Posted on 02/27/2006 12:24:00 PM PST by NYer
ROME (CNS) -- Cardinal-designate William J. Levada said a priest who publicly announces he is homosexual makes it difficult for people to see the priest as representing Christ, the bridegroom of his bride, the church.
A public declaration of homosexuality places a priest "at odds with the spousal character of love as revealed by God and imaged in humanity," said the U.S. cardinal-designate, who is prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Cardinal-designate Levada made his remarks during a Feb. 26 homily as he presided over a Mass for the installation of the new rector of Rome's Pontifical North American College.
In the presence of some 170 seminarians, Msgr. James F. Checchio made a formal profession of faith and promised his fidelity to Catholic Church teaching as he took over as rector of the U.S. seminary in Rome.
In his homily, Cardinal-designate Levada reflected on the challenges priests face today and on the Sunday Scripture readings, which described God's love for his people as the love of a husband for a wife and described Jesus as the bridegroom of the church.
Referring first to "the tragic problem of sexual abuse of minors by clergy," the cardinal-designate said, "thanks be to God, it is now possible to say that the measures taken by the bishops on behalf of the church have put into place a comprehensive program of education, prevention and care for victims, as well as measures to ensure that abusive clergy are not returned to ministry."
"One of the more immediate challenges facing seminaries," he said, is the implementation of the Congregation for Catholic Education's November instruction that men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" should not be admitted to the seminary or ordained to the priesthood.
The instruction, however, made clear that the church was not questioning the validity of the ordinations of gay men who already are priests.
The cardinal-designate said the instruction "is not directly related to the U.S. sexual abuse crisis, but it is not without relevance for it," insofar as a study commissioned by the U.S. bishops identified homosexual behavior as a component in many clerical sex abuse cases.
Beyond the issue of psychosexual maturity, Cardinal-designate Levada said, "the question also needs to be viewed from its theological perspective," particularly in light of the biblical images of God's spousal relationship with his people and Gospel passages in which Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom.
The doctrinal chief said he wanted to look specifically at "the situation of the gay priest who announces his homosexuality publicly, a few examples of which we have recently heard reported" in reaction to the Vatican document.
"I think we must ask, 'Does such a priest recognize how this act places an obstacle to his ability to represent Christ the bridegroom to his bride, the people of God? Does he not see how his declaration places him at odds with the spousal character of love as revealed by God and imaged in humanity?'" he said.
"Sadly, this provides a good example of the wisdom of the new Vatican instruction," he said.
The cardinal-designate also told the seminarians: "It is important for our people to hear us priests preach and teach about the fundamental character of God's love imprinted upon humanity in the original act of creation: 'God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.'
"It is here that we find the basis for church teaching about marriage and about the family," he said. "It is here, too, that we find the basis for church teaching about homosexuality and the reason why proposals for recognition of homosexual marriage are contrary to sacred Scriptures and the natural law."
You are also a Donatist. Since you aren't a Catholic maybe you ought to let Catholic theology of ordination speak to Catholic claims instead of telling Catholics that they ought to be Donatists like you. The validity of the sacrament rests on the power of Christ. The Donatists claimed that a sinful priest's sin could trump Christ's power in the sacrament. The Catholic response was no. The sinful priest does wrong and has to answer for his wrongdoing. In the case of sexual abuse he will be removed from active ministry. But the statement to which you replied with such vehemence spoke of "validity of ordination." You gave a classic Donatist response.
Donatists, incidentally, are not Catholics either.
Well, if we are unsure of the ordination, then you might write it as "ordination" and we could question it. However, a valid ordination is a valid ordination. Even if a Priest were to become an evil and wicked man afterwards. True, he could and should be suspended from ministry if this is the case, but the supernatural indelible mark of Holy Orders remains. Same logic applies to people who are validly baptized and then leave their Faith for a sinful life instead. The solution, of course, is for them to repent and come back to God's sheepfold. Their original baptism remains valid.
A Priest who strives to be a holy man in his Priesthood works towards a greater glory of grace in heaven. A wicked, sinful, and unrepentant man performing the sacraments of the Church in Christ's name as a valid Priest does so for his greater punishment in hell.
