Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Vatican's search for gays in seminaries raises alarm (Reuters)

Caccia alle Streghe in USA?
 Vatican's search for gays in seminaries raises alarm
By Jason Szep  Fri Sep 16, 5:48 PM ET
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."
Underpinning concerns among U.S. Church leaders and conservative 
Catholics is a 2004 survey by John Jay College of Criminal Justice that 
found that, of 10,667 individuals abused by priests between 1950 and 
2002, 81 percent were male.
Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, a conservative 
Catholic journal, expects the review to lead to a ban by the Vatican on 
gays in America's seminaries. "Is there a particular concern about 
homosexuality? Sure," he said.
Edwin O'Brien, archbishop for the United States military who is 
supervising the seminary review, told The National Catholic Register 
that even gays who have been celibate for 10 or more years should not 
be admitted to seminaries.
Brian Saint-Paul, editor of the Catholic journal "Crisis," said he 
hoped the probe would not spark a witchhunt in the priesthood but that 
it was long overdue. "It's like having a heterosexual young man live in 
an all-female dorm," he said. It's not a reasonable position to put 
someone in."
Faculty members, seminarians and graduates from the last three years 
will be interviewed confidentially in the review, which was agreed when 
U.S. Cardinals visited the Vatican in April 2002 to discuss the abuse 
scandal, Maniscalco said.
"SCAPEGOAT"
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.

Ma 'sta notizia te tiene sveglio pure attè alle 3:48 ...O vivi da ste parti?
Dormi solo colla parte destra e l'occhio sinistro (canale di luna)
e`spalancato !??
(--) (@)    :)))
Giano
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