Posted on 11/30/2005 12:07:06 PM PST by tuesday afternoon
U.S. Catholics at Odds Over Interpretation of Vatican's New Directive
The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said yesterday that under a new Vatican directive on homosexuality, men with a lasting attraction to members of the same sex can still be ordained as priests, as long as they are not "consumed by" their sexual orientation.
Bishop William S. Skylstad's flexible interpretation of the document, which was officially issued in Rome yesterday, was sharply at odds with the position of some other U.S. bishops. They said the Vatican intended to bar all men who have had more than a fleeting, adolescent brush with homosexuality.
"I think one of the telling sentences in the document is the phrase that the candidate's entire life of sacred ministry must be 'animated by a gift of his whole person to the church and by an authentic pastoral charity,' " Skylstad, the bishop of Spokane, Wash., said in an interview. "If that becomes paramount in his ministry, even though he might have a homosexual orientation, then he can minister and he can minister celibately and chastely."
Skylstad's comments are the opening salvo in what promises to be a wide-ranging battle within the U.S. church over the document's implementation. Bishop John M. D'Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind., said yesterday that Skylstad's interpretation is "simply wrong" -- a rare public clash among bishops, who usually go to great lengths to preserve an image of collegiality, even when they disagree.
"I would say yes, absolutely, it does bar anyone whose sexual orientation is towards one's own sex and it's permanent," D'Arcy said of the document. "I don't think there's any doubt about it. . . . I don't think we can fuss around with this."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I don't think there's a real need to be quite that crude on FR, do you?
How about homosexual pedophilia? The history of homosexuality shows quite convincingly that recently pubescent boys are generally considered the most attractive to homosexual men.
The term pedophilia is inappropriate medically for most of these situations. It refers specifically to attraction to pre-pubescent children.
The term for attraction to post-pubescent adolescents is ephebophilia.
Does Skylstad lean that way himself?
I had tried to use the word laugh in the pejorative sense. After reading your post, I can certainly see that it was a poor choice of words and for that I apoligize.
However, please understand that it is not my "glee" that is showing but frankly, profound sadness.
Biblically speaking any sex outside of marriage between man and woman is perversion. You might not agree with the bible, but I do.
We were pleased with the overall program at the school, and you can't beat the location! When we were there the first weekend of November, the high was 84 degrees!! Sure beat the 50's we were having back in MA.
Hmmm. Something tells me that Pope Benedict will soon be teaching the American Bishops how cows eat cabbage.
I don't think you'll see him do anything overt.
But, there is a big problem with the new ICEL translations. Less than half the bishops approve of them. If he imposes the new versions, he runs the risk of a good number of bishops simply ignoring any complaints against priests who don't implement them.
Huh... I would your are wrong ***hole, you don't deserve to be called "exellency!" If there is one thing the church has done to me is that I lost the respect I had for the church. I know a lot people won't like me saying this, because they will find any excues they can possibly find to give the CC a pass.
By looking at the behavior of the church in the last twenty years, event today...it's obvious to me that the CC has had a great number of queers for years and years... and probably in very high positions. You can almost feel how incredibly difficult it is for them to finnally come to terms with something they were able to keep hidden for so long. I KNEW, that the homosexual culture in our seminaries was prevalent to the point of making straight aspirants uncomfortable.... but some people will still deny it. And how do you suppose all these queers became priest?... no one knew?... the bishops did not notice?... all this took place in a vacuum? or is it possible they...? what is the word? created? supported? made it easy? for this homosexual culture to thrive in the church... and why? Would it be so outlandish to think that many of these "excellencies" were/are homosexuals themselves? - What do you think?
That's where we pewsitters can have an influence. One of our Associate priests tried using a Canadian translation a few years ago. He had the lectors read from a notebook he had created in lieu of the Scripture readings for the day. When we could not use the Missal to read along, we realized what was going on and we complained to the Pastor, giving him some articles that we'd found showing that the transation was not approved. That translation was never used again.
