CHICAGO, Nov 4 (AFP) - The Roman Catholic Church may preach the virtues of turning the other cheek, but the Catholic League pressure group feels no such compulsion.

So when a Kansas City, Missouri newspaper decided to canvass Roman Catholic priests on the issue of HIV, AIDS and the priesthood, the League responded in kind, a spokesman for the group said Thursday.

The New York-based group fired off a similar questionnaire to more than 70 staff at the regional daily paper, asking about their sexual orientations and experience of the disease.

"Do you have a disease other than AIDS? Do you know any journalist who doesn't have HIV or AIDS?" the League queried in its acerbic parody of the Kansas City Star's questionnaire.

"Did you personally know any journalist who died of something other than an AIDS-related illness?" it continued in the survey, which was mailed out Tuesday.

The League for Religious and Civil Rights, an independent pressure group for Catholic civil rights, has promised to publish its survey as a spoiler if it gets any feedback.

But it is primarily aimed at pointing up the "peeping-Tom journalism" and "voyeurism" of the Star's project, League spokesman Patrick Scully told AFP.

"If it was a legitimate scientific survey, why didn't they question Muslim clerics, or Jewish rabbis?" he queried.

The survey, which the Star said it hoped to use for an upcoming newspaper series, was an attack on the Catholic doctrine of celibacy, and a "sensationalist" ploy to sell papers, Scully charged.

The Kansas City Star could not be reached for comment, but in a letter sent out with its survey, editor Mark Zieman said the poll was aimed at "determining the scope of the disease in the clergy."

"The AIDS epidemic has had a powerful effect on society. We have come to understand that the disease also had a devastating impact on groups whose members are unable to speak up about the difficulties that they have endured," the letter said.

The survey, the results of which would be kept confidential Zieman said in the letter, was sent out in October to thousands of priests selected from an official directory of all the Roman Catholic clergy in the United States.

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