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It's about the oil, stupid

Why are so many nations so reluctant to challenge Israel? Plus, the Catholic church gets its gaydar working. Pity it won’t work on paedophiles.

Eamonn McCann, 28 Jun 2010

The position of the Catholic Church with regard to clerical child sex abuse has become as absurd as the Kama Sutra page 129 (very sore on the thumbs).

Details have emerged of plans to "sexually profile" applicants for the priesthood in the US in an effort to identify seminarians who are either potential child-abusers or gay.

Among the questions asked are: ‘When was the last time you had sex?’ and, ‘What kind of sexual experiences have you had?’ Candidates will be also be quizzed about masturbation fantasies, consumption of alcohol, relationships with parents and the causes of romantic break-ups. Depending on the answers, the interview may move on to, ‘Do you like children?’, ‘Do you like children more than you like people your own age?’, ‘Do you take cold showers?’, ‘Do you go for long runs?’

A Church spokesman explained that questions on showers, long runs and suchlike are intended "both to gather information and to let screeners assess the candidate’s poise and self-awareness – or to observe the tics and eye-avoidance that may signal something else."

The possibility that tics and eye-avoidance might signal sudden anxiety brought on by the thought, "What sort of fucking lunatics am I dealing with here?" appears not to have occurred to Church leaders.

Since there is no evidence of any kind of a link between sexual orientation and a propensity to abuse children, the purpose of screening applicants for gayness can only be to exclude gay men. Fr. David Toups, director of the secretariat of clergy for the US Conference of Bishops, reckons the Church is successfully weeding them out. Personally, he relies not on profiling but on his own gaydar: "It’s more like one of those things where it’s hard to define, but I know it when I see it."

What a pity Fr. Toups hasn’t developed a similar facility for spotting paedophiles.

Dr. Robert Palumbo, in charge of screening candidates at the NY Cathedral Seminary Residence, is confident that, "We have no gay men in our seminary at this time".



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