Berkshire Eagle
Editorial
Thursday, December 01
The Vatican document issued this week strongly reinforcing the church's ban on homosexual priests will further inflame an issue that has divided Catholics. More practically, the ban, apparently a misguided attempt to address the pedophile problem afflicting the priesthood, is likely to make considerably worse a shortage of priests that is felt throughout the Catholic community, including in the commonwealth.
The well-documented abuse of young boys by Catholic priests in America has cost the church millions of dollars in damages and perhaps even more significantly the trust and support of many Catholics. The scandal was magnified a thousand-fold by the decision of church leaders to protect pedophiles by shuffling them from parish to parish, where they could continue to prey on the young, in some cases for decades. When the Vatican belatedly acknowledged the problem it did nothing to discipline those who protected pedophiles beyond hauling Cardinal Bernard Law of the Boston Archdiocese to Rome before he found himself under indictment.
Rather than address the institutional problem of a relatively few pedophiles whose crimes are repeated under the protection of their superiors, the Vatican decided to equate homosexuality with pedophilia and close the door to the priesthood for all gays. Though the ban does not extend to currently ordained priests, it may cause the principled resignations of gay priests who have long served their parishes well. It also narrows the demographic of potential priests to heterosexual men who pledge to remain celibate, which is a poor way to deal with an alarming shortage of priests.