Apparently the Catholic Church thinks they have solved the problem of pedophilia in the priesthood - by trying to filter out homosexual candidates.
The authors said screening would help avoid "tragic situations" caused by what they termed psychological defects.
The guidance says the voluntary tests should also aim to vet for those with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies".
Among other traits that might make a candidate unsuitable for the priesthood, the advice lists "uncertain sexual identity," "excessive rigidity of character" and "strong affective dependencies".
Ummm...yeah...good luck with that. I imagine that the usual techniques involving hot pokers and the like will extract the "truth" from candidates too.
Utterly laughable is the idea that there is some kind of knowable and predictable test of someone's sexual identity. (There is, but it depends entirely upon the individual's desire to be open about their sexuality)
Tests for sexual identity, like any other personality attribute, are fairly hard to assess. I suspect the Church's hunt for homosexuals attempting to enter the clergy will be only marginally more successful than past attempts to unearth "witches".
5 comments:
The Catholic Church seems to be using its clergy as a test battle ground in preparation for a bigger Blitzkreig against gays and lesbians in mainstream society.
Father Alphonse de Valk will no doubt be leading the charge, waving his Catholic Insight magazine as their war banner.
Can the Stepehne Harper, Larry Spencer, and Randy White types be far behind??
So, a possible outcome of this is the creation of an underground catholic movement called:
(G)ay, (H)olymen, (A)ssisting, (S)piritual, (T)eaching.
This would give the church 'justification' to start another inquisition in order to hunt down and prosecute all GHASTs. In order for the church to successfully do this they could arrange for a price to be put on the head of each and every member of GHAST. This of course would result in the global increase of the price of GHAST.
SB
That was a ghastly pun!
It is always a source of amusement to me that this proposal is aimed at eliminating any new "trouble makers" from joining the ranks of the clergy. There is never any movement to have the existing staff reviewed for anti-social tendencies.
Woodwose:
I think that there is a fundamental problem with the opening assertion that a priest with a homosexual identity is a problem.
There's an even bigger issue with the fact that the Church hierarchy continues to propagate the false association that implicates homosexuality and pedophilia as related conditions.
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