Word: bishops
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What he didn't know was that so many other gay men had made the same choice. Pinkerton was part of a religious community called the Franciscans. Compared with diocesan priests, religious communities--which are usually not under the close watch of a bishop and a parish--generally attract more gay men. Pinkerton's community of East Coast Franciscans included about 400 men; he estimates that about 250 to 300 were gay. He didn't figure that out, though, until after he was ordained, he says. He soon found himself seated at the "gay-priest table" at a celebration...
...Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has expressed concern that seminaries foster a "homosexual atmosphere or dynamic that makes heterosexual young men think twice" about entering them. But seminaries vary tremendously, depending on the time and place. Whereas Pinkerton says he never noticed a "gay subculture" during his student years in the 1970s, a New Jersey priest who attended a Chicago seminary around the same time has more colorful memories: "It was a pretty wild, free-for-all place. If you went into any of the gay bars, you were bound to meet a priest...
...months, America's Catholic bishops will gather in Dallas for their annual meeting. They will discuss the sex abuse scandal, and struggle to answer the most critical question of all: How can they keep this from happening again? The man who will lead the search for those answers is Bishop Wilton Gregory. As president of the 190-member U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the 54-year-old Gregory will play a critical role in determining the course of action eventually taken against clergy found guilty of sexual abuse. And because Gregory has taken the lead in the extraordinary conference...
...Vatican supports a sort of modified zero-tolerance policy for America's 47,000 priests: call it "a couple of strikes and you're out." Priests who are found to be "notorious and guilty of the serial, predatory sexual abuse of minors" will automatically be defrocked by the local bishop. But the fate of priests who "are not notorious" (i.e. first offenders) will be left up to a local diocese. The Vatican's relatively conciliatory approach disappointed some American Catholics who feel betrayed by the Church, and it has left some American Catholic clergy feeling that more should be done...
...Reconciling the expectations of an angry Catholic community, the disparate feelings of various clergy members and the Pope's definitive guidelines falls into the hands of Bishop Gregory. Not that he is without his own misgivings about a ruling that would permit known offenders to return to work. "We bishops clearly need to discuss among ourselves and with our people the question of any ministerial posts for a priest - even with limited abusive history in the past - who has received treatment and is receiving ongoing care and monitoring," Gregory told reporters this week...