<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Yet another California Jesuit, Father Canisius (not his real name), says the proposal made at the Jesuits' Rome meeting to accept homosexual members came from the top levels of Jesuit leadership in the California province. "There was a meeting of Jesuits, where a number of them spoke strongly about the right of gay men to be ordained priests and that the Church was wrongheaded and going in a direction that the rest of the culture is not," said this priest. "The people they are bringing into the society and into formation don't believe what the Church has to say about this whole 'orientation' issue. The provincials for all the different provinces across the United States wrote a note that went to the procurators' [2003 in Loyola] meeting, saying that they were upset that the recent pedophilia scandals have pointed to gay people as being the cause. The note went to the [Jesuit] father general [Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach], saying that 'we don't think this is good and we want some statement that says that gay priests are not the cause of this problem and that gay priests are not the source of the scandals and should not be scapegoated.' The California province is one of the primary sources of this whole problem, not only within our whole Jesuit community in North America but in the North American Church."
A similar note sent to the U.S. Jesuits was signed by 10 U.S. Jesuit Provincials, including Provincial Father Thomas Smolich of California, and included this statement: "we do not equate sexual abuse with sexual orientation. We recognize that what is important to our identity as religious is our public promise of chastity and living it with integrity."
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