Posted on 10/09/2002 9:53:39 AM PDT by NYer
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican has prepared a draft document containing directives against the admission of homosexuals to the priesthood, informed Vatican sources said.
The document takes the position that since the church considers the homosexual orientation as "objectively disordered" such people should not be admitted to the seminary or ordained, the sources said Oct. 8.
The question of excluding homosexuals from the priesthood had been quietly considered at the Vatican for years without finding a consensus. It received new and more urgent attention in the wake of U.S. clerical sex abuse cases, many of which involved homosexual acts.
The Congregation for Catholic Education prepared the draft document in collaboration with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and other Vatican agencies, the sources said. The draft was being circulated for comment in October among a wide range of consultants, including theologians, canon lawyers and other experts, they said.
At the same time, the education congregation has finished work on a separate document that examines how psychological sciences can be used in discerning vocations -- another hotly debated issue at the Vatican in recent years. Its publication was expected before the end of the year.
The document on psychological testing will take the form of guidelines or orientations for bishops to use in their seminaries, the sources said.
However, the draft document on homosexuals will take the form of directives or norms, to be used throughout the universal church, they said.
"The document's position (on admission of homosexuals to the priesthood) is negative, based in part on what the 'Catechism of the Catholic Church' says in its revised edition, that the homosexual orientation is 'objectively disordered,'" said one source.
"Therefore, independent of any judgment on the homosexual person, a person of this orientation should not be admitted to the seminary and, if it is discovered later, should not be ordained," he said.
Last year Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of the Vatican's doctrinal congregation, said in a Catholic News Service interview, "Persons with a homosexual inclination should not be admitted to the seminary."
In September a U.S. Vatican official at the Congregation for Bishops, Father Andrew R. Baker, articulated arguments against acceptance of homosexuals as priesthood candidates in an article published by the Catholic magazine America.
Father Baker said that if a man has a predominant or exclusive same-sex attraction that in itself is grounds for bishops to have "a prudent doubt regarding the candidate's suitability" for receiving the sacrament of orders. Church law says if such a doubt exists the person should not be ordained.
Father Baker said homosexuality was a "disordered attraction" that can "never 'image' God and never contribute to the good of the person or society." He cited potential difficulties for homosexual seminarians or priests; they included problems dealing with their tendencies in a largely heterosexual society, questions about adherence to church teachings, and possible temptations presented in male environments like the seminary or the priesthood.
Father Baker said his article reflected his personal opinion and not the official position of the Vatican. While some Vatican officials have expressed similar views, others are concerned that such an attempt to "weed out" candidates to the priesthood would rely too heavily on interpretive evaluations of an individual's sexuality.
The officials who spoke to Catholic News Service said there was no definitive time frame for the document on homosexuality and admission to the priesthood.
"Only the Holy Spirit knows that," said one official.
Because of the sensitivity of the issues involved, Pope John Paul II and other top Vatican officials will be carefully reviewing it before publication, the sources said.
"There could be changes, especially because this is an interdicasterial (interdepartmental) work. There are some passages that must be written with very careful attention," said one official.
The wording in the catechism that describes the homosexual inclination as "objectively disordered" was added when the definitive Latin text of the catechism was released in 1997. Earlier editions of the catechism said homosexual acts were intrinsically disordered and said homosexual tendencies represented a trial for most people.
The document on psychological testing, titled "Orientations for the Use of Psychological Methods in the Admission and Formation of Candidates to the Priesthood," was discussed at the education congregation's plenary assembly in February.
At that time, the pope told the congregation's members that guidelines on the use of psychology to evaluate seminary candidates could help identify real vocations and ensure that such decisions are made with "a wider sense of awareness."
The pope said the support from psychological sciences should be used in a balanced way as part of the overall vocational path, integrated in a candidate's formation program. He said recourse to psychological methods can only be understood in the context of the "climate of faith" that marks the vocational decision.
