Rod Dreher

About the author: Rod Dreher is a senior writer for the National Review, a conservative journal of news and opinion.

Although questioning homosexuality in the priesthood is unpopular and many Catholics want to ignore the problem, the church must face the fact that a growing network of gay clergy is damaging the fabric of the Catholic Church. As the number of homosexual priests has increased, so have incidents of clergy sexual abuse of teenage boys. Indeed, because most victims are teenagers, not children, the problem is clearly not pedophilia per se but homosexuality. Some authorities connect the increasing power and influence of homosexual priests with the abandonment of both the practice and the teaching of sexual morality, especially chastity. To solve the crisis of child sexual abuse in the Catholic...