CATHOLIC PRIESTS AND HOMOSEXUALITY

 This report consists of two articles, the first from a newspaper; the second, from an independent Roman Catholic journal. They will provide you with a picture of the ever-increasing decadence that is occurring in the Roman Catholic priesthood. The data reported below concerns their U.S. priesthood; but the situation is probably similar, perhaps worse, elsewhere in the world.

Such decadence has always existed in the Catholic priesthood; but, as the first article reveals, AIDS death records provide a new way to identify its homosexual aspects. (Not reported here are the millions of dollars won by individuals, against the church in court cases, which reveal the heterosexual depravity within the church.)

For hundreds of years, Rome has insisted that none of its priests can marry. This enforced celebacy is the reason why there are so many homosexual priests. Since the church is full of men living alone in their rooms, it is a place that attracts gays to join the priesthood.

Contrary to the Word of God, Rome forbids the marriage of priests. Canon law declares it to be sinful for a priest to marry. But the Bible teaches something quite different. It denounces the forbidding of marriage as "a doctrine of devils" (1 Timothy 4:1-3). "Now, a bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife . . One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?" (1 Timothy 3:2-5). Paul was not married, but he claimed for himself the right to have a wife, just as Peter and other apostles had wives (1 Corinthains 9:5). The Word of God says: "It is not good that man should be alone" (Genesis 2:18).

A.W. Richard Sips, a former priest who has spent over 30 years studying sexuality issues in the Roman Catholic Church, thinks about 750 priests nationwide have died of such illnesses. This means an AIDS related death rate eight times that of the general population. Joseph Barone, a New Jersey psychiatrist and AIDS expert, puts the number of U.S. priests who have died at 1,000—nearly 11 times the rate of the general population. (See U.S. News and World Report, February 14, 2000, and articles quoted below.)

AIDS Deaths among Priests Higher than Estimated

St. Louis Post Dispatch - November 5, 2000

"Kansas City—Concern within the Roman Catholic Church about the number of priests who have died of AIDS-related illnesses is growing, as is evidence that the death rate exceeds earlier estimates.

"In January, the Kansas City Star reported that hundreds of priests had died of AIDS-related illnesses and that hundreds more were living with the virus that causes the disease.

"Since then, the Star has documented more than 300 AIDS-related priest deaths nationwide through death certificates and interviews with family members and religious colleagues. The newspaper examined documents in 14 states in which thousands of death certificates were available. The Star found that the AIDS death rate among priests was more than double that of all adult males in those states and more than six times that of the general population in those states.

"Those AIDS-related death rates exceeded the estimates and projections reported earlier this year by the newspaper.

"But on Friday, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the conference of bishops, said the number of priests who have died is small when compared with the total priest population. Still, Walsh said, ‘three hundred priests dying of AIDS are 300 personal tragedies.’

"Walsh said that the church had been active in dealing with the AIDS issue, and that seminary formation programs today were doing a better job of educating priests about sexuality issues.

" ‘Of course, ordination does not immunize you from temptation,’ she said. ‘I wish there were no one else who died of AIDS. But the reality is, it happens. It shouldn’t happen. People fail. It’s part of the human condition.’

"More voices of concern are urging the church’s hierarchy to open a dialogue on how to prevent priests from dying of AIDS.

" ‘The fact that you have priests having very active sexual lives, that you have priests contracting HIV and dying of AIDS and that they have refused to come to terms with this and tend to deny it, I don’t see how you look at this and not say that these are symptoms of an unresolved sexual problem within the church,’ said Eugene Kennedy, a former priest and biographer of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago."—St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 5, 2000.

How Seminaries Weed Out Faithful Catholics

By Paul Likoudis

The Wanderer - A Roman Catholic [Independent] Weekly

"In early 1980, the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education issued a circular letter to all Latin rite bishops on seminaries, providing guidelines for the correct spiritual, disciplinary, liturgical, and intellectual formation of candidates to the priesthood. If the norms proposed by Rome were followed, the letter said, the vocations crisis afflicting the Church would vanish.

"Twenty years later, that circular letter — which called for renewed attention to the study of Latin and Greek, the fathers of the Church, the Latin liturgical tradition; to the importance of eucharistic adoration and the Liturgy of the Hours; to the necessity of seminarians dressing in appropriate clerical garb — is a dead letter in many, if not most, dioceses in the United States. And the vocations crisis continues.