We just need to be aware of what's going on, and support the Pope as much as we can, and let the Bishops know we don't appreciate them trying to undermine the Pope.
I think the Pope is going to accede to the wishes of the bishops. He knows that he needs their cooperation, and, if they don't like the translations, his imposing them is not going to make them like the translations.
It's either let the bishops have what they want, or rework the translations, which will mean another five years of the current translations becoming entrenched.
Frankly, I saw no good reason to change what is currently in use. Much of what is proposed is, as one bishop said, stilted and unnatural.
They seem to be making the point that celibacy is the only measure here. The homosexuality, in their minds, does not matter a bit.
If all those of homosexual orientation were barred from the priesthood, how many would be left? It stikes me that the Catholic Church would have to change how in conducts services over time, or start importing large numbers of Africans or whomever, to more prosperous lands, where the vocation simply lacks much appeal to anyone other than the very few who are very committed to the vocation, and are willing to suffer for it in the way Christ suffered, or to homosexuals.
On Dec. 13, 2002, some three years ago, I offered an update in "The Word from Rome" about a Vatican document then in preparation on the ordination of homosexuals. Here's what I wrote:
"Bishops with a blanket policy against the ordination of gays will be confirmed by the new document, but others favoring a case-by-case approach may be able to read it in a way that permits that stance … In that sense, the new document will certainly cause an explosion in the press, but it may not change a great deal in terms of existing practice."
My gift for prognostication, it should be said, is notoriously spotty - I once predicted that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger would not be elected pope. In this case, however, at least judging by early reaction to the new instruction from the Congregation for Catholic Education, I seem to have been a bit closer to the mark.
In the wake of the document's official Nov. 29 release, some commentators have indeed taken it as a prohibition of anybody with a same-sex attraction, regardless of their psychological maturity or capacity for celibacy.
This was the unambiguous thrust, for example, of the official commentary published in the Nov. 30 L'Osservatore Romano by French Monsignor Tony Anatrella, a consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for the Health Care Pastoral.
"Candidates who present 'deep-seated homosexual tendencies,' that is, an exclusive attraction with regard to persons of the same sex (a structural orientation) - independently of whether or not they've had erotic experiences - may not be admitted to seminaries and to sacred orders," Anatrella wrote.
Anatrella criticizes the "permissive attitude" that says as long as a candidate is capable of celibacy, he may be ordained. In fact, Anatrella asserts that gay priests experience a whole host of other difficulties.
He offered these examples: "Closing oneself off in a clan of persons of the same type; exaggerated affective choices; [becoming] a narcissistic position in front of a community that [the gay priest] disturbs even to the point of dividing it; a mode of vocational discernment that seeks candidates in his own image; relations with authority based on seduction and rejection; … an often limited vision of truth and a selective way of presenting the gospel message; particularly in the areas of sexual and conjugal morality, these are habitually zones of relational and intellectual confusion and ideological combat, disapproved by a correct search for truth and the wisdom of God."
On a more theological level, Anatrella argues that gay priests cannot effectively incarnate a "spousal tie" between God and the church, nor the "spiritual paternity" a priest is supposed to exhibit.
While Anatrella's essay does not carry the weight of the original instruction, observers say it represents a quasi-official explication of its contents.
Yet among many bishops, religious superiors and seminary rectors, the document is being read in very different ways. Some believe they can make a distinction between a same-sex orientation in itself, which would not necessarily disqualify a candidate, and "deep-seated homosexual tendencies," meaning a fixation on sexuality that raises questions about a candidate's maturity, his commitment to church teaching, and his capacity for chaste celibacy.
"The instruction is not saying that men of homosexual orientation are not welcome in the priesthood," said Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster, England, in a prepared statement. "But it is making clear that they must be capable of affective maturity, have a capacity for celibacy and not share the values of eroticized gay culture."
Auxiliary Bishop Herve Giraud, president of the Commission of the French Bishops' Conference for Ordained Ministry, said his reading is that "the question is not so much to know if a candidate is homosexual, but to distinguish his capacity for pastoral relations."
