VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) – Pope Francis’ second-in-command has categorically ruled out any correlation between homosexual priests and clerical sex abuse, despite substantive academic evidence to the contrary.
The Pain of the Church in the Face of Abuse
The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cdl. Pietro Parolin, dismissed links between gay clergy and sex abuse as a “serious and scientifically untenable association,” in a preface to a new book titled Il Dolore della Chiesa di Fronte agli Abusi (The Pain of the Church in the Face of Abuse).
Priests With Personality Disorders
In the book, the top cardinal, who is considered a potential papal successor to Francis, instead blames the “scourge of abuse” on “personalities that are disharmonious, severely emotionally and relationally deficient.” The book also advocates optional celibacy for Latin Rite priests.
“Homosexual orientation cannot be considered as either cause or aspect typical of the abuser, even more so when it is decoupled from the general arrangement of the person,” Parolin writes.
The book includes essays on clerical sex abuse from Gérard Daucourt, bishop emeritus of Nanterre, psychotherapist Fr. Amedeo Cencini and theologian Andrés Torres Queiruga.
In the book, Parolin argues that abuse is linked to “serious personality deficits,” and “any parceling of the person to a single datum of his or her history or personality represents a heavy and unfair a priori condemnation.”
“Human maturity: this is precisely the central, though not exclusive, aspect to be taken into serious consideration in the evaluation of those on a vocational journey, in seminaries and religious communities, and not only in the initial phase of the journey,” Parolin stresses.
Parolin also rules out any correlation between clerical celibacy and sex abuse, urging seminaries to dedicate more time and resources to the psychological vetting of priests and the formation of the full dimensions of the human person, both before and after ordination.
Ending Celibacy
However, Queiruga, in his essay on sex abuse, calls for “the possibility of optional celibacy for priests, “insisting that “there is no intrinsic connection between the need for celibacy and the call to the ministerial priesthood.”
History, psychology and sociology must be considered without simply regurgitating tradition, Queiruga writes. Ultimately, “the real question of whether or not to demand celibacy for the ministerial priesthood involves practical-pastoral discernment.”
“It would not be more reasonable and evangelically convenient to make the pastoral decision to suspend the [celibacy] requirement and admit married men to the ministerial priesthood,” the theologian adds.
On Wednesday, the Vatican published the instrumentum laboris, the working document, for the forthcoming session of the Synod on Synodality. It desired that a “reflection be opened concerning the discipline on access to the priesthood for married men, at least in some areas.”
Academics Challenge Parolin’s Conclusion
In contrast to Parolin, senior prelates as well as academics have argued that there is a correlation between the predominance of homosexuals in the Catholic priesthood in the West and the high rates of pederasty — the sexual abuse of post-pubescent boys.
“There is no question that the crisis of sexual abuse by priests in the USA is directly related to homosexuality,” Abp. Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated in 2018. He added that “90% of those abused were boys aged 12 and over. That is no longer pedophilia.”
Spanish theologian Andrés Torres Queiruga
“I think it would be naive to suggest that there’s no relationship between the two,” Broglio reiterated during his first press conference after his election last year.
In 2004, the John Jay College report titled The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States revealed that from 1950 to 2002, over 10,000 children, mostly boys, had been sexually abused by over 4,000 Catholic priests.
“Some researchers have identified a similar condition, ephebophilia, which refers to individuals who exhibit these same fantasies, urges or behaviors towards post-pubescent youths,” the report stated.
In 2011, John Jay College produced a second comprehensive report on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy titled The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950–2010.
The second report claimed that the sexual abuse had no relation to homosexuality among clergy, even though 81% of the victims were male, a conclusion that is challenged by researcher Fr. D. Paul Sullins in his peer-reviewed article titled Is Sexual Abuse by Catholic Clergy Related to Homosexuality?
Sullins writes in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, “In both the John Jay College data and the grand jury report, boys and girls were victimized in about equal numbers only for the tiny proportion of abuse involving children under age 8 (5.8 and 5 percent, respectively).”
“Of the remaining 95 percent of abuse that took place with minors aged eight to seventeen years, the overwhelming majority of incidents (83 percent in the grand jury report and 82 percent in the John Jay College data) consisted of male-on-male abuse,” Sullins observes.
Evaluating the evidence, as well as data on Catholic and Protestant abusers, Sullins notes, “Catholic abusers strongly prefer males as sexual objects or, put another way, that child sexual abuse among Catholic clergy is largely perpetrated by homosexual, not heterosexual, priests.”
“Child sexual abuse by Catholic priests does not appear to be a transient problem that has largely disappeared, Sullins concludes.” “There are almost as many allegations of abuse today as in the early 1970s.”