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Loading ...Vatican calls for psych tests to weed out gays
10.30.2008 2:48pm EDT
(Vatican City) The Vatican said Thursday it is considering psychological testing for prospective priests to screen out candidates “with strong homosexual tendencies” and heterosexuals “unable to control their sexual urges.”
The document, released by Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education, said that early detection of “sometimes pathological defects” would help avoid tragic experiences – a veiled reference to the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Church and which the Vatican has blamed on homosexuality, despite evidence showing no link between sexual orientation and pedophilia.The Vatican said that testing would be decided on a case-by-case basis when seminary rectors feared a prospective priest had “grave immaturity.”
“Such areas of immaturity would include strong affective dependencies; notable lack of freedom in relations; excessive rigidity of character; lack of loyalty; uncertain sexual identity; deep-seated homosexual tendencies, etc.”
The document also said that it was “not enough to be sure that [a candidate for the priesthood] is capable of abstaining from sexual activity” but also to “evaluate his sexual orientation.”
Gay groups have accused the Church of using homosexuals as scapegoats for the abuse scandals.
In 2005, the Vatican ordered a major evaluation of U.S. seminaries to look for evidence of homosexuality. It said that men with “deep-seated” homosexual tendencies shouldn’t be ordained, but that those with a “transitory problem” could become priests if they had overcome them for three years.
It is unknown how many gay priests have been forced out of seminaries and the Vatican Thursday declined to give specifics.
I stopped going to mass. From what the Pope keeps saying I wonder if he’s ever read the Gospels? He as I see it has nothing in common with the teachings of Jesus. And my Holy Father is on the throne in Heaven, not the Vatican.
Hmmm. Perhaps they should use the psych tests to weed out the narrow-minded intolerant nutcases instead? Nah. That’d leave them nobody in the seminaries. Sigh…
This reminds me of the comment in To Be Or Not To Be when Mel Brooks is told that
the Nazis are rooting out Jews, gypsies,
and gays from the theater.
He said there wouldn’t be much of theater
left.
Apparently, they choose to forget most pedophiles are heterosexual… Or maybe they want to encourage that!
More proof that the administrations of Lesage and Zapatero did not go far enough in secularizing their respective societies. But this position is consistent with Pope Nazinger’s record of hate and support for Adolf Hitler.
This is the outfit that murdered tens of millions of Arabs with the crusades, no wonder those people, who culturally remember their Holocaust find it so easy to hate us.
And the same church that spawned the hatred of the Jews for millenia. use of this “hate lever” that gave hitler absolute power, and then we got wWII.
And after the war, the church gave a significant number of passports to nazis’ so they could escape to South America.
And they made their priests into perverts, by turning sex into some kind of frankenstein forbidden puritanic monster for their alter boys just reaching puberty. No wonder, when nature took over decades later, these people picked up where they had left off on sexual development, as virtual kids looking for kids with which to experiment.
We should pray for the good people, like my neighbor, a Good Catholic, who while he believes, says that gay people should have all the legal rights of marriage, though he admits he struggles with that particular term. And we can hope that he and millions of other Catholics will join the Episcopal Church, which is in the process of telling its bigots to go take a hike.
And to the Pope, who in his previous job is best described as head of the chuches KGB, designed to root out and prevent any moderation of their thousand year old backwardness.
And a Pope who in his youth at about age 17 said “Seig Heil, Mein Fuhrer”. Young or not, his hands are stained by association with one of history’s greatest monstrosities. I could forgive him if he was a priest. But the head of the church – no way, Jose.
And his actions show that he learned his lessons well. In his youth. It is only the victims that have changed, as it became unfashionable after the Jewish holocaust to spread hatred about Jesus own people.
Someday the history of this church will be written. It will be an abject lesson in how power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and think of how one thinking they have the power of God corrupts even more.
Wonderful – They will have no priests, or their whole group of priests will come out of the closet.
And we will be rid of this backwards looking institution, whose prime goal seems to be power, money, control.
The roots of all evil.
Steve Said: “I would strongly suggest that you point the finger at the Magisterium of the Church, and not the whole church in general.”
In the same way we should condemn the terrorists, yet not those who morally and financially support the terrorists? If some Catholics are opposed to official Vatican doctrine, then why not simply choose another denomination from within which to worship “God”? Why be part of an organization whose official policy is one of hatred and intolerance? Do the enablers of such doctrine bear any less guilt by association, any less blood on their hands, than the perpetrators of such a policy?
So lets assume the Roman Church CAN weed out all gay men. What will they do when the child molestations continue? Pedophiles are very canny about how they present themselves. The RCC gets rid of gays but that isn’t the problem since gay men are interested in men not children. So now what do you do Mr. Potato Head? aka Il Papa
Amen, John.
People don’t seek to become a priest to uphold a flawed ideology, but because they believe they are called by God to serve his people. I would strongly suggest that you point the finger at the Magisterium of the Church, and not the whole church in general. There are many, many, many Catholics (priests included) who don’t seek to exclude anyone, and many of them would agree with many of us who are posting here. I’m not going to give up my faith because of what some ignorant people in Rome have to say, because they have absolutely no infulence in the lives of the people in the pews. The blame/fault lies with the Magisterium, not the Church (the people of God). Don’t miss the forest for the trees…….my faith is not rooted in the ruling class of the church. And BTW, God also knows the difference.