THE ROMAN CATHOLIC Church moves slowly, often too slowly. The Council of Trent, in the mid-16th century, reformed abuses that had been evident a hundred years before. The Second Vatican Council, in the early 1960s, corrected some of the doctrines of the Syllabus of Errors that had been published by Pope Pius IX in 1864. A century’s delay can be a steady trotting pace for a 2,000-year-old papacy.

When I was a child, in the England of the 1930s, or when my mother was a child in the New York of the 1890s, the Catholic clergy tended to be free of scandal. A few of them were too fond of a nip of whisky, but they did not make sexual advances to their choirboys or housekeepers. No doubt there were exceptions, but they must have been rare. The ritual of Confession, combined with the vow of chastity, helped to keep them in line. Otherwise there would have been gossip.

At some point, which may have arrived with the worldwide cult of sex in the late 1950s or early 1960s, these standards certainly ceased to be maintained. In the United States there have been allegations of sexual misconduct against about one priest in 50. Of the alleged victims of these assaults, about 10,000 were male, and about a thousand female. The cases occurred in a period going back to the early 1960s, but many of them were first reported in the 1980s or 1990s. There were simila r cases in Britain, but probably on a smaller scale.

At first the Church reacted in a shameful and self-serving way. In order to avoid scandals, the bishops pushed the offending priests around from parish to parish, thereby spreading the disease. Parents were discouraged from making their complaints public, out of loyalty to the Church. It was not fully recognised that paedophiles are extremely likely to reoffend, and that signs of their repentance cannot be trusted. As the scale of the offences became apparent, the Church adopted tougher and more realistic methods of clearing out the offenders.

The issue was referred to the Congregation for Catholic Education and Seminaries in Rome. For the past three years, mainly under the late Pope John Paul II, that body has been drawing up a new instruction, which will cover the issue of which candidates should be admitted for ordination. The outcome is a document, not yet published, on which The New York Times has been given a special briefing. That is an unusual way for the Vatican to behave, but it reflects the Vatican ’s sensitivity to American opinion on this issue.

The real problem is this: the great majority of the offences were committed against boys or young men. Some offences were committed by priests who had a sexual fixation on pre-pubertal children. In terms of English literary figures, they had the sexual interests of Lewis Carroll. The majority were committed by priests who were attracted to post-pubertal boys or young men — altar boys, students in church schools, members of their congregation. One could compare this with Oscar Wilde’s relations with London rent boys.

The Congregation for Education is fully aware that the original response of the Church was wrong, and exposed children and adolescents to serious psychological damage. It rightly takes the view that its first duty is to protect the victims — the fundamental principle in English family law. It seems to have decided that homosexuals should not be ordained as priests. In so doing, it runs into an opposite but extreme difficulty. Everything will depend on the precise wording of the instruction, which we do not yet know. Indeed, the final drafting may depend on the world reaction to The New York Times report.

In its long history, rich with saints, scholars and martyrs, the Church has benefited from the devotion of countless holy priests and nuns who must have had a predominantly homosexual temperament. As all priests take a vow of celibacy, it may not have been apparent to all of them whether their sexual temperament was mainly homosexual or heterosexual. Indeed, the concept of homosexuality as a separate condition, not determined by sexual acts but by sexual inclinations, is a late-19th century one, and is not wholly satisfactory. No one ever told Christopher Marlowe that he was a homosexual and he probably was not. More likely he was highly heterosexual and also enjoyed sex with boys.

Both the Church and the liberals are on the horns of the same dilemma. Both are genuinely horrified by the widespread abuse of children and adolescents by Catholic priests. Both have to take the view that the protection of children should be the primary consideration. That certainly means that priests who have offended should be reported to the police and should never again be allowed to use their priestly function to get near children.

The difficulty comes when the Church has to decide who should be ordained. Here there is a risk that the wrong question will be asked. The right question is: “Will the candidate for the priesthood be a potential danger to children or the young?” Everyone agrees that is a legitimate question. As the candidate spends seven years in a seminary, the people running the seminary have a long time in which to observe and form their judgment. In making that judgment the candidate’s sexual character is obviously a relevant factor.

The other question — is the candidate a homosexual? — is the wrong question, because it would do an injustice to many sorts of people; to homosexuals who suffer enough injustice in the world, to others for whom their own sexuality is uncertain, “a grey area”. No doubt, over the next century, the Roman Catholic Church will be re-examining the issues of sexuality and the priesthood, including the maintenance of a celibate clergy. In the meantime a policy of exclusion of homosexuals from the priesthood is not justified. As it would force some candidates to lie, it is also unlikely to be effective.

JOIN THE DEBATE

Send your e-mails from here

Times Recommends

• Snow brings out the inner Tory in all of us
• Hail, Britain’s Indiana Jones of the Amazon
• Hewitt and Hoon – two rabbits, one hat