Former Jesuit Priest Says Vatican Campaign Against Gay Clergy Is Blame-Shifting

February 15, 2006 - Robert Goss, a former Jesuit Priest and current pastor of a gay Metropolitan Community Church in North Hollywood, says the Vatican's recent document on gays in the priesthood is blame-shifting to protect Bishops from sex abuse scandals.

Goss makes these charges in an upcoming issue of Conscience, a publication of Catholics for a Free Choice, (March 22, 2006).

Goss says the Vatican document, "Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders," is "a smokescreen designed to distract attention away from the church hierarchy's culpability for the sexual abuse scandal, in the U.S. and elsewhere, and an attempt to pin the blame for the scandal on homosexual priests."

Pastor Goss says the problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is caused by the hierarchical system and abuse of power, "not gay men attempting to answer God's call to priestly ministry." He says gays can expect little compassion from the Vatican with Cardinal Ratzinger serving as Pope.

Goss claims that gay priests are no more likely to molest adolescents and children than heterosexual priests. He also asserts that it is wrong to connect homosexuality with pedophilia because "many child molesters don't really have an adult sexual orientation." According to Goss, "They have never developed the capacity for mature sexual relationships with other adults, either men or women. Therefore many child molesters cannot be meaningfully described as homosexuals, heterosexuals, or bisexuals because they are not really capable of a relationship with an adult man or woman."

Goss paraphrases the paper by Professor Gregory Herek, "Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation," from Herek's web site as evidence that homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to molest children.

Goss's viewpoint is contradicted by the work of Father Charles Fiore, a Catholic priest for 42 years who fought against the ordination of gay priests. Fiore was interviewed by WorldNetDaily in March 2002. He told WND, "The problem is not clerical pedophilia but homosexuality. ... Strictly speaking, pedophilia is the sexual molestation of a pre-pubescent child of either sex." However, "More than 90% of the cases [of child molestation] involve the clerical molestation of teen-age young men," said Fiore. "...the grand taboo in U.S. culture is to focus on homosexuality." (Father Fiore died in February 2003.)

Additional Reading: Report on 'The Gay Report'; The Problem of Pedophilia