Documents provide insight into early concern about gays entering Catholic priesthood

By RACHEL ZOLL
The Associated Press
4/8/02 6:46 PM

Court documents released Monday in the case of a Massachusetts priest accused of sex abuse provide rare insight into the early efforts of the Archdiocese of Boston to keep gays from entering the priesthood.

In a 1979 letter to the Vatican, the late Cardinal Humberto Medeiros expressed alarm at the burgeoning gay rights movement and disclosed he had spent five years weeding out homosexuals from area seminaries.

"The danger in seminaries, your eminence, is obvious," Medeiros wrote to Cardinal Franjo Seper in Rome. "Where large numbers of homosexuals are present in a seminary, other homosexuals are quickly attracted. Other healthier young men tend to be repelled."

Medeiros noted that some priests had publicly revealed they were gay and were asserting that "homosexual acts" may not be sinful. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that engaging in gay sex is wrong.

The cardinal, who died in 1983, wrote that he had encouraged seminary spiritual directors to "exercise their influence to remove from the path to the priesthood young men who are homosexuals." The cardinal proclaimed the effort a success.

"We have a seminary which has now -- within a five-year period -- become almost fully transformed into a community of healthy, well-balanced young men," Medeiros said. "Our numbers are much smaller but now we will attract more young men who will be the right kind of candidates."

The issue of gays in the priesthood remains a pressing concern among Catholics.

Estimates of the number of gays currently among seminarians and the more than 45,000 Catholic clergy in the United States vary dramatically, from 10 percent to 50 percent.

"The atmosphere of seminaries is so gay that the few heterosexuals entering the seminary feel the culture and environment of the seminary is alienating," the Rev. Richard McBrien, a theologian at the University of Notre Dame, said in a recent interview.

"It is an extraordinarily convenient occupation for someone who will never marry. It gives respectability to the unmarried state."

Medeiros' letter was written in response to Vatican questions about the Rev. Paul Shanley, who is accused of repeatedly raping a boy in the 1980s. The Boston Archdiocese knew Shanley had spoken in favor of sex between men and boys at a 1979 meeting that apparently led to the founding of a national group advocating the practice, according to court documents.

Medeiros lamented that some of the men he rejected for the priesthood in Massachusetts had been accepted in seminaries elsewhere. The cardinal said he was working with U.S. bishops to ensure seminaries nationwide were aware of the problem.

Seper congratulated Medeiros for his attention to the issue.

"Your perceptive analysis would seem to indicate the need for specific measures on the part of the American hierarchy, especially those in urban centers similar to your own," Seper wrote.