Thursday, June 3, 2010

What's the answer...

...to the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandals? Apparently, according to an article in the New York Times, the church hasn't been asking the right questions:

Every job interview has its awkward moments, but in recent years, the standard interview for men seeking a life in the Roman Catholic priesthood has made the awkward moment a requirement.

“When was the last time you had sex?” all candidates for the seminary are asked. (The preferred answer: not for three years or more.)

“What kind of sexual experiences have you had?” is another common question. “Do you like pornography?”

Depending on the replies, and the results of standardized psychological tests, the interview may proceed into deeper waters: “Do you like children?” and “Do you like children more than you like people your own age?”

It is part of a soul-baring obstacle course prospective seminarians are forced to run in the aftermath of a sexual abuse crisis that church leaders have decided to confront, in part, by scrubbing their academies of potential molesters, according to church officials and psychologists who screen candidates in New York and the rest of the country.
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Msgr. Stephen Rossetti, a psychologist at Catholic University who has screened seminarians and once headed a treatment center for abusive priests, said the screening could be “very intrusive.” But he added, “We are looking for two basic qualities: the absence of pathology and the presence of health.”

So that's the answer, the church wasn't asking the right questions? Is that really the only obstacle between the church's having good and not-so-good priests? As Jerry Seinfeld would say, really? Really?

Do you think that by asking those questions alone, the Catholic Church will get more and better applicants? How about opening up the job to (gasp!) married men -- and women -- instead? Do you think that might improve their pool of applicants? Or do you think it best to stick to the practice of recruiting men -- only -- and telling them that if they sign up now, they will never be allowed to have sex again for the rest of their lives?

If you were starting a church right now, which approach would you use to attract the best people?

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