Posted on 02/24/2013 9:50:05 AM PST by Gluteus Maximus
"Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation. Otherwise, celibacy itself would lose its meaning as a renunciation. It would be extremely dangerous if celibacy became a sort of pretext for bringing people into the priesthood who don't want to get married anyway," the pope said.
The pope cited a 2005 Vatican document that drew a sharp line against priestly ordination of homosexuals. He said the document emphasized that homosexual candidates cannot become priests because their sexual orientation interferes with "the proper sense of paternity" that belongs to the priesthood.
The pope said it was important to select priestly candidates very carefully,
“The only way to do that is to end priestly celibacy.”
Wrong.
Please explain. How else can the order to remove all gays from the ranks of the clergy be implemented in reality. Who will carry out that order? The hierarchy as it is now constituted?
If the hierarchy would reform itself by removing all gays from the priesthood it would have done so long ago. But obviously it cannot, for the simple reason that it is riddled with homosexual men who have a powerful, vested interest to resist any change along those lines.
So, I ask again, how will the order actually be executed?
Simply separating myself from all lisping limp-wrists in Roman collars has me feeling much better already.A snippet from our parish's bulletin today about a priest who greatly affected our parish priest decades ago when they were both young men:
And then I heard Fr. Powell. As I listened to his tape that night I was thunderstruck, awestruck. I was like a bobby-soxer listening to Frank Sanatra. I had never heard any priest preach or teach like this before. He was human. He was funny. He was insightful... And that night he became my model on how I wanted to preach and teach...
As the years went by we lost contact. He got older, retired from teaching at Loyola and disappeared from the scene. Then one day several years ago, shortly before he died I read that he was accused of sexually abusing a number of co-eds at the university. Were I a young man I would have been crestfallen but having been around this terrible block of priestly abuse for the last 20 years, I was simply heartbroken and terribly saddened. But I am afraid, not surprised.
In Jesus's strongest terms he condemns those who scandalize the little ones. The Greek word skandalon means stumbling block. What a stumbling block and wounding agent he must have been to these young ones under his charge. Spiritual-sexual wounds are almost incurable. And my heart sank for his victims. And I prayed for their healing. But my heart also saddened for him, a clay pot, and earthen vessel, terribly flawed and yet a messenger from God... a fallen angel.
We're in the Holy Season of Lent. It is the time when we are called to do what is hard and what we would rather not do. What is most hard is to carry the cross, to bear the pain, to bear the pain of the victims, to bear the weakness and sinfulness of the perpetrators, to bear the suffering of humanity. Oh, how simple life would be if it was just black or white, good or bad. It's just not. And so we carry the treasure in an earthen vessel. And for now, on this side of eternity, that has to be enough.
In Jesus, Who Became and Bore Our Sin,
Fr. Tony
You walked away. It is not your problem, and your wrongheaded and frankly angry, even hatefilled screeds are not either helpful nor based on fact.
You insist you are the only arbiter and yet, with all due respect, you are nothing of the sort.
Get help. My prayers are with you.
That position seems to presume a limitless loyalty to the hierarchy. I do not have limitless loyalty to anything or anybody, except Christ Himself.
Let's suppose you have a close relative who molested a bunch of children. You were shocked to learn that your brother was actually a monster.
Would you stick by him, no matter what?
I wouldn't. As St. Paul wrote, I'd turn his body over to Satan so that his soul might be saved.
It's the same for the homosexuals infesting the priesthood.
False
Anything except address the question, right?
You don't have an answer to my inexorable logic, so you resort to some smarmy emotionalizing.
Get help? How about you break out of your delusional denial and start dealing with the reality of the situation?