"Indeed, Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles — whose St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo remains unreformed — wrote last April in his pastoral letter on ‘ministry’ that the precipitous decline in the number of Ordinations since the mid-1960s is ‘one of the fruits of the Second Vatican Council.’

"For many Catholics, however, it is also becoming ever more clear that the so-called vocations crisis is the product of episcopal dereliction of duty in the face of a deliberate strategy on the part of many to corrupt the priesthood, gut the Church’s sacramental system, and transform the Church into one of the welfare state’s subsidized service providers: a eunuch for the Kingdom of Man.

"At St. John’s Seminary, in Bernard Cardinal Law’s Archdiocese of Boston, for example, a former seminarian recently confided to The Wanderer that ‘if you support the Pope and Church teaching, you’re out. You have to be one foxy seminarian to survive, because most of the professors are hunting for Catholics. If they find out you’re orthodox, you’re blackballed, and you’ll never be ordained out of St. John’s, and you’ll never be able to get into most other diocesan seminaries.’

"The seminarian told a story of a fellow classmate, who was being aggressively pursued by a homosexual seminarian. He went to the administration to complain, but the administration did nothing. So the harassed seminarian went to the local police, and obtained a restraining order against the homosexual seminarian. ‘The aggressive guy is still at St. John’s,’ the seminarian told The Wanderer, ‘and is awaiting Ordination. Meanwhile, the good guy’s gone.’

"The seminarian who finally left St. John’s after three years recalled his bitter experience.

" ‘I thought when I entered the place it would have a Christian atmosphere,’ he said. ‘But the place is so homosexual that homosexuality is all that matters. When one student complained to the faculty he was being terrorized by a homosexual, no one listened, nobody cared.’

" ‘Does Cardinal Law know about this?’ The Wanderer asked.

" ‘If he doesn’t, shame on him. If he does, that’s worse. For him to plead ignorance, however, doesn’t make sense. He’s the commander. Everything that happens there is his responsibility. Fr. Bob Flagg, the vocations director for the Boston Archdiocese, is the dean of the seminary. He’s also the president of the National Association of Diocesan Vocations Directors. He certainly knows what’s going on there, as does Fr. Tom Nestor, the dean of students.’

"Despite his experiences, the former seminarian still wants to be a priest, but he says that he can never be a diocesan priest, in Boston or anywhere else.

" ‘Fr. Flagg has blackballed me,’ he said, ‘and I’ll never get into any diocesan seminary.’

"In the current (July/August) edition of the St. Catherine Review, editor and publisher Michael Rose, author of The Renovation Manipulation, provides some previews of his work-in-progress on the ‘vocation manipulation,’ showing how, more than 20 years into the pontificate of John Paul II, bishops continue to allow their seminaries to be cesspools of heresy, liturgical abuses, psychological terrorism, and moral turpitude while modernist professors and administrators, trapped in ’60s notions of ‘with-it-ness,’ follow the tried and true methods of ecclesial deconstruction.

"Rose’s feature preview concerns the Archdiocese of Detroit’s Sacred Heart Seminary, whose rector is Auxiliary Bishop Allen J. Vigneron. Bishop Vigneron has a reputation as a thoroughly orthodox bishop and a holy priest among Detroit-area Catholics.

"Sacred Heart, still firmly in control by the aging Call to Actionites who run the archdiocesan bureaucracy, is held in such low esteem by Detroit priests that they advise young men who think they have a vocation to the priesthood to study for other dioceses, and, in fact, observes Rose, there are often more Detroit men ordained as priests for other dioceses than for Detroit.

"Titled, ‘I’d Burn it Down. . . . if it Wasn’t a Sin,’ the preview consists of an interview with former seminarian Jason Dull, 24, now studying with the Benedictines at Our Lady of the Annunciation Monastery in Clear Creek, Okla.

"In the interview, Dull speaks of his spiritual awakening as a Catholic at World Youth Day in Denver seven years ago, of his decision to go to a Catholic high school in Detroit, where he ended up arguing with his religion teacher ‘about Scripture and all kinds of things. It was ridiculous: drugs, sex, teachers abusing students; it went on and on and on.’

