More than half of all Roman Catholic priests identified a "homosexual subculture" in their diocese or seminary in a study released today, the first attempt to quantify what has remained a persistent rumor about the church.
The existence of gay priests, and especially gay cliques in seminaries, has been revived as a focus of contention. Some church conservatives and seminary rectors argue that gay cliques in schools that train priests alienate heterosexual candidates and tend to disregard church teachings on sexuality.
Until now, the church's position on ordaining gay priests has remained ambiguous. Pope John Paul II's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, recently said of gays: "People with these inclinations just cannot be ordained." But it was an offhand response to a question, and it generated controversy, because church policy does not necessarily forbid ordaining gay men.
The survey of 1,200 priests was sanctioned by the American bishops and conducted by sociology professor Dean R. Hoge of Catholic University, for the National Federation of Priests' Council. The group has measured the attitudes of priests periodically since 1970, although this is the first time they included questions about homosexuality.
The survey, which was done in spring 2001, did not ask priests if they were gay but merely collected their impressions of their environment. The results will be presented today in Chicago at a meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion.
Nineteen percent of priests said a subculture "clearly" existed in their diocese or religious institute, and 36 percent said it "probably" did. For seminaries, the numbers were 19 percent and 26 percent, respectively.
The survey showed a wide gap in impressions between younger and older priests. Forty-seven percent of priests ages 25 to 35 said there was "clearly" a gay subculture in their seminary, while only 3 percent of those 66 and older had that same impression.
That gap shows that "those subcultures have increased over time," said Hoge, or that they were underground in the midcentury, or that older men have a hazier memory of their seminary days.
If gay students socialize in exclusive groups, it "sets up a division and a competition for dominance in seminary culture," said Donald B. Cozzens, a former seminary rector and author who is quoted in the study. In his book, "The Changing Face of the Priesthood," Cozzens concludes that gay men should be encouraged at seminary but that gay subcultures should be discouraged.
"It was extremely corrosive," said one unnamed 37-year-old priest in a focus group conducted after the survey. ". . . There were many who had homosexual orientation but were perfectly fine and reasonable human beings. . . . But there was a homosexual lifestyle subculture which . . . ran the seminary practically."
The survey also measured priests' general attitudes about sex. Fifty-six percent of them said celibacy should be a matter of personal choice, although only 12 percent said they would probably or certainly get married if it were.
The survey also showed a growing generation gap overall between priests ordained in the '60s and '70s right after the Second Vatican Council and the much more orthodox younger generation of priests. The two groups differed radically on their views of the status of a priest and on the church's sexual teachings.
Younger priests are more likely to say ordination confers on a priest a permanent status that "makes him essentially different from the laity," the survey showed.
They are also less in favor of making celibacy optional.