A seminarian must now take a two day psyche exam, have multiple references, undergo days and days of interviews before he is approved for the seminary. Here are the FR links:
Spanish Olympic athlete to enter seminary after London games
Fr. Robert Barron to head Mundelein Seminary
Fr. [Robert] Barron Appointed Rector of Mundelein Seminary
Rise in US Seminary Numbers Brings 'Big Smile' to Pope's Face
U.S. seminary confronts abortion mill head-on through weekly prayer invasion
Traditional Catholicism Is Winning
Atlantis rises: US seminaries are changing
VIETNAM-More Than 1500 Seminarians and 80,000 Young Catechists: The Church's Future Looks Bright
The Logos in Seminary Formation and Teaching [Catholic Caucus]
Boom Time for Westminster Seminaries [UK]
Young Catholics Hear Call to Serve
US Dominican Province Welcomes Its Biggest Class of Novices in Decades
Of priests and possible priests to be
More twins (enter priesthood)
Cardinal Arinze - "Youth will embrace religious life with right role models"
Today's seminarians reflect growing trend
Number of Seminarians Increases - Please Decipher This!!!!
In Seminaries, New Ways for a New Generation
Seminary Springtime: Father Darrin Connall s Big Success
EVIDENCE GROWS OF DIRECT DISOBEDIENCE TO VATICAN IN MAJOR AMERICAN SEMINARIES
Pope to Church: Risky Seminarians Must Go
Priests Down, Seminarians Up
U.S. Priests and seminarians survey: more vocations in orthodox dioceses
Vatican Announces Surge in Seminaries during JPII Pontificate
Seminary Reform Needed in Wake of Sex Abuse Study ["the crisis in the Church is ... homosexuality"]
Homosexuals in seminaries? The latest.....
Priests 'In Orgy' at Seminary
Bishop urges gay ban in clergy; presses for overhaul in screening priests
A New Breed of Priest
AUSTRIAN SEMINARY SHUT DOWN FOR PROBE
Seminarians Show Support For Celibacy
556 Reasons for Hope [Seminarians Support Celibacy]
No Shortage of Vocations From Conservative Parishes
Oakland seminary housing sex offender priests
Phoenix bishop to helm Priestly Formation Committee [of USCCB]
Vatican Firms up Plans for U.S. Seminary Visitation in 2005
SIBLING VOCATIONS - Early calls led two sisters to same religious order
On the admission of homosexuals to seminaries
Catholic priests demand the right to marry
New Start For Austrian Seminary
Disciples of Pope John Paul (Faculty of Gregorian University Gripe About Piety of New Seminarians)
New Priests in U.S.: Older, and More >From Abroad (Survey Tracks Trends Since 1998)
U.S. seminarians welcome Pope Benedict XVI
Vatican review of seminaries to raise issue of gay priests
Some Decry Retirement Despite Priest Shortage
The Priesthood Ordination Class of 2005 “People would be surprised to know that I…”
(Catholic) Seminarians Double In 25 Years
Pope's death inspires would-be priests
Changes Add Up for Priesthood
Irish Bishops Apologize to Seminary Whistle-Blower
SIGNAL CALLING - UB quarterback foregoes family and career to train for priesthood in Rome
Pop Culture Heros Help Recruit Priests
Small Bible-belt (Catholic) diocese sees increase in seminarians
Dashing young priests turn heads at Youth Day
Vatican to Start U.S. Seminary Evaluations
Apostolic Seminary Visitation To Begin This Fall
U.S. Bishops to Begin Inspecting Seminaries
Prelate Says Gays Shouldn't Be Ordained
American overseeing Vatican evaluation of US seminaries says gays should not be ordained
Vatican to Check U.S. Seminaries on Gay Presence
POPE APPROVES BARRING GAY SEMINARIANS
Pope bans homosexuals from ordination as priests
Questions Arise Over Seminary Inspections
New Vatican Rule Said to Bar Gays as New Priests
New Vatican Rule Said to Bar Gays as New Priests (ABOUT TIME)
VATICAN: HOMOSEXUALS ARE NOT TO BE ORDAINED AS CATHOLIC PRIESTS
Homosexuals in the seminary; A Global Church in a Globalized World
Gay Men Ponder Impact of (Anti-Gay Clergy)Proposal by Vatican(Barf Alert)
Aquinas Seminary is First for Scrutiny
Vatican Begins Inspections At St. Louis Seminary (Rector: No homosexuality-pedophilia link)
