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	Professor's View: Witch Hunt for Gay Priests off Base When Target Should Be Child Abusers By Iver Bogen Duluth News Tribune April 25, 2010 http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/166856/group/Opinion/ Pope Benedict XVI in August 2005 ordered an investigation of America’s 229 Catholic seminaries in order to eliminate gay seminarians. The week of Sept. 27, Vatican investigators began the “witch-hunt” at the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. The question posed to the students: “Are you, or have you ever been, a homosexual?” Pope Benedict XVI in August 2005 ordered an investigation of America’s 229 Catholic seminaries in order to eliminate gay seminarians. The week of Sept. 27, Vatican investigators began the “witch-hunt” at the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. The question posed to the students: “Are you, or have you ever been, a homosexual?” The investigation was reminiscent of the house arrest of Galileo in his home near Florence from 1633 until his death in 1642 for espousing the Copernican heliocentric view of the universe. The church does not suffer “heretical” thinking well and is extremely slow in altering its doctrines to be consistent with scientific progress as well as changes in cultural mores regarding acceptable human behaviors. In the 1994 edition of the Catholic Catechism, the church had this to say about homosexuality: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” Such pronouncements conflict with what psychologists and biologists tell us about homosexuality. Homosexuality is not listed as a psychological disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. It is termed as sexual and emotional attraction to members of the same gender. It is a given aspect of one’s self which has unspecified genetic implications. Although there is flexibility in human sexual responses to persons of the same and other genders, homosexual orientations are not considered a personal choice and are quite resistant to any alterations. Variations exist as to the percentage of homosexual men in our culture. Typically, sexologists indicate that it is somewhere between 2 percent and 10 percent. There is no hard data available as to the number of priests who indicate they are gay. In an earlier study, 15 percent indicated they were homosexual. However, recent literature tends to place this at a higher estimate. Because of the stance taken by the church, admitting to being gay could surely create apprehension. It is apparent that this inquiry into the sexual orientations of seminarians is a crisis as a result of the pedophilic acting-out of some priests. It is evident the church sees a link between this recent crisis and homosexual, not heterosexual, clerics. According to Fred S. Berlin, associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, “There is no evidence that a male homosexual is any more risk to a boy than a male heterosexual is to a girl. … One of the problems within the church is that they are confusing homosexuality with child abuse and pedophilia.” It is my belief the Catholic Church’s focus on gay priests is merely a strategy for affixing blame and is consistent with its historical antipathy toward homosexuality and same-sex behaviors. However, research in the area of child sexual abuse suggests that pedophilic intrusions occur preponderantly with heterosexual males rather than gay men. It is not one’s orientation that is predictive of pedophilia. According to Dr. Nathaniel McConaghy, “The man who offends against prepubertal or immediately postpubertal boys is typically not sexually interested in older men or women.” Being immature psycho-sexually, these men find themselves responding sexually to other males who also are immature. One’s orientation is not predictive of pedophilia. When men enter the priesthood, they take vows of celibacy and chastity. These quasi “contractual” arrangements deprive priests of sexual contacts with persons of their own age group and of marriage. Being deprived of these relationships with other mature persons, sexual expression is more likely to be invested in immature youth (male and female). Furthermore, chastity is also part of vows for entrance. Chastity is defined by Webster as “purity.” Does this mean that the rest of us who are enjoying connecting sexually with others are impure? What century are these folks living in? It would seem that these vows of celibacy and chastity contribute to the sexual isolation of some men of the cloth and to their seeking to express sexual energy in ways in which we consider inappropriate. Sexual orientation does not always determine our expression of our sexuality. The Kinsey Reports on human sexual behavior reported that 38 percent of males have had at least one same-gender sexual experience resulting in orgasm. It is evident that sexual behavior is flexible irrespective of orientation. It is well known that same-gender sexual activities occur between some men who are imprisoned. When they are released, they return to their more typical mode of behavior. It is evident that the Catholic Church is experiencing a critical cultural lag in many of its prohibitions involving some aspect of sexuality. The area of homosexuality is one. Lust, contraception, masturbation, abortion, celibacy and chastity, and the role of female clerics are others. There is evidence that the American public is changing its attitudes, condoning marriage between gay adults, passing laws consistent with the equal protection clause for gays in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, gay men and women asserting their orientations by “coming out,” and mainline churches supporting the ordination of gay preachers. Pope Benedict XVI is using his power to assert public policies that are less and less supported by Catholic parishioners through their private behaviors and in their public pronouncements. How will the church strategize change? Iver Bogen is a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
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