PURITAN NEWS WEEKLY

www.puritans.net/news/

03/03/04

 

 

SODOMY IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTHOOD

 

 

 

By J. Parnell McCarter

 

 

The Roman Catholic Church recently released data on sexual abuse cases in the United States.  The data indicates that the overwhelming percentage of sexual abuse cases involving Roman Catholic priests are instances of sodomy perpetrated by priests on young boys.  The data released suggests what other studies have shown: there is a significant problem of sodomy in the Roman Catholic priesthood.

 

In his new best-selling book, The Changing Face of the Priesthood, Father Donald Cozzens, a respected Catholic seminary president, says there is such a high percentage of gay priests in the church that he is concerned “the priesthood is or is becoming a gay profession.”   A.W. Richard Sipe, too, estimates that between 25 percent and 45 percent of American priests are homosexual in orientation. (see http://www.answering-christianity.com/priests_with_aids.htm)

 

The Kansas City Star had an informative article about the presence of sodomy in the Roman Catholic priesthood and AIDS associated with it (see http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/home.pat,local/37743133.129,.html  ):

 

"it appears priests are dying of AIDS at a rate at least four times that of the general U.S. population, according to estimates from medical experts and priests and an analysis of health statistics by The Kansas City Star."

That death rate is consistent with the rate calculated by The Star after reviewing death certificates of priests who died in California, Missouri and Massachusetts in 1995. The finding: six priests -- or 7.3 per 10,000 -- died of AIDS in those states that year. The AIDS death rate of the general population in those three states in 1995 was 1.8 per 10,000.

A.W. Richard Sipe, a former priest who has spent more than 30 years studying sexuality issues in the church, thinks that about 750 priests nationwide have died of such illnesses. That would translate into an AIDS-related death rate eight times that of the general population.

Joseph Barone, a New Jersey psychiatrist and AIDS expert, puts the number of U.S. priests who have died at 1,000 -- nearly 11 times the rate of the general population.

Barone directed an AIDS ministry from 1983 to 1993 for students at North American College in Rome. While there, he set up an underground AIDS testing program. Over seven years, he tested dozens of seminarians. Barone gave them false names, drove them to their tests in an unmarked car and paid for the tests himself.

"I didn't know who they were; they didn't know who I was," Barone said.

Of those he worked with, he said, 1 in 12 tested HIV-positive.

By the time Barone left Rome, he had treated about 80 priests with AIDS. Most of them were gay, he said, and contracted the disease through sexual activity.

"The tragedy is many of them have been so duplicitous and so closeted," said Barone, a member of the National Catholic AIDS Network.

"They didn't realize what they were doing, not only to themselves, but to other individuals, because of the exponential transmission rate."

Another researcher who has extensively studied the issue of AIDS within the church is the Rev. Thomas Crangle, a Franciscan priest in the Capuchin order in Passaic, N.J. In 1990, Crangle conducted a mail survey of hundreds of priests selected at random.

Crangle said that of the 500 surveys he sent, 398 were returned. About 45 percent of those responding volunteered that they were gay, and 92 -- nearly one-fourth -- said they had AIDS.”

 

We should not expect the Roman Catholic Church to address the plague of sodomy in American society, when the plague is worse within the leadership of the Romish Church itself.