One of the Vatican’s “solutions” for their perennial sex scandals is to start testing and screening candidates for the priesthood. Australia is even considering doing it: unfortunately, the targets are all wrong.
Melbourne’s Catholic Church has embraced a Vatican suggestion to test potential priests for sexual orientation. Those who “appear” gay will be banned.
The head of the Vatican committee that made the recommendations has made it clear celibate gays should also be banned because homosexuality is ”a type of deviation”.
I really want to know details about how these tests are going to be done. Do they hook the candidate up to a plethysmograph and then show them pictures of varying degrees of titillation to various sexual orientations? That sounds fun — they might get a flood of new prospects who are really just there for the test. Heck, if I was sufficiently bored, I might sign up … especially if the testing is done by hot novices in sexy wimples.
But, still, it’s all incredibly wrong-headed. Priests are people who are supposed to be celibate…it should hardly matter whether they are turned on by women or men or turnips, for that matter. There might even be a significant number of church leaders who are radical perverts deep down, but are in the priesthood specifically and sincerely for the whole denial of the flesh aspect. Why single out gays? Shouldn’t we be more worried about priests with uncontrollable urges towards children, or even heterosexual priests who are unable to resist the women who look up to them as authority figures?
This isn’t about correcting the problems of the church at all. It’s more about finding another opportunity to discriminate against gays.