Linked to your points, Jewel, is the recruitment of Catholic priests at very young ages.
In my youth, you could choose to enter a seminary high school as young as 14 or so, for the purpose of beginning your vocation to become a priest. As I have mentioned here before, while attending a Catholic prep school (not seminary school), the subject of a calling to the priesthood came up often. The Catholic Brothers would discuss the subject in class, what it meant, what it would take. Sometimes a kid would choose to do that. (Or was it the kid?) Even as a lad myself, I could sense something wrong going on in terms of the kinds of kids that seemed attracted to the priestly vocation. They seemed, to me, to be kids who were not well adjusted socially; guys we might have called "weirdos" in the quaint and gentle lingo of typical high-schoolers.
I cannot remember what I knew about homosexuality at that age, but it sure wasn't much. So I would have never associated "sexual-orientation" with what I saw going on. Somehow, who knows beginning when, the priesthood has become a heavily gay profession. Those on the inside, or former priests, speak of 50% gayness or higher.
I think it is quite likely that many of the young boys who entered the seminary schools were struggling, among other things. with who they were sexually. And perhaps their experiences in the cloistered seminary schools (the ones I knew were boarding schools) pushed them toward homosexuality. And perhaps that it is one reason why the priesthood is what it is today.
To my knowledge, seminary high schools were gradually phased out, and no longer exist today. In the Boston area, seminary studies can only begin somewhere during the college years.
I could not agree more with you that the "education" being forced upon adolescents in sex-ed classes often goes beyond mere tolerance, and gives every appearance of promoting a positive image for the gay lifestyle. |