"Undaunted, he decided to apply to the seminary, and was accepted. His first experience at Sacred Heart on a ‘discernment weekend’ was watching the movie Clueless, with about 30 other young men, a tasteless film featuring young girls in miniskirts and halter tops. No one objected, primarily out of fear.

" ‘I soon came to find that the attitude at the seminary was this,’ said Dull. ‘Any objection or dislike of such movies and practices must mean one has difficulties with maturity, and has sociological and psychological problems, rigorisms. After all, you must be in the world, they say. If it is accepted in society, well, hey, why not? Their overall idea on everything is similar. For instance, if the parish you get assigned to does not follow the Sacramentary, then that’s their local custom, their culture, and who are you to stop their practices? That’s the general attitude.’

"Dull relates his experiences with the ‘formation director’ at Sacred Heart, a priest who extolled the value of watching hard-core pornography; of seminary faculty who led students on ‘pilgrimage’ to Las Vegas for a ‘festive orgy’ and a gambling spree; of irreverent liturgies; of violations of the seal of Confession; of heretical professors; and of the psychological abuse of ‘orthodox’ seminarians.

"At one point in the interview, Rose asked Dull: ‘Can you give us some idea about the psychological screening process involved when you applied for admission to the seminary?’

"Dull answered: ‘It’s a catastrophe. The shrink that I went to charged the Archdiocese of Detroit around $100 an hour. My screening took about eight hours. The most drop-dead gorgeous woman was my shrink. The first test I was given was about 500 questions; another had about 100. Then there were some puzzles to put together. She asked me questions, as part of one test, such as, How often do you masturbate? fishing for other interior knowledge that is a matter for the confessor alone, not some psychologist. . . . Who is this woman, I wondered. Is she a Catholic? Is she even Christian?’

"Later, Rose asked: ‘How is that orthodox seminarians are offended? I’ll let you count the ways.’

"Dull responded: ‘Let’s look at the issue of psychological abuse. Every orthodox seminarian that I knew of while I was at the seminary was sent to a shrink or was going to be sent to a shrink, myself included. I quit when the writing was on the wall that I was next. I would have finished my second year if I had stayed another two weeks to finish my finals. But I dropped out then because I didn’t want to be sent to a shrink. My true spiritual director (outside the seminary, a good and holy priest) told me I was being ‘weeded out.’ So I said, no thanks, I’ve already been to the shrink once. No thank you.’

"The seminarians forced to see the psychiatrist,’ Dull continued, ‘told him they were being sent for rigorism, which was really a stout-heartedness in the faith, which we ought to have. . . . They were sent for ongoing counseling. If a seminarian missed one of his counseling sessions, then the seminary would know about it immediately. There was nothing more strictly mandated — including celibacy — than going to your counseling sessions. You were to comply, and if you didn’t you were out. No two ways about it.’

"Sacred Heart Seminary was also a hothouse of ‘political correctness’ Dull said, where the use of ‘inclusive language’ was mandated.

" ‘I was ordered in the seminary by my rhetoric teacher to use inclusive language. If I used standard English (correct traditional grammar), I was marked down. In other words, I was not able to use the type of language Jesus used.’

‘The strangest phenomena at Sacred Heart,’ Dull continued, ‘were the efforts by the seminary staff and administration to downplay religion. For example, there was a rule that prohibited seminarians from praying more than 15 minutes a day. Praying the rosary in the hallways was forbidden; spiritual direction consisted of weight-lifting sessions; and first-year students were not permitted to take religion classes.

" ‘I insisted upon having at least one religion class each semester,’ Dull said at one point. ‘They did not like that at all. I had to fight and yell just to be allowed to take one religion course. Could you imagine that? In the seminary not being required to take a religion course each semester? I said I’d quit if I cannot have even one class about religion, and that caused trouble. The priests heard this and said, Jason has a problem. We have a rigid one here. We have to weed this boy out.’ "

"So what is the role of Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Allen Vigneron, Sacred Heart’s rector for the past six years?

"Dull gives Vigneron credit for having an ‘orthodox vision’ for Sacred Heart. However, Dull asserts, the bishop lacks the fortitude to apply that ‘vision’ out of fear of offending the old guard.

