Vatican issues screening guidelines for priests

[defendandprotect]

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican issued new psychological screening guidelines for seminarians Thursday — the latest effort by the Roman Catholic Church to be more selective about its priesthood candidates following a series of sex abuse scandals.

The church said it issued the new guidelines to help church leaders weed out candidates with "psychopathic disturbances." The scandals have rocked the church in recent years, triggering lawsuits that have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.

"(The guidelines) became ever more urgent because of the sexual scandals," Monsignor Jean-Louis Brugues told reporters. He stressed, however, that psychological testing was used in some seminaries as far back as the 1960s — or at least a decade before the sexual abuse scandals exploded in public.

"In all too many cases, psychological defects, sometimes of a pathological kind, reveal themselves only after ordination to the priesthood," the guidelines said. "Detecting defects earlier would help avoid many tragic experiences."

The guidelines said problems like "confused or not yet well-defined" sexual identities need to be addressed.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said the Vatican needs to go beyond screening seminarians to end what the group calls the church's "virtually unchanged culture of secrecy and unchecked power in the hierarchy" that left dangerous priests in parishes.

"Every barrel will always have some bad apples," the Survivors Network said. "Real change requires effectively reforming the barrel and those who oversee it."



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081030/ap_on_re_eu/eu_vatican_screening_priests

[defendandprotect]

1. Hetereosexuals are 100X more likely to sexually abuse children than homosexuals. . .!!!

The Vatican continues to scapegoat and defame homosexuals --

and, additionally, I object to the idea that this has only been going on 50 years--!!!

No, as the Italians make clear, this goes back to the first days of the Vatican --- !!!



Studies commissioned by the bishops' conference have found that the majority of known victims of abuse by priests in the last 50 years were adolescent boys. In response, some Catholics have blamed gay clergy for the scandal; experts on sex offenders contend homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to molest children.

A 2005 Vatican document said men with "deep-seated" homosexual tendencies shouldn't be ordained, but that those with a "transitory problem" could become priests if they had overcome them for three years. The Vatican considers homosexual activity sinful.

The new guidelines reflect the earlier teaching, stressing that if a future priest shows "deep-seated homosexual tendencies," his seminary training "would have to be interrupted."

[Ian David]

4. This year Der Popenfuhrer sort of softened his stance in that regard.

Pope Ratso said that gays and pedophiles are "two completely different things."

[defendandprotect]

6. Some progress . . ..

[Ian David]

2. Because if you believe an invisible man in the sky wants you to never have sex or masturbate...

... that doesn't mean you're not normal.

[Ian David]

3. ... "confused or not yet well-defined" sexual identities...

Does that mean they'll take straight people AND gay people, but not bisexual or "confused" people?

[DailyGrind51]

5. Allowing priests to marry and encouraging women priests would

do more to recruit priests with mature and healthy sexual identities.