The Sins of the Seminaries
Notre Dame Experts React to Potential Seminary Rules
Seminary Reviews Not Just About Homosexuality, Says Prelate
Jesuit Official Rips Expected Ban on Gays
Jesuit Official Rips Expected Ban on Gays
Jesuit official protesting expected Vatican ban on gay priests
A Catholic Moment of Truth
Gay Catholics Angry Over Seminary Searches
New Rules Affirm Pope Benedict's Stance Against Gays
New Report on Vatican Gay Priests Document Said to be Gay Lobby “Rumor Mill”
Gay men can be priests if celibate
Gay men can be Catholic priests if celibate-paper
No ban on gays expected in Vatican document; will advise 'prudential judgement'
African Cardinal Views the Vocation Shortage - With Full Seminaries, Ghana Shares Its Wealth
Keep the Ban
Today's seminarians: The Vatican survey
Lincoln diocese boasts highest number of priests to Catholics
Vatican Document on homosexuals in seminaries will be published tomorrow
Married Priests Aren’t the Answer (a seminarian states his view)
Vatican document restricts gays in priesthood: paper
Barring gays from priesthood not discrimination, say Italian bishops
Roman Women are Converts to Convents
Heads Up!! Zero Hour is 9am on December 29
Why I Thank God I Couldn’t Be A Priest
A look inside the Denver seminaries
Ordination Challenges: Out of the Seminary, Into the Fire
Vatican teams checking seminary effectiveness (in all, 229 US seminaries to be reviewed)
Seminaries Are Overflowing in Socialist Vietnam
Seminaries Full in Southern India (despite new anti-conversion law)
Ordination Class of 2006 - New Catholic Priests include twins, converts and some surprises
Twin ordinands, youngest of 13, credit parents for priestly vocations
Eleven new priests for Denver, largest ordination class in 40 years
Religious vocations can come from anyplace
Coordinator of U.S. seminary visitations expects report this fall
Celibacy has nothing to do with the abuse of children. Don’t you get it — it’s homosexuality.
True, merely re-stating the ban on gay clergy is not enough; a Holy Inquisition is needed to examine the conduct and beliefs of existing clergy. I agree that this part: the actual purging, especially in the seminaries, should be done more forcefully. However, some of it has been done and, I am confident will continue to be done, in the new pontificate.
I disagree on the conclusion that married clergy is the answer. It clearly hasn't helped the boy scouts, the public schools or the sports. It would mean capitulating a centuries-old tradition of the Latin Church, precisely at the time when the flock needs more than ever to learn sexual continence.
I also don't appreciate your tone, sir. You post excerpts from an old article while the rules do not prohibit reproducing the article in full. You attach to it your own rant, about how you left the Church, which properly belongs among Blogger and Vanity section. You then pepper your post with baseless insinuations about the Holy Father. You left the Church? Good riddance. It is faithless ignorant trash such as yourself that is the bigger problem in the Church than all the pederasts combined. Deal with your childhood memories privately, please. If you want to come back, do not think you can do so by suggesting how our Holy Church can be reformed, but rather in penance and obedience to the Church as she is; if you don't want to come back, why should we waste time conversing with you? We have more important enemies than your confused and messed up person.
That right there is a terrible error. Father Tony is equating an adult priest having (I presume) consensual sex with adult women with my friend's parish priest molesting him as a boy of 13.
Remember the natural law?
Fr. Powell may have sinned against his vow of celibacy, and he may have caused other young women to sin as well. And he probably used his position of trust to seduce them into it. That's all very grave and there's no excuse for it and Fr. Powell should be defrocked summarily.