"He cites Vigneron’s attempt to restore Latin and Gregorian Chant to the liturgy. Referring to an article that appeared recently in Adoremus, which praised Vigneron for taking a national lead in training seminarians in the traditional music of the Church, Dull comments:

" ‘The article implies to the reader that Latin and chant are a norm. But this is definitely not the norm. The author of the article knows that. Everyone who attends Sacred Heart knows that. Most of the music we used at the seminary was the faux folk variety from the Gather hymnal, which includes hymns written by Martin Luther.

" ‘We rarely sang either the Agnus Dei or the Sanctus in Latin. If we were lucky, we’d sing the Kyrie, which is Greek. Once in a while there would be a Mass in which the Agnus Dei and Sanctus were in Latin. But that was rare, maybe once a month. But when we had the big benefactors present at the Christmas and Easter Masses, we would pull out the Gregorian Chant. The whole article states accurately Bishop Vigneron’s intentions—which are great, but they have not come to fruition.’

"And why is that? Rose asks.

" ‘1 don’t know,’ Dull responds. ‘It’s beyond me. That attitude seems to be, ‘this is a place where we all feel at home and no one should be offended,’ yet — predictably — the orthodox seminarians are often offended and no one, including the bishop, seems to care much about that.’

"Rose’s interview with Dull ends with Dull’s recommendations for a genuine reform of Sacred Heart: complete segregation of new seminarians from upper-class seminarians and from the liberal faculty; formation of a new faculty that is faithful to the teachings of the Church; a phasing out of the old faculty ‘so that none are left by the eighth year’; abandoning the seminary code — with its prohibitions against prayer — and ‘starting over.’ "—Paul Likoudis, "How Seminaries Weed Out Faithful Catholics," in The Wanderer, a Roman Catholic [Independent] Weekly. October 2000.

The Changing Face of the Priesthood

Book by Donald Cozzens

Donald Cozzens is a leading American Roman Catholic churchman and is head of St. Mary’s Seminary in Cleveland, Ohio. He claims that the Roman Catholic priesthood has become "primarily a gay culture." His report on the present state of the Roman Catholic priesthood in America is astounding. Contained in a 149-page book, it unveils what is taking place and why.

Cozzens says that an increasing number of experienced priests are leaving the priesthood in order to get married. A related problem is that they are tired of resisting homosexual priests.

This exodus has drastically altered the ratio of gays to non-gays in the priesthood.

Cozzens says: "At issue at the beginning of the 21st century is the growing preception that the priesthood is, or is becoming, a gay profession. Heterosexual seminarians are made uncomfortable by the number of gays around them."

Special Report -The Remnant

A National Catholic Bi-Weekly

August 15, 2000

Reprinted from 'Scotland on Sunday'

A Roman Catholic Journal

Noel Young June 11, 2000

This report, originally printed in Scotland on Sunday, and reprinted in The Remnant, includes a comment by Dean Hoge, a specialist on the pristhood at Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C. He describes Cozzens’ book as "the most important we have seen on Catholic priests for years."

Bishop Robert Morneau, another leading Catholic, praised Cozzens’ book: "I think he raises some very important issues. We need to know what’s going on."

Over the past decade or so, a number of news stories have been printed about priests that have led young boys into sexual relationships. Many very expensive lawsuits have resulted, which cost Rome a lot of money.

Morneau explains the significance of this:

"The Catholic Church in America has paid out millions of dollars in child sex abuse cases. Cozzens points out that most priests who are abusers target teenage boys, unlike other child abusers who tend to target girls." The problem is that far too many of the priests are homosexual.

Morneau continues: "Figures for the number of homosexual priests in the American Church are very difficult to pin down. Cozzens says estimates range up to 60 percent."

Here is the complete report, originally printed in Scotland on Sunday:

"A leading American churchman is claiming that the Roman Catholic priesthood has become ‘primarily a gay culture’ that deters heterosexual men from taking up vocations.

"The Changing Face of the Priesthood, by Father Donald Cozzens, says an exodus of experienced priests from the church, many of them to marry, has drastically altered the gay-straight ratio. ‘At issue at the beginning of the 21st century is the growing perception that the priesthood is, or is becoming, a gay profession,’ Cozzens writes. ‘Heterosexual seminarians are made uncomfortable by the number of gays around them.’

" ‘The straight seminarian feels out of place and may interpret his inner destabilization as a sign that he does not have a vocation for the priesthood.’

