UNITED STATES
Des Moines Register
By SHIRLEY RAGSDALE
REGISTER RELIGION EDITOR
September 26, 2005
Vatican-appointed investigators begin this week reviewing 229 U.S. Catholic seminaries for evidence of a homosexual culture and faculty dissent from church teaching.
Advocates for gay priests and seminarians say the audit is a witch hunt. Church and seminary officials say the examination will reassure Catholics that potential child abusers are not being trained for the priesthood.
The "Apostolic Visitation" comes as Catholics await publication of a new Vatican policy barring gay men from ordination and after the Rev. Edwin O'Brien, the archbishop supervising the seminary review, has said that "anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations" should not consider the priesthood.
"The church hierarchy is attempting to scapegoat gay people for its own failure to address the sexual abuse of children and young people that it alone created and covered up," said Matt Foreman,Abuse Tracker Gay and Lesbian Task Force spokesman who grew up Catholic and has relatives in the priesthood. "The evil in this is that they are trying to equate being gay with sex abuse, which is appalling."