A Nov. 23 statement from the Swiss Bishops Conference also read the document in this fashion. "When, for a particular man, homosexual tendencies make impossible a life of sexual abstinence, then admission to ordination is not possible," it said. Yet, the Swiss statement clearly asserted that "a homosexual tendency lived out in sexual abstinence does not exclude one from pastoral ministry."
The Belgian bishops issued a statement along the same lines.
"The Vatican instruction makes a point of recalling that if the homosexual orientation of a candidate proves to be an obstacle with regard to freely chosen celibacy, or in terms of right relations with men and women, this candidate may not be admitted to the seminary," their Nov. 29 communiqué stated.
The Dutch bishops, in a similar Nov. 29 statement, said that the point of the instruction is to ensure that "every priest is able to establish pastoral and affective relations with others which are compatible with his celibate state of life."
Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, likewise seemed to endorse a more permissive reading in a Nov. 29 Vatican statement.
The instruction, Skylstad said, would rule out a candidate "so concerned with homosexual issues that he cannot sincerely represent the church's teaching on sexuality." The question of whether "homosexually inclined men" can be good priests, Skylstad said, therefore depends on how they live and what they teach.
The Conference of Major Superiors of Men, the largest umbrella group of men's religious orders in the United States, said that the aim of the document is "men who are well integrated and psychologically mature, faithful to church teachings, and who posses a clear understanding of the meaning of, as well as the spiritual and emotional capacity to commit to chaste celibacy for life."
In summary, the presidents of the English and the American bishops' conferences, the French bishop in charge of priestly life, the bishops' conferences of Switzerland, Belgium and Holland, and the chief representative of men's communities in the States, all have said in various ways that even under this document, a same-sex orientation by itself will not exclude candidates from the priesthood.
By no means, however, is this a universal consensus among bishops.
Bishop John D'Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind., in the United States, for example, told The Washington Post that Skylstad's interpretation is "simply wrong."
"I would say yes, absolutely, it does bar anyone whose sexual orientation is towards one's own sex and it's permanent," D'Arcy said. "I don't think there's any doubt about it. ... I don't think we can fuss around with this."
* * *
Logically enough, some observers wonder if, in light of this conflicting welter of interpretations, the Vatican will issue further official clarification. I put the question on Dec. 1 to a church official who advises several Vatican congregations.
The official said he does not expect new pronouncements.
Despite the language of Anatrella's commentary, he said, the point of the document was not principally to ban each and every candidate with a same-sex orientation, but to "raise the bar" to ensure that the church is not putting potential abusers into the priesthood. (This despite the fact that work on the document began well before the most intense period of the sexual abuse crisis).
"Everybody knows there are gay men who are fine priests, and everybody knows that being gay doesn't mean somebody is a pedophile," he said. "This is not about scapegoating homosexuals."
"However, everybody also knows there are gay priests out there who should never have been ordained, who are fixated on sexuality and who have caused all kinds of problems. The church has a responsibility to be sure that adolescent males in its care are not at risk from homosexual priests who are not chaste. That's the obvious truth, but nobody wants to say it."
This official said the same point applies to heterosexual candidates, but that gay priests face a different set of pressures, since a priest is much more likely to have unsupervised contact with adolescent males than with females.
Time will tell, but for now it seems the church may be left with the same dynamic that often follows Vatican pronouncements -- a tough-sounding document, applied and interpreted in varying ways.
*********
My opinion: Benedict XVI will leave it to the bishops to interpret the document with the knowledge that they had better do all they can to make sure that potential abusers are kept out of the priesthood.
Thanks for the reply. It was very interesting. I wonder if your church is trying to do more, to improve the lives of priests; in particular addressing the loneliness you so often mention. The pathos it evokes, is quite sad.
No. If anything, due to the shortage of priests, the loneliness of these men is getting worse. The priesthood in the US is made up of older men who are overworked, underappreciated, and afraid to appear in public in their Roman collars due to the association with sexual abusers.
It's really a very sad situation.
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