Indeed. I know someone who is in charge of that process in a seminary. In confidential examination, candidates are required to be frank about their sexuality, and questions are designed to identify those who (a) have not integrated their sexuality healthfully within their concept of self, and/or, (b) provide deceptive or ambiguous answers, and/or (c) failed to resolve any internal ambiguity about their sexuality, and/or (d) are not inclined toward discipline when it comes to sexual acting out.
Naturally, a particularly randy heterosexual who seems immature in this department (incapable of self-control) would also be inappropriate.
The measurement, as it has been explained to me, is the level of attachment to sexual interest and pursuit, as well as the relationship between personal identity and sexuality.
Second, any prejudice toward one’s own sex is directly in conflict with the nature of celibacy, which has as its goal universal and “disinterested” charity. Even someone who is chaste but has an orientation of consistent preference would be unsuitable, as an all-male residential environment would intensify such “exclusive” tendencies. The priesthood is not a club for either overt attraction or covert attraction (replacing quasi-erotic attraction for the physical variety).
Someone in another forum (I will call Mr. UK) a while back and I had an honest discussion on homosexuality. He was very nice and gracious, asked if I was gay or was struggling with same sex attraction myself. I suppose when one speaks or writes against homosexuality or gay ‘marriage,’ one can be or get accused of harboring yet
denying homosexual feelings. I replied that a married woman (to one man) like me all these years with two grown sons could be a ‘secret’ lesbian, but no, I said, I am not one or have ever struggled with sexuality. However, the issue struck close to home with a family member having this heavy cross, so I have compassion to those so afflicted. It is not compassion that affirms it as a neutral or good thing. Or to be celebrated!
Mr. UK later on admitted to being a homosexual himself, and as a young man did not know how to live with it. He entered the seminary, and guess what, that is where he met his first boyfriend and had his first homosexual relationship. They were “in love” and both left the seminary and carried on. As stories of most who surrender to the weakness go, he went through a series of and promiscuous homosexual affairs. He is now middle aged, unbelieving but grateful that he had not contracted AIDS / HIV.
I imagine there were homosexual seminary applicants who succeeded in putting their best face and efforts to get in, and even go the length of formation thru ordination, even rising to position of high rank in the Church. And the Church is ever hopeful of redemption and rehabilitation. You just know how such candidate profile for the priesthood, with enough of them in the hierarchy, could turn into a systemic problem for the church. Spiritual and moral rot undermining the authority of Holy Mother Church, that her enemies inside and outside are all too glad to see.
The former pope valiantly worked to get rid of the problem. The current one, who had need to defend himself as a Son of the Church, needs our prayers in battling the problem of gay priests. It is not just simple judgmentalism that the media and secular society including Catholic posters with a liberal slant are magnifying.
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