"Cozzens, a priest for 35 years, is head of St. Mary’s Seminary in Cleveland, Ohio. He does not go into whether gay priests indulging in sexual relations are violating vows of celibacy, but he says: ‘The sexual contacts and romantic unions among gay seminarians create intense and complicated webs of intrigue and jealousy.’

"Dean Hoge, a specialist on the priesthood at the Catholic University of America, describes the Cozzens book, now on sale in Ireland and Scotland, as ‘the most important we have seen on Catholic Priests for years.’

"Bishop Robert Morneau praised the author. ‘I think he raises some very important issues,’ he said. ‘We need to look at what’s going on.’

"Cozzens was well aware he was stirring up a storm when he wrote his book. After one interview. with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which provoked calls for his resignation as rector of the local seminary, he has stopped giving interviews. He told the reporter: ‘I had to write this book. Parts of it have been percolating in my soul since my days teaching at college.

" ‘I don’t think we, in the Church, have asked ourselves what is God’s spirit saying to us through these most recent crises—the sexual misconduct with minors and the large numbers of priests who have stepped away from their calling. Cozzens covers many other ills of the priesthood in his book, but it is chapter seven, Considering Orientation, that has drawn all the attention. ‘I confess to a certain anxiety as I begin this reflection on homosexuality and the priesthood,’ he writes.

" ‘Whatever it said about such a sensitive and complex issue is open to misunderstanding and seeming insensitivity. Some will deny the reality that many observers see as changing the face of the priesthood—that the percentage of homosexual priests and seminarians is significantly higher than society at large.

" ‘Others will see any attention given to the phenomenon as a symptom of the homophobia that is characteristic of individuals with less than open minds. Still others will wonder what difference sexual orientation makes in the celibate lives of priests.’

"Cozzens says the need gay priests have for friendship with other gay men, and their shaping of a social life largely comprised of other homosexually oriented men, has created a gay subculture in most of the larger US dioceses.

"The Catholic Church in America has paid out many millions of dollars in child sex abuse cases. Cozzens points out that most priests who are abusers target teenage boys, unlike most other child abusers who tend to target girls. Figures for the number of homosexual priests in the American Church are very difficult to pin down. Cozzens says estimates range up to 60 percent.

"Cozzens is not against ordaining gay men, and he concedes some effective bishops and even some popes may have been gay. But, he argues, an overwhelmingly gay clergy affects how lay people view the priesthood and also the intake of recruits. He says the priesthood’s crisis and the Church’s crisis of soul is in part a crisis of orientation.

"Sooner or later the issue will be faced more forthrightly than it has been in the closing days of the 20th century. The longer the delay, the greater the harm to the priesthood and to the Church."

On the Crisis in the Priesthood

Priest Robert J. Egan

The Commonweal - A Catholic Weekly -August 11, 2000

Egan is a Jesuit who teaches theology and spirituality at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. This lead article, in The Commonweal, is as remarkable for its admissions as all the others. Apparently, Catholic leaders are so deeply concerned about the gradual takeover of the Catholic Church in America by homosexuals, that they are beginning to publicly write in journals primarily read by fellow priests and leaders. They want the Vatican to do something about the problem!

Here is part of Egan’s article, from The Commonweal:

"Donald B. Cozzens has published one of the most honest and thoughtful reflections on the state of the Roman Catholic priesthood in the United States that have appeared so far.

"Cozzens is president-rector and professor of pastoral theology at Saint Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in Cleveland. Although brief, The Changing Face of the Priesthood distills over 30 years of the author’s experience as a priest, college teacher, spiritual director for priests, vicar for clergy and religious, and administrator and superior of a seminary community.

"The most serious problem facing us today in arriving at a more adequate understanding of the priesthood, theologically and practicality, is a widespread inhibition of speech within the Catholic community. For various reasons, to the great detriment of the church, its credibility and its mission, too many have felt reluctant or unable to say what they see and what they think. Cozzens’ most important virtue is his courage to say what his experience has taught him. For this alone, his book deserves a wide and respectful readership.

