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Essay on Gay Priest
AIDS has quietly caused the deaths of hundreds of Roman Catholic priests in the United States, although other causes may be listed on some of their death certificates, the Kansas City Star reported today. The newspaper said its examination of death certificates and interviews with experts indicates several hundred priests have died of AIDS-related illnesses since the mid-1980s. The death rate of priests from AIDS is at least four times that of the general population, the newspaper said. Kansas City Bishop Raymond Boland says the AIDS deaths show that priests are human.
The Roman Catholic Church faces a double-headed crisis: sexual abuse corrupting the priesthood and mismanagement by bishops who allowed such abuses to continue for decades (Bouldrey, 1995). Some of the fundamental questions need to be addressed include: Who can be a priest? What training do they need to be the exemplars of holiness their vocation requires? Do homosexuals qualify? (Horner, 1978) Everyone acknowledges there are gay priests. A national random survey of priests by The Kansas City Star in 2000 found 15% considered themselves homosexual, 5% bisexual. In the 1970s, certain seminaries were dubbed "pink palaces" for their homosexual subcultures, says the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the religion journal First Things. And while Neuhaus says there are "many fine gay priests," he says homosexuals molesting teen boys, not pedophiles attacking children, are the lion's share of the men accused in abuse cases.
The church's official position is that homosexual orientation is not sinful but homosexual activity is. Priests are required to be both celibate (unmarried) and chaste (sexually abstinent) but need not be virgins to apply to seminary (Ritley, 1997).I'll say it flat out: No, homosexuals should not be priests," says the Rev. John McCloskey, an outspoken conservative who says homosexuals are less able to stay chaste.....