St. Augustine dealt with this very problem Centuries ago which lead to his singular title as Doctor of Grace.
Your heart is in the right place though. Homosexuals should not be ordained to the Priesthood to begin with, and those who are ordained while living this sinful lifestyle without repentance should be suspended and laicized.
"The validity of the sacrament rests on the power of Christ. "
News for you: Christ doesn't use pedophile sodomites in his holy service, he casts them into the lake of fire.
Don't let your theology confuse you about what's right and wrong.
I don't believe it is possible for the Church to "cancel" a valid sacrament. The Church can suspend and/or laicize a Priest from active ministry, but the sacramental character remains with the individual man throughout the rest of his life eternity. Either for his greater glory in heaven or his greater pains in hell. Just as in Baptism or Confirmation, the soul is permanently changed and configured in a supernatural sense forevermore after valid reception of the sacrament of Holy Orders.
That's the Donatist heresy. This was settled about the time of St. Augustine of Hippo.
Yes, priests who break their vows or break the law are doing wrong, and need to be dealt with.
But that doesn't mean their ordination is invalid, or the good works they have done (like saying mass, baptising, marrying, and so on) is made invalid by their personal sin.
Should men who cannot live up the standard be dealt with? Yes.
Dear PetroniusMaximus,
"You gotta bunch of highfalutin words there to explain why a pedophile sodomite is a valid priest befor God."
My "highfalutin words" explain why ANY sinner is a valid priest before God.
"Right is right and wrong is wrong, and a pedophile sodomite is not a man of God - he is of the devil."
He may be. Nonetheless, if he was validly ordained, he is still a priest. And, in that the mark of the priesthood is on his soul, should he be damned, he will suffer all the more for it.
"And I don't care if you've got enough "Tradition" to fill the ocean, if you can't see a simple fact like that your 'Tradition' is wrong."
Yes, yes, I know. PetroniusMaximus is right, is the valid interpreter of Holy Scriptures, is the right teacher of Christian doctrine, and the collective teaching of the Church of Christ is wrong.
There's that arrogance that I mentioned previously.
Don't worry. With enough prayer, it may be overcome.
sitetest
PM, it does look to me like you have bought into Donatism. The moral character of the person who administers any sacrament is quite immaterial to the efficacy of the sacrament for the simple reason that the priest in question is merely a "conduit" of God's uncreated energies, of which the sacraments are a visible sign, a tool of God if you will. And thus, his moral state can have no effect on the sacrament. The real problem with Donatism is that virtually everyone falls far short of moral purity. It is a particularly vicious and dangerous heresy.
Interestingly, the Donatist heresy so weakened The Church in North Africa that it is likely that it lead to the rapid collapse of Christianity there when the Mohammadens showed up.
S, it may be that our friend PM can be so sanguine about what The Church teaches is a heresy because his view of the sacraments is fundamentally different from that of The Church. Possible, PM?
Interesting theological question.
The devil and other fallen angels are just that, fallen angels. The angelic beings are pure created finite spirits. They were tested as was mankind and the good angels passed to the life of Grace built on the nature God gave them. The evil angels fell because of their pride. They still retain their natural abilities, but are forevermore lost to the life of Grace since their pride will not allow them to repent. They have lost all lovableness except for the mere fact of their existence which God gave them. Indirectly, in the plan of Salvation, they still give glory to God in the sense that He uses them to manifest his glory in defeating them.
In the plan of Salvation God has for His creation, Man is at the center. With a nature made up of matter (our bodies) and spirit (our souls), it is through the instrumentality of human nature that God devised His plan for our Salvation. And it is precisely through the Life, Death, and Resurrection of the God-Man Christ Jesus that this plan is carried out.
Christ established His Church and the Sacraments as vessels of Grace to extend His Life to the world throughout the centuries till the "close of the age". The Sacraments involve outward signs concerning matter that signify and produce supernatural Grace in the interior life of individual souls. The Sacrament of Holy Orders is a Sacrament given by Christ to the whole Church by which He invisibly continues to minister His Priesthood to His Church through the Ordained visible Priest.
