The Instruction Arrives! Diogenes comments on the new document on homosexualit & seminaries

Catholic World News ^

[fabrizio]

The Instruction tacitly dismisses the tendentious claims that homosexuality is innate, or unchangeable, or changeable only in rare circumstances. While it acknowledges the disorder can be deep-seated in some persons, it maintains that it may also be just an adolescent hang-up one can leave behind. Here the Church's moral wisdom rescues her from the errors of politicized academic fashion. To treat adult homosexuality (except in rare cases) as a self-indulgent prolongation of juvenile weakness and infatuation may rattle some gay ideologues, but it's more realistic and more charitable than the standard APA account. In summary form, the Church is saying, "For the love of Christ, knock-off the pansy act and grow up."

[...]Are we closer to solving the problem? Not in the foreseeable future. The men asked to use this Instruction to guide their seminary admissions are the men who find the Vagina Monologues in keeping with Ex Corde Ecclesiae. But the Instruction seems to recognize this, insisting that "the candidate himself is the man most responsible for his own formation." Sure, a crypto-gay can lie his way through to ordination if he's devious enough. But if so, his choice for duplicity -- that is, for adolescent dishonesty -- performatively concedes the truth of the teaching he's trying to circumvent. But the good news is that there are honest men out there with the guts to tell the truth about themselves and (in Cardinal George's words) to let the Church be the place where Christ changes them. They've got a document they can work with, and we've got a document we can defend.

[fabrizio]

Worth reading in full. Hope that the leaked text is the true one, although we have enough of wonderful documents. What we need is some action. The Assisi crackdown gives hope, though.

Oremus pro pontifice nostro

[tuesday afternoon]

The Instruction makes it clear that no one can carry homosexual baggage across the seminary threshold.

A good analysis by Diogenes.