Boston ? The Boston Archdiocese’s newspaper says a recent editorial raising questions about priest celibacy, ordination of women and homosexuality has been widely misinterpreted.

A new editorial published Thursday in The Pilot, the nation’s oldest Catholic newspaper, denies it intended to challenge church policy last week when it published “Questions that must be faced.”

Last week’s editorial said Boston’s child-molestation cases involving the church raised questions about whether there would be fewer scandals if celibacy was optional for priests, and whether the priesthood attracts an unusually high number of homosexual men.

It offered no answers, but stated: “These scandals have raised serious questions in the minds of the laity that simply will not disappear.”

The editorial was written by Monsignor Peter V. Conley, the paper’s executive editor who is said to be a close confidant of Cardinal Bernard Law, Boston’s archbishop.

Many commentators called it a noteworthy statement of independence from the Vatican, which considered such issues closed.

The editorial took on “a life of its own” and sparked inquiries from around the globe, The Pilot said Thursday. “But even on a second reading, it takes a great stretch of the imagination to conclude that this local journal of religious conviction was distancing itself from the discipline of the Church,” the editorial said.

Last week’s editorial was intended to “take notice” of questions raised during a convocation held in Boston earlier this month, The Pilot said, even though that editorial made no mention of the convocation.

Philip Lawler, editor of The Pilot from 1986-88 and now editor of Catholic World Report, called the latest editorial an attempt to undo last week’s damage.

“It’s baloney,” Lawler said, adding that last week’s editorial was “certainly putting the ball in play, and it is just awfully hard for me to imagine you could do that without realizing what you’re doing.”

Cardinal Law, in a statement last week, downplayed the editorial. His spokesman had said the archbishop was unaware the article would be published.