Oracle Java Stored Procedure and Thread

I can't seem to find any documentation on spawning new threads inside Java is possible when running as an Oracle stored procedure.

I currently have an application that needs to spawn a new thread in order for the web application(mod_plsql) to complete without timing out. The problem is that the application seems to hang while executing it inside the database and I can't figure out why because it runs perfectly outside of Oracle. The only thing I can think of is that it is either waiting for the child thread to complete before moving on or it is simply not performing the task and not notifying me that there is a problem.