But you can't equate Fr. Powell's illicit heterosexual intercourse with the sickeningly unnatural homosexual acts of my parish priests. One is bad, but the other is off-the-charts horrific. Fornication is plenty bad. But sodomy is so bad that God destroyed entire cities for it in the OT. Sodomy mocks God so fundamentally that no civilization that allows it can hope to endure. Sodomy mixes blood and semen with FECES. It's a bizarre mockery of life-giving heterosexual intercourse. It is a sin that cries to Heaven for vengence.
In short, there's a very subversive message in that passage from Fr. Tony.
Is Fr. Tony gay?
I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that he is, and he just Trojan-horsed a fundamental error into his subversive teaching.
Forgive me if I'm wrong about Fr. Tony, but my earnest advice to you is to watch him. He just smuggled in some serious heresy there.
Yes. Phillip Jenkins a non-catholic did a study of over 2500 catholic priests over 30 years and found only 1 pedophile.
Ephebophilia is homosexual attraction to adolescent boys which is the majority of accusations against catholic priests and Jenkins also found in his study that the rate there was 3% which was the same rate as married men.
There is simply no evidence that celibacy increases the likelihood of either of these two disorders.
I got that it's homosexuality! Good grief, did you read what I wrote?
The problem isn't just "homosexuality" but rather "deeply entrenched homosexuality." The problem is that a large part of the clergy (the exact percentages are open to debate) is gay and is promoting the homosexual agenda using Church resources.
The Church cannot implement the necessary reforms so long as the men doing the implementing vehemently disagree with the reforms and will do just about anything they can to subvert them.
It follows - I think quite clearly - that the only way to implement the reform of ridding the clergy of all homosexuals is to end the celibacy rule, which allowed the establishment of the Lavender Mafia in the first instance.
If the Church will end priestly celibacy, then the ranks of the clergy would be swamped with heterosexual men who would run the Lavender Mafia out on a rail.
This would go a long way to addressing the Church's homosexual problem.
Would it solve all problems? Of course not.
Would child abuse still happen? Of course it would, although it's hard to imagine the creation of a heterosexual Mafia that would carry out a decades long cover-up of the sins of its members. In short, whatever abuse will happen will be much more likely to be reported and punished.
It's an INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEM. Imagine that you're the head of HR of the Church. How do you address the problem of gays in the clergy?
I see no other way than to swamp them by a tidal waive of new straight ordinations.
That would certainly work. It's not a panacea, but it would go a very long way to resolving the immediate problem of molestation of boys by Catholic clergy.
How do the multitudes, the masses, compare in anyway with the hand picked celibate Priests of the Roman Catholic church?
Why do you keep saying that celibate Priests are no worse than the average Joe in the percentage of sexual diviants?
I'll try again, do you have the numbers for that?
In all fairness, celibacy serves a very strong purpose, though one often not recognized. To have sex, and to reproduce, are very taxing on a person’s life. And while there are some people who seemed designed to reproduce and raise children, many are not.
Those who preserve their strength, and refrain from sex and reproduction, however, can commit that energy to things of much greater value to everyone. The can have the fortitude to stand up when all others fall down.
And, as has been observed over hundreds of years of murderous regimes, that even with a concerted and brutal effort, priests and nuns are terribly hard to wipe out.
The Catholic church in all its glory likely only exists in its current form because of this strength. No other institution can claim such durability, unless they also practice chastity.
And while the failures of the clergy has long been tolerated, those clergy that can overcome their base desires make it all worthwhile. As one can read in Boccaccio’s Decameron, of the 14th Century, the corrupt and unfaithful and debauched are always there; but also there are the honorable and faithful and pure, who while not notorious, represent the real strength and character of the church.
But it's obvious that the celibacy rule discourages heterosexuals in modern society from entering holy orders, and that this relative dearth of heterosexuals in the ranks of the clergy facilitated greatly the increase in the numbers of homosexual men in the clergy.
Does the homosexuality of Bernandine and Weakland have anything to do with the cover-up of hundreds of proven cases of ephebophilia???
