The Vatican's real scandal: LA Times editorial

[emad]

The Vatican's real scandal


IF ITS PURPOSE IS TO UNDERLINE the church's stance that homosexuality is immoral, then the Vatican's policy barring many gays from the priesthood counts as a success. But if its aims also are to stem sexual abuse and make priests more effective chaplains, as it implies, then the directive is both illogical and ill-informed.

Most of the molestation cases in the Roman Catholic Church have involved male victims. But that's a far cry from indicating that most gay priests are potential molesters.

Beyond that, the new church instructions create artificial definitions of homosexuality. The ban on gay priests extends only to those with "deep-seated" homosexual tendencies or those who support a "gay culture" in the form of movies or books. There are no such tidy lines in the world of sexuality. Even if there were, they wouldn't necessarily say anything about a man's chastity or empathy.

Focused on homosexuality rather than on sexual behavior, the instructions leave plenty of room for criticism that they are inconsistent about sexual morality. Heterosexual intercourse outside of marriage is also frowned upon by church doctrine. But there are no explicit requirements that straight men must not support the widespread culture of movies or literature that depict such behavior.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-priest4dec04,0,6828774.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

[xchrom]

1. it's not about gay priests -- it is about smoke and mirrors.

it won't be just gay priest who leave the church -- this marks a radical approach to people who are liberal thinkers.

the folks who head the vatican are not under educated -- they KNOW there is no correlation between homosexuality and molestation -- but they feel like they need a scapegoat -- and they need a purge of more than just gay priests to help pull this off.

[CatholicEdHead]

2. It is about scapegoats to discreit the movement since Vatican II

and encourage a more "pure, orthodox church". Every time you look at church history over this, nothing good has come out of these periods of time.