Posted on 10/07/2005 5:26:14 AM PDT by Abathar
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican will allow gay men into the priesthood if they can show they have been celibate for at least three years, leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported on Friday.
But it said the Vatican will ban men who "publicly manifest their homosexuality" or show an "overwhelming attraction" to homosexual culture "even if it is only intellectually."
The Vatican views on gay priests are contained in a secret 16-page document which is expected to be released next month.
The document, an "instruction" by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education, covers one of the most sensitive issues in the Roman Catholic Church.
Officials at the Congregation for Catholic Education and the Vatican press office could not be reached for immediate comment.
The Corriere report said: "Candidates who show a homosexual tendency will not be allowed into the priesthood unless they can demonstrate that they have been able to remain chaste for at least three years."
Media reports last month, primarily in the United States, said the document would bar all gay men from being ordained priests, even those who are celibate.
Those reports caused concerns in many quarters in the Church that many good men would be excluded by a total ban.
The Church teaches that homosexuality is not a sin but that homosexual acts are, and it expects all priests, whether homosexual or heterosexual, to remain celibate.
Corriere and the weekly Panorama magazine both reported on Friday that Pope Benedict had approved the document this summer.
Panorama said its release would be accompanied by a written explanation by "an internationally known psychologist."
WIDESPREAD CONTROVERSY
Reacting to earlier reports that the document would ban even celibate gays, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin told the British Catholic newspaper The Tablet last week:
"You don't write off a candidate for the priesthood simply because he is a gay man."
Martin told the Tablet that seminaries did not in the past give men enough support to help them mature in their sexuality.
"We need to provide services of support for these priests and this will involve helping them along their personal journey and reassuring them."
In his book "The Changing Face of the Priesthood," Father Donald Cozzens estimated that some 40 percent of U.S. priests are gay but only a tiny minority are practicing homosexuals.
The Corriere report by the paper's respected religious affairs correspondent Luigi Accattoli, which he said was based on "verbal indiscretions," said the testing period for celibacy would be the last three years of seminary study.
Some conservative Catholics cheered last month's media reports that the new document would ban even celibate gays.
Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, head of the U.S. Archdiocese for Military Services, caused a storm when he said that even homosexuals who had managed to remain celibate for 10 years or more should not be admitted into seminaries.
Such positions were met by much criticism in the rest of the Church, particularly in the United States.
The Vatican has been working on the instruction on homosexual men and the priesthood for years. It will be a reform of a 1961 document which said men with "perverse inclination" to homosexuality should not be ordained.
Is this report believable since the Vatican does not comment on documents until actually released?
There is no place for ANY homosexual in the priesthood. period. They are not an example in any way.
Now it's true that the thought-life is in God's view. There is a difference between having temptations, and grasping a temptation mentally, clinging to it, pursuing it, nurturing it, accepting it....
So if "gay" "priests" who don't act on impulses they otherwise embrace, accept, and wallow in are OK, how about those also embracing thoughts of rape, murder, child molesting, theft, other things God condemns?
Doesn't make sense at any level.
Dan
No homosexuals in the priesthoood PERIOD... Vatican must end this practice immediately... YOu cannot make a deal with the devil and think you can keep it contained.
I agree with you. I've never heard a 'gay' proponent argue that they resist and turn away from homosexual thinking or homosexual acts in their seeking fellowhip with God on His terms, but I have seen many homosexuals who sense they lack a sincere fellowship with God, remain enslaved to sin, and attempt to fabricate any counterfeit relationship to God that might creep upon them. To that end, I understand the entire 'glbf' agenda in 'Christianity' as an attempt to create a counterfeit religion based upon what they see as right in their own eyes without God's work. Hence their efforts are good for nothingness from a divine perspective.
Is it just me or has reality changed?
I always seemed to remember the word 'homosexual' or 'Sodomite' being used in those verses, yet whenever I do a word search for those terms in Internet concordances, they never seem to hit, but now the Scripture has been changed on the net to read something like, 'those who defile themselves with mankind'.
I must have tripped into another parallel universe again,....Kurt Vonnegut would be jealous...
Right. If you're celibate, you're NOsexual. Period.
Because, being homosexual, they are mentally ill, and should be in treatment---not studying for the priesthood until they are cured.
I've known enough queers to know that they are NOT mentally normal. They're called "queer" for a reason.
I agree. Homosexuality is a behavior.
Another problem was the feminist nuns who were sitting on Vocations boards who rejected faithful men, but allowed the homosexual men to enter the Seminaries because they were considered more 'mature' about their sexuality. Since these nuns and liberal professors are aging and dying off, their replacements, chosen by the newer, more orthodox Bishops are changing the Seminaries in ways that will be good for the Church in the next 5-10 years when these new priests take their place in Parishes all over the country.
bttt
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin loves the lavendar lads, and he's a right snake to boot.
This makes me nervous. How can they prove chastity??
Ummmnhhh...
The propaganda war continues.
IOW, there's less to this story than meets the eye. Key quote: "..anyone familiar with Church teaching knows what the document will say..."
Meaning the 1961 document will be re-affirmed.
All the rest of this is merely 'guidelines for judgment.' What that means is that Bishops and Vocations Directors STILL 'make the call,' and it's possible that the laity will regret it.
However, it's also clear that the Vatican looks with great unhappiness on the mess in the USA and is sending a clear message.
Shep Smith's remark demonstrates that he's not exactly a "deep thinker." But we knew that already.
Homosexuality is NOT MERELY a matter of orifice-selection. It is a weltaunschuung--a worldview--which is "intrinsically disordered" and gravely so.
Smith and O'Reilly--a great like-minded duo. No mind in either one; a perfect match.
Ummmnhhh...
You DO know that The Press makes, ah, errors in its "reporting", right?
Hold your fire.
As has been repeated endlessly--"press" reports have been erroneous.
We're still short about 9,000 corpses in NOLA.
Really?
Martin's been a suspect for a long time.
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