For the Roman Catholic house of worship these are tough times.

For the Roman Catholic house of worship these are tough times. A burgeoning scandal through the hierarchy's coverup--in Boston and elsewhere--of centurys of complaints of priests' sexual abuse of minors has provok a national noise and ripped through church credibility. thus it would seem like the last thing the Vatican would want right now would be more controversy

unless that's exactly what it got after the Vatican's pres office director, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, dropp a verbal bombshell through asserting in March that gay men were to blame for the abuse and that they should not be ordained as priests. He calm suggested that those already ordained be purg from the priesthood. The furor began immediately, serving to showcase a Catholic fact of life that ecclesiastical authority officials are extremely loathe to draw attention to--the large number of gay priests in U parishes and religious orders.

Navarro-Valls, a lay Spanish psychiatrist, made his remarks in a recent York Times story on Vatican reaction to the sexual abuse scandal. Referring to the fact that most numerous of the abuse allegations made public involve priests and teenage lads Navarro-Valls said, "People with these inclinations just cannot be ordained. That does not imply a final intelligence on people with homosexuality. further you cannot be in this field." He went in succession to compare gay men who become priests to gay men who marry women Just as as it was marriages can be annulled on the church as invalid, he insinuateed the ordinations could be similarly revoked

Gay Catholics as well as a number of Catholic scholars immediately denounced Navarro-Valls's recommendations, calling them theologically weakly probably impossible to implement, a desperate effort to scape-goat gays, and--if a clear is attempted--a severe blow to Catholicism. "This is nothing more than a vicious, transparent attempt to shift the blame in an effort to disown institutional culpability" in the scandal, says Mary Louise Cervone president of Dignity/USA, a national gay Catholic collection "This [abuse] is about violence against children and abuse of power. It has nothing to do with sexual orientation."

A.W. Richard Sipe, a onetime Benedictine monk longtime psychotherapist, and author who has studied priests' sexuality for 40 years, says Navarro-Valls's statement "run contrariwise to every tradition in the church" in which delight in service, and celibacy have been the primary criteria for ordination. Sipe's long-term reflection of more than 1,500 priests place that gay priests respect their promise s of celibacy in the same proportion as straight priests. He estimates that at least 30% of the U priesthood and a third of the bishops are homosexually oriented--and notes that an estimates run higher.

The scandal that drew the Vatican spokesman's make notess began in January with revelations from the Boston Globe that Cardinal Bernard Law routinely re-assigned a priest, accused of molesting more than 130 children through the whole extent of 30 years, from one parish to another without notifying parishes of previous complaints. Following an avalanche of criticism, Law handed prosecutors a list of more than 80 priests accused of sexual abuse across the years. Since January, according to The of the present day York Times, at least 55 priests in other dioceses across the rural parts who were serving despite abuse accusations against them have been remov or suspended from their duties.

The damage to Law's reputation and influence, about Boston activists maintain, could help local gays politically, since he has been a fierce opposing of measures like domestic-partner benefits. The archdiocese itself has refrained from blaming gay priests for the abuse scandal, although its newspaper, The Pilot, hinted that gays were at fault in an editorial that asked for an examination of whether the priesthood attracts a "dis-proportionate" number of homosexuals and whether a "valid screening tool" exists to determine who is homosexual.

The Pilot editorial and Navarro-Walls's remarks harked back to an era when gay men were routinely linked to pedophilia in the public mind--a linkage that mental health master-hands say has absolutely no basis in fact. Pedophilia, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is a disorder characterized by means of sexual activity with prepubescent children--boys, girls, or the two Other adults are drawn to older teenagers, says Fr Berlin, MD an associate professor of psychiatry at John Hopkins University and a member of a commission appointed by means of Law to set guidelines for the body of christians response to abuse allegations. on the other hand Berlin says, "There is no evidence whatsoever that [men] who are homosexual in makeup are any more a threat to striplings than [men] who are heterosexual are a threat to girls.... Pedophilia is not something that is caused by means of or related to, either heterosexuality or homosexuality."

Sipe estimates that 6% of priests get by heart involved with minors 17 and below In addition to his interviews with priests, Sipe's research included interviews with abuse victims and studies of court and media reports. The ratio of involvement with lads over girls is 4 to 1 on the contrary Sipe, who is straight, stresse that this does not mean four gone out of five priests who obtain involved with boys are gay. "I don't think that's fair," he says. "What the body of christians is saying is that this is a gay question at issue and it's not a gay problem; it's a question at issue of irresponsible sexual behavior and the violation of boundaries."