catholic

Tests for would-be priests to bar gays | The Australian

Richard Owen, Rome | November 01, 2008

CANDIDATES for the Catholic priesthood should undergo psychological tests to screen out heterosexuals unable to control their sexual urges and men with strong homosexual tendencies, the Vatican says in a document released yesterday.

In the document -- the second in three years to deal with the effects of a sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the church since it first emerged six years ago -- the Vatican says the early detection of "sometimes pathological" psychological defects of men before they become priests would help avoid tragic experiences.

Seminary rectors and other officials should use outside experts if they cannot handle the screening themselves, it says.

"The church ... has a duty of discerning a vocation and the suitability of candidates for the priestly ministry," says the document from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education.

"The priestly ministry ... requires certain abilities as well as moral and theological virtues, which are supported by a human and psychic -- and particularly affective -- equilibrium, so as to allow the subject to be adequately predisposed for giving of himself in the celibate life."

Vatican officials said the tests would not be obligatory but decided on a case-by-case basis when seminary rectors wanted to be sure a man was qualified for the priesthood.

The testing by a psychologist or psychotherapist should aim to detect "grave immaturity" and imbalances in the candidates' personalities, the document says.

"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. If this should be the case, the path of formation will have to be interrupted," it says.

The Vatican says it is "not enough to be sure that (a candidate) is capable of abstaining from sexual activity". Seminary rectors also need to "evaluate his sexual orientation".

At a news conference, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, head of the Vatican department that prepared the document, was asked why a man with deep-seated homosexual tendencies could not become a priest, while one with deep-seated heterosexual tendencies could.

Cardinal Grocholewski said homosexuality was "a deviation, an irregularity and a wound" that did not allow priests to carry out their mission properly.

The sexual abuse scandal, first uncovered in the US in 2002, spread throughout the world and mostly involved abuse of teenage boys by priests.

Gay groups have accused the church of using homosexuals as scapegoats for the abuse scandals.

The Vatican document says men with strong homosexual tendencies should not be admitted to the priesthood but it also makes references to the control of heterosexual urges.

Men should be barred from entering the priesthood if psychological testing makes it "evident that the candidate has difficulty living chastity in celibacy: that is, if celibacy for him is lived as a burden so heavy that it compromises his affective and relational equilibrium".

Rectors cannot force candidates to undergo psychological testing, but the main purpose of the document seems to be to encourage its use to avoid future scandals.

The Times