St. Louis seminary among first evaluated in gay inquiry

ST. LOUIS -- A Catholic seminary in St. Louis will be among the first in the country to be visited by Vatican officials seeking evidence of homosexuality.

Bishop Michael Burbidge of Philadelphia will lead a five-member team that will visit Aquinas Institute of Theology Sept. 25 to 29, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Friday. The purpose, according to the Vatican, is to "examine the criteria for admission of candidates and the programs of human formation and spiritual formation aimed at ensuring that they faithfully live chastely for the Kingdom."

Seminaries across the U.S. will be visited through next spring. St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke and Belleville, Ill., Bishop Edward K. Braxton will be among the 117 bishops and seminary staff sent to the seminaries.

Visits will involve interviews with faculty, staff, seminarians and recent alumni, and will be overseen by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education.

On Monday, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, who oversees the evaluation effort, told The Associated Press that most gay candidates for the priesthood struggle to remain celibate and the church must restrict their enrollment.

O'Brien, said the church "really must stay on the safe side. ... The same-sex attractions have gotten us into some legal problems."

He said that the church is not "hounding" gays out of the priesthood, but wants to enroll seminarians who can maintain their vows of celibacy.

The catechism of the Roman Catholic Church calls homosexual acts "acts of grave depravity" and "intrinsically disordered" because they "close the sexual act to the gift of life." But the catechism also says that although the inclination to homosexuality is "objectively disordered," homosexuals "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity."

The Vatican ordered the seminary review three years ago in response to the clergy sex abuse crisis to look for anything that contributed to the scandal, which has led to more than 11,000 abuse claims in the last five decades.

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, www.stltoday.com.