C'mon, man. deal with reality here. The problem isn't that some men are homosexual, the problem is that far too many priests are, and that these same homosexual clergy spent the last several decades covering up and even facilitating each other's sins.
You know my solution is end the celibacy rule, as this would swamp the clergy with heterosexual family men who would vie for power with the Lavender Mafia and ultimately run them to ground. I think it clear that no other policy stands a ghost of a chance at success, since any and all orders against the entry of homosexuals to the priesthood have been and always will be subverted by the gay clergy. It follows that the gay clergy must be driven out. It's clear that they will not do that to themselves, and so they must be warred upon from the outside. The only way to achieve that, at least that I can see, is to require that all new ordinations be married men.
You don't like my proposed solution. Ok, please tell me precisely how you propose to rid the clergy of homosexuals? Please be specific.
How do the multitudes, the masses, compare in anyway with the hand picked celibate Priests...?
They do not compare other than being authority figures for the young. However, if the argument is advanced that celibacy is a cause of sexual child abuse, then that argument is refuted by pointing out what I point out: that there is plenty of child molesters among the married folk.
Just prior to when I would have been ordained deacon, I was too much of a systematic theologian and not enough of a pastoral counselor. My bishop said he already had enough guys like me and needed pastoral counselors, so he did not ordain me. This was also the Diocese of Green Bay, same as for the author of the original 2010 screed. There is a Canon Law statute forbidding ordination if the diocese did not have a use for a man. The staff at the seminary still to this day thinks I should be a priest, but it would have to be in one of the monastic orders, to which I did not feel called. My not becoming a priest had exactly zero to do with celibacy or sexuality.
Celibacy is not a cause for a homosexual takeover of the church. The men I knew who did get ordained embraced it willingly. There is no duress of any kind to be ordained. There is no "right" to be ordained. Ordination is an entrance into a life-long relationship, hence the comparisons to marriage. Either party can refuse the ordination. Only a fool would suppress an urge to marry for a lifetime for perceived power in the Church. That is not how celibacy works.
I have seen it up close from the other side. I absolutely certain that relaxing the celibacy requirement will be devastating, not enhancing, to the numbers of priests. Why become a priest if you need to support a family and you could easily get a better paying job? One year out of seminary formation and I am making more than double what I would as a priest. All the lodgings the Church gave me as a seminarian were straight out of 1960's construction codes. I would not subject a family to that kind of treatment.
I have seen what healthy celibacy looks like. Though I have room for a woman in my life now, I will probably remain celibate the rest of my days. I have a path that involves mission trips to Third-World countries, and I know few Catholic women in my parish who would go along with that who were not already heading to a convent. In the end, it is not that important me, because my vocation is the mission to help the poor, not to get married. If a suitable woman comes along to help me in that mission, so much the better, but it is not a necessity.
I guess I just have a completely different experience in the Church that you had Glutens. I do not recognize the church you describe. It is alien to me.
I agree with much of what you're saying. Celibacy, as an ideal, certainly can be a powerful good in the life of the Church.
14th century? That's nice, but that was a time when the avenues for advancement open to intelligent young men in the 14th century were rather limited to, as I wrote above, the military, the Royal bureaucracy, and the Church. Giving up the natural joys of family life might seem acceptable to a bright young man who was on fire for his studies and desirous of rising in the world.
But that's not the way it is now, and not the way it has been for at least the past century. Career choices for bright young men are nearly limitless. Why give up sex and family and endure 8 years of higher education when one can get the higher education and keep the family and still be a good Catholic?
Heterosexual vocations began to dry up 70 years ago. The seminaries responded by ignoring the rule against homosexuals in the clergy. As time passed, these same gays became entrenched in the Church bureaucracy and they naturally began to make their presence felt in terms of de facto policy.
Homosexuality was preached from the pulpit when I was growing up in Green Bay in the 70s. Priests openly carried on. Many young boys my age were molested.
So, it might well be true that celibacy can be a real boon to the Church. But it's also clear that it has become the bane of the Church in modern times.
Do you see my point?
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