UNITED STATES
Newsday
BY CAROL EISENBERG
STAFF WRITER
September 16, 2005
An intensive review of more than 220 Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States, including those in New York and Long Island, will look for "evidence of homosexuality," faculty dissent from church teaching and how seminaries monitor men's behavior outside school, according to a Vatican document.
The visitations by teams of bishops and seminary officials are slated to begin later this month against the backdrop of a papal review of a long-awaited document on whether gay men should be ordained as priests.
"The overall focus of the visitations is on the formation for celibacy," said Msgr. Francis Maniscalco, spokesman for the U.S. bishops conference.
"There's a special issue today with regard to homosexuality because we live in an era of gay rights, where some people have said that this is a permissible way to live, and even a priest might think he can be a priest even though he's active in a homosexual way, or an advocate of a homosexual lifestyle. Things like that need to be dealt with."