chaplains, pastors, educators and authors who have been gay priests and honorably served the Catholic community.

A HOMOSEXUAL PANIC 

The Vatican-appointed visitors are spending several days interrogating all the faculty and students at each seminary. Understandably, there are many nervous and anxious seminarians. How many closeted seminarians and faculty will sacrifice their fellow colleagues and fellow students to preserve themselves and their vocations by turning in others on charges of homosexuality?

After the visitation, the report will go directly to the Vatican which will then notify those designated for termination. The process is heartless, even cruel. It will target men who have been encouraged to be honest about their sexual orientation at the beginning of their application process for religious life in a seminary. Truthful admissions of sexual orientation in their dossiers will be used against them, and they will be expelled from the seminary for telling the truth about themselves. The Vatican will destroy the lives and vocations of those who readily admit to being gay and want to live a celibate life. It will force survivors and future seminarians to become accomplished, closeted liars and betrayers of fellow students to shift focus from themselves. It will ultimately hurt the Catholic community already impacted by the decline in numbers and quality of priests. It will create a more elaborate and closeted system of lies, sexual deceptions and secretive behaviors. Finally, this type of inquisitional purge will do nothing to help Catholic seminarians and priests develop a healthy integration of sexuality and spirituality. This is vital for ministry to Catholics and will likely hurt the church for decades.

Many gay priests have served and are now serving the Catholic church. Some have been canonized, others lived as models of sanctity and exemplars for Catholics. For example, Father Mychal Judge, a gay Franciscan priest, gave his life while administering the last rites to the dying in the burning ruins of the World Trade Center on September 11. He certainly exemplified the best of Catholic priesthood. Now the Vatican wants to prevent future Mychal Judges from serving as priests. The Vatican is willing to squander thousands of vocations to the priesthood to protect its own squandering of truth. This is not consistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

ABUSE OF POWER

The real issue for the hierarchy is not homosexuality but the abuse of power, based on a narrow view of human sexuality and gender inequality. The homophobia so latent in church doctrine arises from misogyny; the exclusion of gay men from the priesthood is intrinsically woven with the denial of ordination to women. And when a church predicates clerical and ecclesial power on the exclusion of women or gay men from ordained ministry, it is an abuse of power.

Ecclesial bureaucracies cannot stand truth-telling. Truth is what the Vatican and the bishops spin to the public, and may or may not have any roots in reality. When the Vatican convened a group of psychologists and experts on sexual abuse to better understand the abuse scandal in the US, it opted to reject most of the experts' findings. The Vatican's strategy distorts the truth and harms innocent gay men called to serve God's people. In the end, it harms the church itself and all Catholics, gay and straight, male and female. Speaking truth to power will be a key strategy in confronting this abuse of power.

RELATED ARTICLE: Homosexuality and pedophilia.

Members of disliked minority groups are often stereotyped as representing a danger to the majority society's most vulnerable members. Historically, Jews in the Middle Ages were accused of murdering Christian babies in ritual sacrifices. Black men in the US were often falsely accused of raping white women, and commonly lynched as a result. In a similar fashion, gay people have often been portrayed as a threat to children.

There are problems researching the links between homosexuality and pedophilia, notably whether the samples used in research studies are representative of all child molesters and the fact that the terminology used in this area is often confusing and can be misleading. However, the research we have means we can be sure of some things, including the fact that many child molesters don't really have an adult sexual orientation. They have never developed the capacity for mature sexual relationships with other adults, either men or women. Therefore many child molesters cannot be meaningfully described as homosexuals, heterosexuals or bisexuals because they are not really capable of a relationship with an adult man or woman. Instead of gender, their sexual attractions are based primarily on age. These individuals--who are often characterized as fixated--are attracted to children, not to men or women.

In one study, Groth and Birnbaum (1978) studied 175 adult males who were convicted in Massachusetts of sexual assault against a child. None of the men had an exclusively homosexual adult sexual orientation, Eighty-three (47%) were classified as "fixated" ("stuck" at an early stage of psychological development); 70 others (40%) were classified as regressed adult heterosexuals (meaning they have developed an adult sexual orientation but under certain conditions, such as extreme stress, they return to a less mature psychological state and engage in sexual contact with children); the remaining 22 (13%) were classified as regressed adult bisexuals.

Other researchers have taken different approaches, but have similarly failed to find a connection between homosexuality and child molestation. Dr. Carole Jenny reviewed 352 medical charts, re presenting all of the sexually abused children seen in the emergency room or child abuse clinic of a Denver children's hospital during a one-year period (from July 1, 1991 to June 30, 1992). The molester was a gay or lesbian adult in only two of the 269 cases in which an adult molester could be identified--fewer than one percent.

In yet another approach to studying adult sexual attraction to children, some Canadian researchers observed how homosexual and heterosexual adult men responded to slides of males and females of various ages (child, pubescent, and mature adult). All of the research subjects were first screened to ensure that they preferred physically mature sexual partners. The researchers found that homosexual males responded no more to male children than heterosexual males responded to female children (Freund et al., 1989).

Reflecting the results of these and other studies, the mainstream view among researchers and professionals who work in the area of child sexual abuse is that homosexual and bisexual men do not pose any special threat to children. For example, in one review of the scientific literature, noted authority Dr. A, Nicholas Groth wrote: "Are homosexual adults in general sexually attracted to children and are preadolescent children at greater risk of molestation from homosexual adults than from heterosexual adults? There is no reason to believe so. The research to date all points to there being no significant relationship between a homosexual lifestyle and child molestation. There appears to be practically no reportage of sexual molestation of girls by lesbian adults, and the adult male who sexually molests young boys is not likely to be homosexual." (Groth & Gary, 1982)

In a more recent literature review, Dr. Nathaniel McConaghy (1998) similarly cautioned against confusing homosexuality with pedophilia. He noted, "The man who offends against prepubertal or immediately postpubertal boys is typically not sexually interested in older men or in women" (p. 259).

While one individual, Paul Cameron, has claimed to have data that prove homosexuals to be child molesters at a higher rate than heterosexuals, his survey data are subject to so many methodological flaws as to be virtually meaningless. (E.g. small sample size, poor response rates, self-acknowledged bias, a margin of error up to 33 percent, potentially flawed questionnaires and data collection, etc.)

The empirical research does not show that gay or bisexual men are any more likely than heterosexual men to molest children. This is not to argue that homosexual and bisexual men never molest children. But there is no scientific basis for asserting that they are more likely than heterosexual men to do so. And, as explained above, many child molesters cannot be characterized as having an adult sexual orientation at all; they are fixated on children.

The above is excerpted with some paraphrasing from the article "Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation" by Prof. Gregory M. Herek, PhD, University of California at Davis. For the complete article: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/ html/[acts_molestation.html.

ROBERT GOSS is a former Jesuit priest who now serves as Senior Pastor/Theologian of the MCC Church in the Valley in North Hollywood, Calif. He is the author of, among others, Jesus ACTED UP: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto (1993) and Queering Christ: Beyond Jesus ACTED UP (2002).