Sexual Orientation and the Willingness of Catholic Seminary Students to Conform to Church Teachings

Abstract

The willingness of seminarians to subjugate their personal views to church teachings is a key component of church renewal and change. The complex web of causes and effects surrounding seminarians' willingness to subjugate themselves to church teachings renders bivariate investigations incapable of determining the strengths of the numerous possible causal connections. We disentangle these effects by testing a structural equation model based on data from 203 Catholic seminarians about their sexual orientation, their willingness to subjugate themselves to the church, and their acceptance of traditional teachings. The model fits the data well and provides the surprising conclusion that only a few of the postulated effects are operative. Sexual orientation has no appreciable impact on willingness to subjugate oneself to church teachings, and no impact on whether the seminarians support a reform role for the church. The more the seminarians view their faith as mystical, and the more strongly they agree that Jesus Christ is God humbled, the more they are prompted to subjugate their personal views to church teachings. Having ever loved someone makes seminarians less willing to subjugate themselves, and progression through seminary training reduces seminarians' willingness to subjugate themselves.