Can an angel, good or evil, be a Priest? The answer is no. Christ's Grace comes to us through the instrumentality of human nature. It flows from the font of His humanity, which is hypostatically united to His eternal and infinite Divinity, to ours. Which is God's plan from all eternity. Angels, in the order of nature higher than man, do not have human nature. This leads to reflection on one theory of the pride of the fallen angels. It is this: They could not accept God's plan whereby He entered into His creation as a lowly Man, rather than an angel. The Epistle to the Hebrews deals with this concept.
Can an evil man be a Priest? All mankind is born under Original Sin. It's a downhill fall from there to ever more evil sins. It takes a supernatural Grace from God for any person to turn to Christ in Faith. Already, we see that God's pure Grace has to crash through an evil heart to start the life of Grace in each soul, just as Christ crashed into the sinful, evil world of human history at His birth to start the process of redemption. Grace is God's initiative from beginning to end.
God can and does use sinful persons for the completion of His eternal plan for His creation. This includes the ministers of His Church (think of St. Paul). All Priests go to (or should go to) confession like all other Catholics. That means that they have sins to confess as do we all. Fortunately, while we cannot see into the interior life of each Priest to decide where their hearts are, we have the confidence from Christ that it is He Who is invisibly ministering to us through His Priest and that His Grace is not dependent on the state of the ministering Priests soul.
That said, why yes, yes I'd like to see all homosexuals Priests suspended from ministry. The Grace of God builds on nature, and in the last forty or so years especially, the Church has made some bone-headed mistakes at the practical level regarding this issue.
Dear Kolokotronis,
"S, it may be that our friend PM can be so sanguine about what The Church teaches is a heresy because his view of the sacraments is fundamentally different from that of The Church. Possible, PM?"
That had occurred to me.
sitetest
Petronius,
like Don Quixote you have taken on numerous opponents here on FR and "held your own" meaning at least the thread has not degenerated into bashing session
yes your heart is in the right place but the theology has to be correct too or else other problems arise as has been pointed out so well by others
many errant priests have been laicized, probably more should be
although these abusers are still priests, there is still ample remedy to deal with them---i.e. just because they are truly priests does not mean they should not be punished and removed from ministry
have a good evening
Heresy-of-the-month club ping
Dear monkfan,
It seems that no matter how many times they're defeated, heresies never die, they just get recycled.
sitetest
Petronius Maximus being a self-proclaimed Protestant and convicted by his own words of being a Donatist as well, has no view of sacraments, at least not the sacrament of priestly ordination. Protestants may be all over the map on almost any topic, but one thing all the Protestant Reformers agreed on was that ordination was not an objectively efficacious sacrament that transformed a man into a priest.
So dear Petronius not only has little idea what a sacrament is, he has no idea what a priest is. Priesthood is not on his horizon. That's the problem. For him God does not work by mediation of men or of God's other good creatures.
So it's really silly of Petronius even to have offered an opinion about whether a gross sin can invalidate the sacrament of ordination of a priest. I suggest that Petronius go scare up some fellow Donatist devilish heretics and have tea with them.
Oh, and by the way, Petronius: heresy (the stubborn persistence in error) is also a sin, a gross sin, not unlike sodomy. I realize, of course, that to you I am a heretic. I just thought you might want to see if the shoe fits the other foot as well.
"If my baptism was valid it was because I was responding in faith and obedience to the call that Christ had given me to come and be his follower."
Sounds like that evil old Pelagian works righteousness doctrine to me. I thought Evangelicals didn't go in for salvation by works. But as hard as it is to believe, it would seem that Petronius is not only a Donatist heretic but a Pelagian heretic as well.
Oh, I forgot, you really wouldn't have had to have been baptized at all--your salvation depends solely on getting your heart right with God.
In any case, you certainly don't need or want any priests, sinless or sinful though they may be. So I don't understand why you are so exercised about our belief that God can work through even sinful instruments. Indeed, there's an awful lot of Scriptural support for the idea that God employs sinners to do his will.
Which is why your Donatism is unbiblical.
"Those who don't have a history are condemned to relive someone elses." -monkfan
:)
It must be frustrating to come up with a theology, and then find out that it's a 2nd-century heresy ... like the Episcopal "priestess," Justice Breyer's daughter, who thought up Arianism in her own head, independently, just last year!
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