kit,
>I don't know that any study or other definitive work has been done to show that the majority of perpetrators of sex >abuse were in fact homosexual. (Priests in the church I mean)
Dr Philip Jenkins from the University of Pennsylvania did a study on the issue about 20 years ago and has written on it over time.
His data and that of others showed that the majority of sexual abuse cases were committed by homosexual priests with young teen age boys. Few were actual pedophiles who molested children who were pre-pubescent, which is what pedophilia is by definition.
>In one sense all seminaries have a homosexual culture because they are all same sex institution.
That doesn't make them homosexual. Homosexuality is a sexual orientation where people of the same gender have sexual desires for others of the same gender.
I was in the Marines where we had all males in the units I served in. There was no homosexual culture there.
Same is true for all male schools, there isn't a homosexual culture, although there are a minority of homosexuals attending those institutions.
In the case of seminaries where there was a predominant homosexual culture, the majority of seminaries were in fact homosexuals and engaged in homosexual acts.
Heterosexuals who went to the seminary left in disgust, or were not allowed to continue on toward the priesthood because of their anti-homosexual mentality. In other words, the leadership of those seminaries were homosexuals.
Get yourself the book, "Goodbye! Good Men: How Catholic Seminaries Turned Away Two Generations of Vocations From the Priesthood," by Michael S. Rose
When the book came out, priests attacked it as being flawed. However, after the sex abuse scandals broke, the author was proven to be right in his research.
>Formation puts all men regardless of whether they are heterosexual or homosexual in an all male environment and >expects them to form bonds with other men. Seminaries geared to the secular clergy have a tradition of being woefully >inadequate at addressing subsuming sexuality within vocational life.
Bonding friendships with other men does not define a man as a homosexual.
Sexual desire and acts is what defines that orientation.
>In my experience homosexual seminarians were a bit more aware of and comfortable with their sexuality in the past >quarter century. That is quite useful for one who is remaining celibate. There were a lot of heterosexual men around >twenty to thirty years ago who left seminary as they were uncomfortable with homosexual men who were comfortable >with themselves.
Being comfortable with your sexual orientation and getting involved sexually is the problem with regards to the sex abuse scandal.
Heterosexual priests also got involved with young girls and older women, were part of the sex abuse scandal, but they were the minority of cases, although higher than actual pedophile cases.
>Ratzinger got through policies that excluded ALL homosexual men from priestly vocation. His office cooked up the >"intrinsically disordered" idea. He scapegoated homosexuals for the pedophilia scandal.
The Church teaches that homosexuality is a disorder, but the orientation of itself is not evil.
The acts are, just as all sexual acts outside of marriage.
Further, Cardinal Ratzinger did not ban all homosexuals from the priesthood, but those with strong sexual tendencies.
The same holds for heterosexual males who have strong sexual tendencies. They too are not allowed to continue in the seminaries.
Formation is more thorough today than it was in the past 100 years as it should be.
>In the years after Vatican II a lot of the heterosexual priests left to marry.
Yeah some did leave to get married, but the majority did not and remained true to their vocations.
The gay priests tended to stay. Ratzinger demoralized them. he made seminaries harbingers for heterosexual men with inordinate discomfort with gay men. He dreadfully bungled identifying pedophilia and coming up with a response to it. He had a knack for getting it wrong for everybody.
Your opinion not fact.
Jim