"Cozzens invites his readers to ask themselves to what extent we in the church truly value candor and intellectual honesty. ‘Some priests have lost confidence in their chanceries and seminaries,’ he writes. ‘Even the best of bishops and chancery staffs can be caught in the grip of institutional paralysis and denial. They sense a reluctance on the part of diocesan officials to listen to the import of their own data if the data suggest structural or policy changes that are not in harmony with traditional or current church practices.

"This silence and denial affect the church’s reaction to the rising average age of the clergy, parishes without resident pastors, the closing or twinning of parishes, overwork and discouragement among priests, and clergy misconduct with minors, as well as the decreasing percentage of heterosexual men in the seminaries and the priesthood.

"In what will probably be one of the most discussed chapters in the book, Cozzens carefully— and somewhat nervously—takes up the issue of sexual orientation as it affects the priesthood. Citing several different estimates— and explaining why they can only be estimates—he seems to suggest that perhaps 50 percent of our priests and seminarians have a homosexual orientation, possibly an even higher percentage among those under forty. If this estimate is close to the truth, then half of all our priests and seminarians are being recruited from roughly 5 to 8 percent of the general population of American Catholic men. This is a very sobering statistic.

"It seems to me unreasonable to presume that the percentage of gay American Catholics who enter the seminary or religious life has risen dramatically in the last 30 years. There are altered cultural factors that tend to support the opposite assumption. Given the severity of the priest shortage, the problem isn’t that we have ‘too many’ gay men in the clergy. The problem seems to be a precipitous decline in vocations among the roughly 92 to 95 percent of American Catholic men who are heterosexual.

"Cozzens is clearly concerned about this trend, although he doesn’t claim to know what conclusions should be drawn from it. At several points, he raises a concern that heterosexual seminarians, finding themselves in social environments with a large percentage of gay men, may feel ‘destabilized’ by this experience; may suffer a loss of morale, and may interpret their sense of alienation as a sign that they do not belong in the priesthood. Although he says less about it, gay seminarians, meanwhile, often find themselves in situations that encourage repression, equivocation, and dissembling, and sometimes the kind of self-contempt that spills over in the treatment of other people.

"In concluding the book, Cozzens reviews the crises in the church that are most affecting the souls of priests today. First, of course, there is the vocation crisis: a dramatic growth in the Catholic population, a severe drop in the number of priests, and a significant rise in the average age of priests. Because of this shortage, priests work longer hours, often at multiple locations, and they retire at an older age. They work under considerable stress in a highly polarized church, and they now usually live alone. ‘Twenty years ago there was approximately one priest for every 1,000 Catholics; in 2005 the ratio is likely to be one priest to every 2,200 of the faithful.’ Already more than a quarter of Catholic parishes lack a full-time priest.

"Cozzens tries to sort out some of the factors contributing to this picture, emphasizing the reluctance of many Catholic women to encourage their sons to consider vocations to the priesthood. He concludes with strong words from an address by Father Norman Rotert, a former Kansas City-Saint Joseph vicar general:

" ‘The paternalistic attitudes, the increasing consciousness of women, the lack of appreciation for the value of celibacy, the large percentage of gay priests, the pedophilia crisis, all have so impacted our vocation recruitment efforts that I see no possibility of salvaging the priesthood, as we know it today. We must talk about the issue if we are going to find a creative solution.’

"Second, there is an authority crisis. Cozzens describes a process whereby ‘the church’s teaching office saw its power to enlighten and reconcile, to challenge and encourage, diminished by its unwillingness to listen seriously to those outside the inner corridors of the Vatican establishment.’ As a result, he argues, our bishops have ‘lost a good deal of their credibility.’ In a democratic culture, effective teaching needs to be dialogical to be persuasive. Assertion by itself in unconvincing. ‘Practicing Catholics, in large numbers,’ he says, ‘simply bracketed policies and lower-level church teachings that didn’t square with their experience.’

"Third, there is what Cozzens terms an ‘orientation crisis,’ a growing perception that priesthood is becoming or has already become a ‘gay option.’ I believe we should see this as one aspect of something broader: a crisis in the public meaning of religious celibacy. The celibate life of priests has had its ‘witness’ value considerably muddled by studies that indicate a high percentage of sexually active priests; by perceptions that half or more of our priests are homosexual, whose choice of celibacy therefore has multiple and undecidable meanings; by serious psychological, philosophical, and theological criticism of the traditional rationales for mandatory priestly celibacy, especially for the celibacy of diocesan priests; and by the deep disappointment and shock caused by sexual scandals and lawsuits involving priests, brothers, and bishops. This crisis is also related to the ‘developmental’ problems the book describes. The aura of emotional immaturity among some members of the clergy can make their celibacy look like a flight from intimacy and commitment.

