Survey: Crisis of Gay Men Plagues Priesthood, Seminaries

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DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) - Faithful Catholics agree: there's a crisis of gay clergy in the Church.

In a recent survey, Church Militant asked, "Do you believe there is a crisis of homosexual men in the priesthood and seminaries?"

Of 5,943 respondents, 5,624 — 94.64 percent — responded: "Yes, it's a crisis." One-hundred and thirty, or 2.19 percent answered, "No, it's overblown," while 189, or 3.18 percent, were undecided.

Faithful Catholics recognize that the decades-long sex abuse crisis (the McCarrick scandal being just the latest chapter) of minors, seminarians and young priests is rooted in homosexuality. This understanding is backed by evidence: Multiple studies confirm clerical sex abuse is a crisis not of pedophilia but of homosexuality.

In a 2017 report on the clerical sex abuse crisis, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) found that "Eighty-one percent of the victims were male," and when the age of the victim was determined, only "one in ten were under age ten." The report further confirmed that these findings were "similar to those reported for year 2015."

Supported by a research team from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in 2004 the National Review Board released its initial report. Again, the results were conclusive: Eighty percent of the alleged victims were male, and nearly 90 percent were post-pubescent, with "only a small percentage of priests receiving allegations of abusing young children." An updated report, issued in 2011, revealed similar numbers: 81 percent of sex abuse victims were boys, and 78 percent were post-pubescent.

Since former Cdl. Theodore McCarrick's crimes were exposed publicly in June, a raft of priests, former priests and seminarians have stepped forward to confirm the homosexual crisis in the U.S. Church.

"The presence of homosexual activity among bishops and seminarians was so widespread and connected especially in seminaries," Fr. Regis Scanlon recently observed, "that it is impossible to believe that it was not known to many, if not most, of the bishops in the United States — especially to high-ranking prelates who deal with the daily affairs of the Church, like problems in seminaries.

The crisis isn't strictly an American phenomenon; homosexuals infest seminaries across the West.

On June 1, Vaticanista Marco Tossati published an interview with Abbot Faria, an Italian monk with an insider's perspective on the gay clergy crisis. Faria confirmed the root of the sex abuse epidemic is homosexuality in the priesthood, not pedophilia.

"Crimes against pre-pubescent minors are horrendous, but the enormous scourge is that of priests (often with homosexual tendencies) who practice ephebophilia," he explained.

"And even if it is true that only a fraction of homosexuals has this tendency," he added, "it is also true that many of them (with a tendency towards ephebophilia) have thought the priesthood is a good shelter to better continue their practices undisturbed."

Check out Church Militant's #CatholicMeToo coverage here.

"In short, homosexuality in the clergy is at levels that are beyond alarming," Faria warned.

Tossati's article was published just days after 48 Honduran seminarians issued a collective letter denouncing an "epidemic" of homosexuality in their Tegucigalpa seminary.

Complaining of "gravely immoral situations, above all of an active homosexuality inside the seminary," they revealed Honduran Church authorities were covering up the epidemic.

"The reality of this problem in the seminary can no longer be concealed," the young men wrote. "[W]e need you formators to become aware and apply the solution that the Church proposes in these cases," they added, calling for a reinvigoration of "the processes of discernment of candidates in each diocese."

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