|
|
 Make the Church Grow Fondlers?' 70 Accused Boston-Area Clergy Out of 700 Equals 10 Percent Andrew Sullivan says Pedophilia is a Crime, Not Just a Failing |
|
Compiled by GayToday
Bill Keller, the recipient of a Roman Catholic education and author of the aforementioned Times Op-Ed, says "The more serious impediment to reform is a powerful culture of repression and denial regarding all subjects sexual." Keller calls a remark by the pope's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls "astounding." The Vatican official is seeking to confuse pedophilia and homosexuality in the public mind, thus whipping up anti-gay hysteria. Joaquin Navarro-Valls seems to be threatening a worldwide purge of even celibate gay priests because, he said, "inclinations" and not "acts" must be considered before such priests are ordained, a reversal of long-standing Catholic teaching. The ordination of any man with homosexual inclinations, he said, could be declared invalid in much the same way that marriages are annulled. "Either the (Vatican) spokesman chooses not to believe what every credible study has shown," writes Bill Keller, "that gays are far more prevalent in the priesthood than in the population at large, or he is casually proposing a whole-sale purge of the clergy." Keller asks Times readers to note that "there is no known connection between homosexuality and pedophilia." " The point is," he continues, "an institution that cannot honestly reckon with the sexual orientation of its ministry can hardly be trusted to face the question of a frightening sexual disorder." In a recent TIME essay, openly gay Roman Catholic believer Andrew Sullivan confronts his Church's predicament, writing that "the violation of a child's innocence, the betrayal of a priestly trust, the rape of a minor's very body provide about as good a definition of evil as one can find." And yet, Mr. Sullivan realizes, its a sign of near-irremediable hypocrisy when a religious body "that regularly condemns and judges so many of its congregants for comparatively minor sexual variations on the married heterosexual norm permits and covers up far worse offenses among its own."
Priest-violators and their accomplice-superiors now admit to having shielded accused priests for decades and with having bought -with many thousands of dollars collected from Catholic believers- the silence of their youthful prey. "The curse that never fails is undermining the Roman Catholic Church," an occultist-mystic told GayToday's editor. "And what's that curse?" The mystic replied: "I wish you upon yourself." |
