Vatican edict on gays divides U.S. Catholics

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."

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.

Frankly I don't think it is the celibacy that is the biggest problem for most priests; it is LONELINESS, and that does not require a sexual solution.

I agree with you. But what is the solution to loneliness? I can tell you that many of these priests just need somebody to talk to, since one priest parishes are rather common now. They need some place to go to kick off their shoes and not have to be "in role" for a couple of hours.

My wife is my confidant, my springboard, my source of inspiration and someone who will put me in my place when I need that.

Who does that for these guys in the priesthood?

We went to dinner a couple of nights ago with a man who is returning to active ministry after 25 years away. He was married, had two kids who are now grown, and his wife divorced him. Since he wasn't laicized, he applied to come back, and the diocese took him back.

He's going to need a lot of support (he's four years older than I am), and he's welcome at our house any time of the day or night, and we told him that.

If we're going to expect these men to serve us, we have to be willing to support them whenever they need it.

You know all of this, of course, since your brother is a priest.

KnoxNews

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Traditional Latin Mass making return

Farragut church begins offering option Sunday

By INA HUGHS, hughs@knews.com
November 26, 2005

"Gimme that old-time religion it was good enough for Grandpa, and it's good enough for me."

People aren't just whistling Dixie when they sing the familiar words to that old Southern song. When tradition comes up against change in the church, it can be a holy mess.

One of the changes made in the 1960s with the Second Vatican Council was that Mass would be offered in the language of the people present, rather than in Latin. The idea was to make worship more alive and accessible.

With the current rise of conservative and so-called "back to basics" fundamentalism playing out in all denominations, a growing number of Roman Catholics want to go back to the traditional Latin Mass. Among those, a small number claim Mass offered in Latin is the only legitimate Mass possible.

Proponents of this Latin-only movement contend that if the Catholic Church is to grow and flourish, it is essential to go back to a universal tongue.

The fact that Latin is a "dead" language is irrelevant, these traditionalists believe. In earliest times, only the clergy were expected to have academic understanding of the Mass, and it has always been held that mystery is at the heart of this central Roman Catholic sacrament:

"It is," writes historian the Rev. Frederick Faber, "the most beautiful thing this side of heaven. It came forth out of the grand mind of the Church and lifted us out of earth and out of self, and wrapped us round in a cloud of mystical sweetness and the sublimities of a more than angelic liturgy, and purified us almost without ourselves, and charmed us with celestial charming so that our very senses seemed to find vision, hearing, fragrance, taste and touch more than ear can give."

The Rev. Vann Johnston, chancellor of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Knoxville, says the Latin-only controversy has not affected this area. He explains that Bishop Joseph Edward Kurtz has granted permission to two churches in the diocese to offer the Mass in Latin: "This came about after a petition was passed asking that Latin be offered, but the people who signed it indicated they did not believe it was the only true Mass. They respect and legitimize Mass done in English and Spanish, or whatever the language of the people; but they loved the poetry, the music, the tradition of the Latin, and they wanted it offered for those reasons."

The first church in the Knoxville Diocese to offer the Latin Mass was St. Therese in Cleveland, which began offering the traditional Mass in 2004 on the first and third Sundays of each month. Now, beginning Sunday, it will also be offered on the second and fourth Sundays at St. John Neumann in Farragut.

"I'm comfortable with that," says Johnston. "The people asking for it are faithful Catholics, and their motivations are not related to schismatic groups. The Latin Mass is very beautiful."

He agrees people today are longing for a sense of the holy, but that, if done reverently and in accordance with the mind of the church, the English and the Spanish Mass have the same spiritual components and value as the Latin.

"They, too, can and do feed people's hunger for the sacred," he says.

Ina Hughs may be reached at 865-342-6268.

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