Mark D. Jordan is a professor of religion at Emory University and the author of ''The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism.'' Laurie Goodstein spoke with him.

For many years the Roman Catholic Church did not acknowledge it had gay priests. Now the pope's spokesman is blaming them for the sexual abuse scandal. How did that happen?

Notice how the grounds of the debate have shifted since January, when the scandal broke. Early on, the story was about the coverup of pedophile activity by priests, about keeping secrets in the hierarchy. Then the hierarchy made a mistake by trying to spin the pedophile story toward homosexuality and saying: ''If you want to know the cause of these troubles, either it's that we let in too many gay men or that the gay liberation movement is corrupting priests.'' But that was a catastrophic mistake for them because then the question became, what about homosexuals in the priesthood and in the hierarchy?

Some church officials say that homosexuals became a major presence in the American priesthood in the late 1960's and the 1970's in synch with the gay rights movement. Is that true?

What happened after Vatican II was that both the number and the visibility of gay men in the American priesthood increased. The increase in visibility has everything to do with the progress of gay rights in the general culture. Also, after Vatican II a large number of men left the priesthood to get married. But in the longer historical perspective, this is just a small uptick in what's been, from my reading, a fairly homoerotic history of the Catholic priesthood back to the early middle ages. Already in the early literature of monastic and religious orders, you begin to get mention of the problem of ''monks desiring monks.'' There's this marvelous saying by one of the desert fathers: ''I would rather have the devil at the gate of the monastery seeking admission than a beautiful boy.''

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What is Catholic doctrine on homosexuality?

There's always been condemnation of genital activity between members of the same sex, as there has been condemnation of genital activity outside of marriage or for anything other than procreation. Then in 1975, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a document called the Declaration Regarding Certain Questions of Sexual Ethics. Many people took this as saying it's fine to be homosexual as long as you don't act on it. But in 1986, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger came back with a letter to the bishops on pastoral care of homosexuals, in which he says the disposition to homosexuality is in fact ''intrinsically disordered.'' That's the teaching repeated in the Catholic catechism. So I don't think it's fair to say it's fine to be homosexual as long as you don't act on it. I think the current teaching is that having persistent homosexual desires is disordered, it's an effect of original sin.

People talk now about a ''lavender mafia,'' as if gay priests were all part of one big club.

Sometimes people talk as if all the gay priests in North America got together on Fire Island every summer and plotted things. They don't. They live in an empire of closets in which most of the closets are pretty tiny. A gay priest may be out to some other priests, maybe 20 in a large diocese, but not to most of them. Priests who are really closeted may not be out to anyone else. And nobody in the hierarchy really knows how many gay priests there are, or how many are sexually active, because they can't know and don't want to know.

Are gay priests any less likely to stay celibate than straight priests?

I think many are celibate, but I don't think any of us can know the number. People assume that gay priests are more sexually active, because they assume that gay men are more sexually active. That's a cultural stereotype, sort of like myths about African-Americans' sexuality. I do know that gay priests who are very closeted tend to act out sexually in damaging and self-destructive ways, because that's how very closeted gay men tend to act out.

Isn't some of that sexual abuse of children?

Some of it may be. Some of it is sex with prostitutes. Some of it is anonymous pickups in nasty bars. Priests who are afraid of being recognized, who can't have a real relationship because it would expose them, tend to have anonymous encounters, including criminal encounters with children or adolescents.

So then it is relevant in looking for solutions to the sexual abuse scandal to look at homosexuality?

That pedophiles might be attracted to the priesthood because it is a place for keeping sexual secrets seems to me plausible. A believing Catholic who was horrified at his own pedophilic impulses might seek refuge in the priesthood thinking it could help him stop. But as I understand it, pedophilia is a specific clinical description of a person who is attracted to prepubescent children, and in that there is no particular connection to homosexuality. Where the issue gets murky for everybody is where you're talking about 16- or 17-year-olds, who may regard themselves as sexually mature. How do we talk about priests who have relations with such people? Can someone who has homosexual desires be sexually attracted to 17-year-olds? Yes, some gay men are. Some straight men are attracted to 17-year-old girls. So do we regard that as a pathology, or do we regard it as an attraction that shouldn't be acted on for moral reasons? Either way, it's wrong, but not wrong in the same way.

Some cardinals have suggested the solution to the abuse scandal is to bar gay priests. Do you see that actually happening?

I think we've had a Vatican-directed program to cut down on the number of ''out'' gay seminarians for at least 20 years. So to say that they're going to start trying to prevent them is not right. They already have been trying. I do think what will happen now is this push will get added power, partly because of the visibility, and partly because the horror at pedophilia can also be tapped for, can also be confused with this program of getting rid of out gay priests.

If there are so many gay priests, how could the church survive without them?

Look, they can't tell who's gay and who isn't, unless they've invented some kind of magical machine. But if they could tell every gay priest, and could overnight get rid of them, there would be no functioning church the next day. So what they really mean by ''getting rid of gay priests'' is that they want everyone to go back in the closets and shut the doors, tight. This return to the system of secrecy does imperil priests who have come out and tried to be honest while celibate.

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