Psychological methods "do not eliminate every type of difficulty and tension, but favor a wider sense of awareness and a freer exercise of liberty" when it comes to the challenging choice of a priestly vocation, he said.
Many Vatican officials have privately voiced apprehension about over-reliance on psychological methods to screen candidates to the priesthood. The document is said to address those concerns by stressing a balanced approach that recognizes the potential contributions of psychology, but within a limited sphere of competence.
END
Guess I shoulda searched the News Forum before I posted it too.
Bumping again!
I know in my diocese at least, it gives us laity a much bigger stick with which to beat our pro-homo bishop.
And that's a heap of good in our battle.
Unfortunately, as one of our good diocesan priests quipped after joining us for a protest against the bishop having a New Age/ Call to Action nun speak at a diocesan conference,
"You can beat a dog with a stick, but he'll still be a dog."
That is the level of respect our bishop's own priests have for him.
Sorry, NYer. I know you don't agree with the content of the poster, but I MUST rebut such nonsense.
The difference between releasing a Church member from an obligation to perform an action which could endanger their health, and providing the means for Church members to engage in unhealthy behavior with greater impunity is night and day.
Practicing the abstinence and monogamy proscribed by Church teaching would end the risk of AIDS overnight. We ought to condemn homosexual activists for propagandizing away the Church's medically viable solution to the AIDS crisis.
I concur. I could use the practice.
Many Vatican officials have privately voiced apprehension about over-reliance on psychological methods to screen candidates to the priesthood. The document is said to address those concerns by stressing a balanced approach that recognizes the potential contributions of psychology, but within a limited sphere of competence.
The document is said to address those concerns by stressing a balanced approach that recognizes the potential contributions of psychology, but within a limited sphere of competence.A big surprise for me in the child-abuse scandla is the extent to which the church has 'bought into' the modern psycho-therapeutic regime. From using psychologists to evaluate seminarians to using therapists to heal abuse victims, the church has relied on the psych community rather than on its own traditional methods.
The above is only what an informed Vatican sources said.
I am pretty sure the language will be nice and clear in the completed document -- because that's what's badly needed. Disclosing the 1961 anti-homo-clergy document only to the US Bishops didn't do much good, so this time it will be made official -- IMHO.
That's interesting. Thanks for the post. Considering that there is no coherent peer-reviewed consensus among psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, or philophers of science regarding what would constitute a working scientific model of the human psyche, this should prove fascinating territory. Just peruse Out of its Mind: Psychiatry in Crisis by J. Allan Hobson and Jonathan Leonard. If Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins medical schools, together with the APA, AMA, and the various international Freudian/Lacanian juntas can't agree where the id meets the elbow, or the conscious self ends and the amygdala begins, where does that leave seminary review boards?
The last thing needed is a bunch of goofy diocesan bureaucrats scrying over Myers-Briggs scores, Rorschach Inkblots, and serum serotonin blood levels. While it would nice if "Catholic experts" could make sense out of this, secular psychdom does not exactly offer a coherent working model for precision. Just imagine the kind of people Cardinal Mahony or, heaven forbid, Rembert Weakland might have hired to see if any seminarians needed Ritalin, Prozac, or sex-addiction counseling. Get the picture? Will psychologists from the NEA be picking our new priests? If the picture Michael Rose painted is accurate, it doesn't really require a PhD or M.D. to spot kooks, pervs, and people who swing the wrong way. Character screening, as in other public safety and security professions, does not necessarily require a psychobabble paradigm to weed out the pathological and unfit. Let's hope the Vatican places the right emphasis on these matters. We certainly could use a few heroes to clarify this well-known penumbra.
Right on, HowlinglyMBA! You just need good and holy men with good judgment and a good knowledge of people to choose reasonably well who should be a priest and who should not. It was done that way for two millenia. The psychological babble-junk used now has only led to deep pain and suffering within and without the Church. Nowhere is this pain greater than where children are (and have been) involved.
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