ited in this Update, the bishops of the Marriage and Family Life Committee want to encourage parents and families to accept, love and walk together with their gay son or lesbian daughter. The homosexual crisis of the church’s doctrinal and behavioral integrity will be revealed more from within the system than from the outside. Priests themselves will bring it to resolution or perpetuate duplicity and abuse.A notice posted on the main bulletin board of The North American College in Rome — the premier seminary for outstanding candidates for the priesthood selected from dioceses in the United States—reads, OVERT HOMOSEXUALITY WILL NOT BE TOLERATED IN THIS SEMINARY. The linguistic ambiguity cannot be missed; nor the unintentional humor. Is covert homosexuality tolerable? Is homosexual behavior outside the seminary acceptable? What is unmistakable is that homosexuality is a confusing subject in Catholic teaching. It is a perplexing problem in moral doctrine and practice at the very heart of the celibate/sexual system. There are consistent reports that 20% of seminarians experience homosexual contact during the years of their training.A 1980 study of 50 gay priests by a Roman Catholic priest was startling, and it remains so . Only 4% of that group were sexually abstinent; the other 90-plus % had abandoned the celibate process. The priests in the study ranged in age from 27 to 58. They averaged 226.8 sexual partners each, “Of some note is the fact that nine respondents (18 percent) in this sample had no more than ten partners total, while eleven (22 percent) reported five hundred or more, Kinsey found that 39.2 percent of his sample had no more than ten partners, while 8.4 percent reported having more than five hundred” (pp. 26-27). Sixty percent of the group reported feeling free of guilt; only 26% reported feeling guilty (p. 94). Eighty-six percent of this group considered themselves happy or somewhat happy; onl...
