A Vatican Investigation

Reuters: Vatican's search for gays in seminaries raises alarm---

BOSTON (Reuters) - A Vatican investigation of U.S. seminaries for evidence of homosexuality, sparked by a scandal over pedophile priests, infuriated gay rights advocates on Friday.

Teams of American Church officials will visit 229 seminaries, which train about 4,500 future priests, beginning this month and ending in spring, U.S. church officials said.

The Catholic Church demands celibacy of its priest and gay activists said the latest review amounted to a witchhunt.

The Vatican approved the seminary review, known as an apostolic visitation and the first in America since 1983, in response to the sexual abuse crisis that erupted in 2002 and triggered lawsuits by thousands of people abused by priests.

"There should not be any doubts about the lifestyle the priests ought to live," said Monsignor Francis Maniscalco, spokesman at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "It is an evaluation of seminaries to see if they are doing their job."

It certainly has taken the Vatican long enough to look into this. Such behavior is not in line with the Bible or Catholic Church teachings, no matter what Liberal "Catholics" say.

But no surprise that the gay activists are all upset. Wah wah.

Gay rights advocates such as Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, said the Church was making gay men scapegoats for pedophiles.

"You have this massive problem within the Catholic Church and the Church's response to it, in one sweeping gesture, seems to be 'we're going to travel around the country and ask people if they are gay'," Solmonese said.

"What the Church is doing, to the outside observer who reads this, is immediately equating gay men with the abuse that is going on here that is perpetuating something that is absolutely not true."

The real problem is the Church's fixation on celibacy, said Daniel C. Maguire, a professor of moral theology at Marquette, a Jesuit university in Wisconsin.

"I see it (the investigation) as a diversionary tactic away from the real problem of Catholic clergy which is enforced celibacy," he said. "It's highly unrealistic. I would call it a failed experiment in human control." he said.

He said some studies he had read estimated about 50 percent of students studying at U.S. seminaries were now gay, and he believed the review could ultimately drain the Church of future priests.

"It's an impossible plan because if they eliminate the gays they are going to eliminate half their clergy in some of their places," he said.

I would like to know what Daniel C. Maguire proposes we do? Allow Priests to fornicate? That's against Church teachings and what the Bible says. Allow Priests to marry? That's got to be the first time a Liberal has suggested marriage would solve something. Liberals always seem to be about "free love" and being irresponsible.

If the Catholic Church has to eliminate half their clergy in some places, then so be it. Living a homosexual lifestyle is sinful, immoral, and not what Catholic Priests ought to be doing.

Really, though, it is no surprise that Maguire is "a professor of moral theology at Marquette." Jesuits have become the Leftists of the Catholic Church. And Jesuit Universities are Liberal Think Tanks.