"Fourth, there is an intellectual crisis. Being a responsible and engaged Catholic in our society is complicated and demanding. More than ever, the community needs leadership that is intelligent, learned, and discerning. But priests who are serving two or three parishes do not have time to do serious reading or engage in sustained reflection."

"Homosexualist Alliances Abound in Amchurch Entanglements"

Article in The Wanderer

A Roman Catholic Weekly June 8, 2000

"The emergence of the National Catholic AIDS Network [NCAN], headquartered in the scandal-plagued Santa Rosa Diocese, as a lead agency promoting AIDS education in Catholic parishes is an illustration of how the Catholic bishops have allowed homosexual activists to use church resources to promote the gay agenda.

"The NCAN enjoys official recognition by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, and has Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., as its Episcopal moderator.

"At last year’s NCAN annual gathering, Bishop Hubbard praised Cape Town South Africa Auxiliary Bishop Reginald Cawcutt as an exemplar of progressive leadership on AIDS issues in the Catholic Church.

"Cawcutt made headlines around the world earlier this year when he was exposed as the [homosexual web chat room] moderator and a regular chatter on the St. Sebastian’s Angels website for gay clerics who engaged in explicit chat about their homosexual lifestyles, expressed their contempt for the church’s moral teaching, and mocked Pope John Paul II and members of his Curia, most notably Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger."

"Irish Theologian Urges Greater Acceptance of Gays in Church"

Religious News Service March 13, 2000

"A call for Christians to welcome homosexuals into the church as a source of enrichment has come from the eminent Irish moral theologian, the R__ Enda McDonagh in a London speech to the Roman Catholic caucus of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.

"Challenging lesbian, and gay Catholics to draw on their own experience of exclusion and suffering to help bring justice and peace to church and society, McDonagh said, ‘I honestly believe the challenge for lesbian and gay Catholics now is how you can set the most of us free, enrich the community to which we belong, to let your vision and realization of the values of the kingdom be free to free us in an important way."

"Catholic Priests Are Dying of AIDS, Often in Silence"

Kansas City Star January 2000

This was a bombshell article, for it was the first one on this subject to be extensively reported in the U.S. press. It discussed the careful investigation conducted over a number of years by Thomas Crangle, a Franciscan priest in the Capuchin order in Passaic, N.J. He has extensively studied the issue of AIDS within the Catholic Church. In 1990, Crangle conducted a mail survey of hundreds of priests selected at random.

"Crangle said that of the 500 surveys he sent, 398 were returned. About 45 percent of those responding volunteered that they were gay, and 92—nearly one-fourth—said they had AIDS. ‘I was surprised,’ Crangle said. ‘I felt there was a problem, but I didn’t think it was of that magnitude.’ "

"The Battle over Gay Clergy"

Time Magazine November 13, 1989

"Just how common is homosexuality among the Catholic clergy? A September Washington Post article cited the figures of Baltimore therapist A.W. Richard Sipe, who, after 26 years of interviewing 1,000 priests, concluded that 20 percent of the nation’s Catholic clergy are gay, half of those sexually active."

In view of the fact that there are more than 50,000 priests in the United States, 20 percent would be 10,000 homosexual priests.

"Oregon Case Settled"

Associated Press October 11, 2000

The Roman Catholic Church in America has already spent millions to settle lawsuits involving sex abuse by their priests. They have now agreed to pay more millions. Both Catholic and Protestant churches have covered up cases by quickly moving sex offenders to different churches.

"Portland, Oregon—The church . . agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to 22 men who said they had been molested as far back as 50 years ago . . The amount of the settlement was kept confidential by both sides. The men had sued for $44 million . . Nationally, the church has spent millions to settle priest abuse cases over the past decade . . [The article then discusses just two other cases involving 56 victims, with awards totaling $169 million.]

"The lawsuits charged the church of failing to notify parishioners of past molestations of boys, failure to monitor his activities and advise authorities . ."

Presyterians Want Gay Pastors

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