Church should avoid harmful stereotypes.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

The following editorial appeared in the Kansas City Star on Tuesday, April 30.

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As the Roman Catholic Church seeks effective and redemptive ways to respond to the sexual abuse crisis, it should avoid launching a broad campaign against homosexual priests.

Sexual abuse is criminal behavior regardless of who the perpetrator is or what their sexual orientation may be. And experts say pedophilia is no more common among homosexuals than among heterosexuals.

But some church leaders are calling for stricter prohibitions against gay men entering the priesthood. Others suggest the sexual abuse scandal would disappear if gay priests went away.

Last month, for instance, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the pope's spokesman, said, "people with (homosexual) inclinations just cannot be ordained. That does not imply a final judgment on people with homosexuality. But you cannot be in this field."

Similarly, Cardinal Adam Maida, who heads the Detroit Archdiocese, said recently that the sex abuse scandal was "not truly a pedophilia-type problem but a homosexual-type problem." He said bishops needed to "cope with and address" gays in seminaries. (Maida later modified his remarks by saying he blames errant priests, not homosexuality, for the current crisis.)