This causes me to wonder whether the Church should be ordaining homosexuals at all. I know what the CCC teaches us about how homosexuals should be treated, respected and helped as they have an extra heavy cross to bear, but I don’t think that that means that we should ignore this spiritual affliction any more than we would let a visually impaired person drive the bus. By doing so we are doing them a diservice and playing with fire. On the otherhand I have no doubt that there have been Priests with a homosexual orientation who have recognised it for what it is and have never engaged in homosexual acts and have lived chaste lives and served the Lord faithfully.
The Church no longer ordains homosexuals or those with a same-sex attraction, and hasn’t done so since 2005. Pope Benedict, as part of his crusade to stop abuse within the Church, changed the policy that permitted those with an SSA to enter holy orders as long as they promised to stay celibate. Pope Benedict ordered in 2005 that the Church “cannot admit in seminaries nor give access to the sacred Orders to those who practice homosexuality, who present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called gay culture.” In conjunction with this and other policies, abuse rates plummeted.
Jacataqua, I’ll cross post something I wrote on another thread, as your husband may find the link and information of interest.
The USCCB does an annual audit of all allegations of abuse within the Catholic Church in the U.S. It is published in April for the previous year, so I don’t think 2012 is available yet.
Here is the last report:
usccb.org/issues-and-action/c…ual-report.pdf
The report notes that:
In 2010, only 8 allegations were considered credible by law enforcement.
I’d say the reforms by Pope Benedict are working. The small number of cases are themselves still too many, but show definite improvement in how the Church handles problems, its youth protection programs, and seminary admissions and faith formation policies.
So even for the older cases, 45% of all priests who were accused for 2011 were already deceased, 75% of all priests who were accused for 2011 are either deceased, already removed from ministry, already laicized, or missing; and over 90% of all abuse accusations last year allege incidents from at least two decades ago (the most common time period was from almost 40 years ago: 1975-1979).
Again, this is not to excuse the horrible crimes that did occur, but Pope Benedict made the hard decisions. He correctly recognized the institutional problems and pushed for changes back in the 1980s, as even the NY Times had to acknowledge:
nytimes.com/2010/12/02/wo…pope.html?_r=0
Why do Catholics get singled out? Many people hate an organization that says the individual and the government is not the source of moral authority, God is, and that in fact, God established our Church. As many people wish to usurp the role of God, that is a threat to them, and they will do anything they can to tear down the Church because of the failings of its human members. Other institutions get a pass.
The incredible rate of abuse and institutional cover-up in other religions, in schools, in medical care facilities, in juvenile correctional facilities, in the media and the entertainment industry (see the BBC scandal, Michael Jackson, Roman Polanski, and many others) and politics continues and dwarfs the past and certainly the current rate of abuse in the Church.
The Christian Science Monitor reported that
Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers.
These are findings from national surveys by Christian Ministry Resources (CMR), a tax and legal-advice publisher serving more than 75,000 congregations and 1,000 denominational agencies nationwide.
CMR’s annual surveys of about 1,000 churches nationwide have asked about sexual abuse since 1993. They’re a remarkable window on a problem that lurked largely in the shadows of public awareness until the Catholic scandals arose.
The surveys suggest that over the past decade, the pace of child-abuse allegations against American churches has averaged 70 a week. The surveys registered a slight downward trend in reported abuse starting in 1997, possibly a result of the introduction of preventive measures by churches.
Any institution with young people in it will attract predators, as the evil are attracted to and prey on the innocence of the young.
Just yesterday in my hometown newspaper, there was an investigative report on the sexual abuse of juveniles and resulting coverup in state juvenile treatment centers for abuse and addiction in Arizona:
azcentral.com/news/articl…nclick_check=1
