1. Decision in Dallas, National Catholic Register, June 22-29, 2002
“…Archbishop Chaput said homosexuals in the priesthood should not be viewed as a primary cause of the sexual abuse scandal… The more pertinent issue, he said, has been the history of American priests and bishops succumbing to cultural pressure for leniency on many Church teachings pertaining to sex and marriage.”
“We've seen a permissiveness regarding contraception and pre-marital sex, and the same priests who allow that can easily slip into giving themselves permission regarding other issues of sexual moralities,” Archbishop Chaput said. “It's a spirit that says each person and priest can decide individually what to accept in terms of Church teachings.”
See http://www.ncregister.com/Register_News/061802bis.htm
2. Faith, Hope and Dallas, National Catholic Register, June 22-29, 2002, Interview with Bishop Timothy Dolan, Auxiliary Bishop of St. Louis
“In a way, thanks be to God that people are horrified by this terrible scandal. It is at odds with human decency, it is at odds with the Gospel, it is particularly at odds with everything the priestly vocation stands for. It also shows again how far off the mark we've gotten when it comes to the Church's whole teaching on chastity, how far we have strayed from the Church's beautiful teaching on sexual love. What's a painful paradox is that many of the people who find this [scandal] most horrible don't make the connection that so are other sexual aberrations.”
See http://www.ncregister.com/Register_News/061802dol.htm
3. Catholic Scandals: A Crisis for Celibacy? The Real Story Behind Clerical “Pedophilia” & What It Really Means, by Leon J. Podles in Touchstone, April 2002
“Most men are outraged by a homosexual advance to a youth, not only because it is wrong, but also because it encourages the youth to deviate from heterosexuality, a crucial constituent of masculinity. The absence of this normal male outrage among bishops and other religious leaders has been astonishing and disquieting, and is a symptom of another and deeper problem, a lack of masculinity.”
“The difficulties with celibacy are simply an egregious manifestation of a general lack of discipline in the Church, a discipline that must be mostly self-discipline, and a symptom of a laxity and worldliness that were encouraged by some of the changes after the Second Vatican Council.”
See http://www.touchstonemag.com/docs/issues/15.3docs/15-3pg25.html
See LifeSite News's feature page on the abuse scandals
http://www.lifesite.net/features/churchscandals/
(This update courtesy of LifeSite News.)
