UNITED STATES
The Tablet
AN INVESTIGATION of all 229 seminaries in the United States begins next week in an effort, according to Vatican officials, to ensure that future priests remain celibate and obediently accept church teaching on all sexual matters. But the “Apostolic Visitation” – requested in 2002 in the wake of the American clergy’s sex abuse crisis – is already mired in controversy after it was discovered this week that investigators will be looking specifically for “evidence of homosexual-ity” in the seminaries.
The request for such evidence is part of a 13-page working paper, or “instrumentum laboris” (IL), that the Congregation for Education in Rome formulated to guide the visitations. It has fuelled speculation that the Vatican is set to issue an official ban on homosexuals entering seminaries, even if they have never engaged in sexual activity. An unconfirmed report on Monday from the United States-based Catholic World News agency said Pope Benedict had already approved the stricture in the form of an “instruction”, which would be published later this year by the Congregation for Education.
Several American commentators haveclaimed that the Vatican is orchestrating a gay witch-hunt, while several prominent Church leaders have expressed fears that homosexually oriented priests were being unfairly targeted as scapegoats for the sex abuse crisis. “The public discussions that have taken place so far have indicated a kind of discrimination, not against behaviour, but against identity,” said Fr Bob Silva, president of theAbuse Tracker Federation of Priests’ Councils in the United States.