ARIZONA
The Arizona Republic
Michael Clancy
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 24, 2005 12:00 AM
The Catholic Church is close to banning gay priests as a partial remedy to the sex-abuse scandal that has rocked American dioceses from coast to coast.
But priests and parishioners wonder whether keeping gay men out of the priesthood is the answer.
"We are less interested in the orientation of priests and more interested in their psychological and spiritual maturity," said Paul Pfaffenberger of Mesa, a parishioner at St. Anne in Gilbert and head of the local Survivors' Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.
Other Catholics, like Tom Van Dyke of Phoenix, say that as long as a priest is celibate, it makes no difference if he is gay.
"It all goes back to celibacy," he said. "That is too big a burden to put on somebody."
The anticipated crackdown follows word from the Vatican that an upcoming review of 229 American seminaries, called an Apostolic Visitation, will include questions about gay behavior. The inspections were ordered as a result of the sex-abuse scandal that implicated dioceses nationwide, including Phoenix and Tucson.