none that I know...
Posted on 11/29/2005 8:03:37 PM PST by presidio9
The Vatican's tougher stand on homosexuality has divided American Catholics, with some welcoming it as a renewal of a Church plagued by scandal and others warning it would further alienate Catholic leaders.
Reflecting the divisions foreseen by some churchmen and scholars, a Catholic priest in Arizona announced his resignation because of "aggressive anti-gay positions" at the Vatican and the U.S. Church.
"I could no longer stay in that institution with any amount of integrity," Rev. Leonard Walker, 58, told the Arizona Republic after resigning from the Queen of Peace Church.
Apparently trying to defuse controversy over the eight-page Vatican document officially released on Tuesday, the president of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, Bishop William S. Skylstad, said priests with "homosexual inclinations" can be good priests and should not fear discussing the issue.
Widespread leaks of the document last week already prompted criticism by gay rights advocates and liberal Catholics who said the Vatican failed to address deeper problems that led to the U.S. scandal over pedophile priests that erupted in 2002.
Some Catholic scholars said the real issue was the Church's fixation on celibacy. Daniel Maguire, a professor of moral theology at Marquette, a Jesuit university in Wisconsin, described celibacy as a "failed experiment in human control."
"It's highly unrealistic," he said.
PRIEST SCANDAL
Skylstad, who sets the tone for Vatican edicts in the United States, sought to calm angry Catholics by stressing that the first major ruling of Pope Benedict's reign would not exclude gay men who dedicated themselves to the priesthood.
"Deep respect should be shown to all people irrespective of sexual orientation," Skylstad told Reuters in an interview. "But a person has to be deeply committed," he added.
The Vatican statement said homosexuals should be barred from entering the priesthood along with men with "deep-seated" homosexual tendencies and those who support gay culture.
Homosexual tendencies must be clearly overcome at least three years before admission to the deaconate, a position a step short of priesthood, it said. Decisions on how to put this into practice rest in part with local Bishops, said Skylstad.
Brian Saint-Paul, senior editor of the Catholic journal CRISIS, described the document as "liberal" for allowing gays to continue to enter seminaries at all compared to a 1961 edict that barred all homosexuals outright but was poorly enforced.
"This leaves the door open for men with same-sex attractions...this is quite significant but it is one part of a larger approach to a renewal of the priesthood," he said.
He added that homosexuality and the pedophile priest scandal were clearly linked. His position is shared by other conservatives who point to a 2004 survey by John Jay College of Criminal Justice that found that, of 10,667 people abused by priests between 1950 and 2002, 81 percent were male.
The U.S-based Human Rights campaign called on U.S. Catholics to complain to their pastors and accused the Church of using homosexuals as scapegoats for the abuse scandals.
"We see it as more hypocrisy from an institution that is rapidly losing its credibility," said Marianne Duddy-Burke of gay and lesbian Catholic group Dignity USA in Boston.
In Arizona, Walker said he no longer felt comfortable "wearing the uniform" of priesthood. "It's like a Jew wearing a Nazi uniform," he said, declined to disclose his sexual orientation.
There are currently 64.8 million Catholics in the United States compared to 45.6 million in 1966 -- or 23 percent of the population compared to 24 percent in 1966, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate in Georgetown.
Are you comparing the acts of charity an individual might be doing, against the actual words in the Bible? I'm sure you know the verses and chapters as well as I. God pretty much stated it up front that "a man who sleeps with another man is an abombination". I didn't see any qualifiers in that assessment, at least not in my bible.
God is pretty consistent on this one. Bluntly stated, homosexuality really torques God off. Noah witnessed it first hand, as did Lot. I am unaware of any other sin that had as severe a punishment as homosexuality. I mean the Egyptians certainly provoked God, and they got boils, locust, some nasty hail and finally the first born. God flooded the entire Earth the first time, then essentially Nuked Sodom and Gomorrah.
You can only wish...right?
Heterosexual celibates cease to be attracted to women?
I don't think that's true at all. In fact, I know it's not.
Sheepdogs, forward.
Why do people always fixate on this issue? Are they implying that married people can't be pedophiles? Or maybe men are animals who can't control themselves? After all, nuns are celibate and nobody worries about them! Where's the hue and cry for married monks? How about the pope?
In any case the Church is not "fixated" on celibacy, but there is a long basis for it in tradition, and it does leave the priest free to focus on God's work.
Do yu think that also applies to those who have sexual orientations towards animals, relatives or children but haven't acted on them in the past three years?
A "preference" is a taste among equally valid choices, such as beef verses chicken for dinner. Or red verse blue in buying a car.
Homosexuality is a mental disorder. It can no more be called a preference than people who talk to themselves or people who maim themselves calling those behaviors preferences.
I wish that I could say that the Churchwide Assembly in Orlando back in August had settled the matter for the next two years; but it really did not. At the end of October the Metro New York Synod held a special assembly basically to declare open rebellion against the larger church by advocating an immediate suspension of enforcing standards of chastity on gay and lesbian clergy in "partnered relationships." You can read about this sordid affair (and its spread to the left coast) on alpb on line, the bulletin board of the conservative American Lutheran Publicity Bureau. Some of the comments are from persons who do not share the confessional purity of ALPB.
You can always count on the MSM to drag up one of the most liberal Catholic priest to comment on this matter.
The Jebbies have been complaining about celibacy for YEARS. I don't know why, though. There is a real problem with homosexuality and AIDS in the order, so they're obviously ignoring it anyway.
I fail to see your point. Either way is consistent with Christ's teaching to hate the sin, not the sinner.
The Latin Rite of the Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination of the world, and it mandates celibacy for its priests and bishops. So, there is some "fixation" on celibacy, in that a non-celibate cannot be admitted to a Catholic seminary.
There is a long tradition to celibacy, but no other rite in the Catholic Church mandates it for priests, and Eastern Rite priests seem to be doing quite well, even with wives and children.
The fact is, the number of priests is going down at a precipitous rate, here in the States, and that shows no signs of reversing. And, apparently, married men admitted to the priesthood is off the table. So, the honchos running the Church are going to have to come up with something brilliant to attract men to the priesthood.
They truly seem to be clueless as to what to do about the shortage of priests.
none that I know...
Neither the Lutherans nor the Anglicans require a vow of celibacy of their priests, but they have plenty of homosexual priests anyway, so I guess celibacy has nothing to do with it.
Since the Catholic priesthood is filled with homosexual men who are chaste and who are serving God's people well, it stands to reason that the Church will continue to allow homosexuals into seminaries.
Let me rebut:
Since the Catholic priesthood is filled with homosexual men many of whom are NOT chaste and who are NOT serving God's people well, and many of whom HAVE harmed children and scandalized adults by their outrageous conduct and denial of the TRUTH taught by the Church, it stands to reason that the Church will NO LONGER allow homosexuals into seminaries.
Unlike those who prattle against the teaching of the Church here, let me remind all here that orthodox seminaries are full - it is the queer over-run seminaries that are failing.
Read the document from the USCCB. Bishop Skylstad disagrees with you.
There is no more single person who has harmed the Catholic Church than Ted Kennedy, unless it would be John Kerry. Both are divorced, both support abortion...
There will be heterosexuals, too, but neither should be acting on their particular 'inclinations'. There will no more ambiguity about it; it will be absolutly CLEAR what is expected of them, so when they are ordained, they will have been prepared for it.
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