Homosexuals and the priesthood.

Vatican City -- News reports suggest that the Vatican intends to approve an Instruction barring men with homosexual tendencies from the priesthood. Although media treat the reports as a "new" departure in Catholic practice, it would actually reiterate a binding directive already given by Pope John XXIII in 1961 and officially still in place.

During subsequent years, the 1961 directive fell into disuse among seminary rectors and vocation directors, particularly in North America. Faithful Catholics blame that neglect for earning the priesthood the title a "gay" profession, and for helping bring about the tide of clergy abuse scandals that have rocked the North American Church. The release of the document may come while an investigation is taking place into the admission criteria and fidelity to Catholic teaching of all 229 U.S. Catholic seminaries this fall.

The most recent document is said to have been prepared by the Congregation for Catholic Education in response to a request from the late Pope John Paul II in 1994. According to news reports, homosexual men should not be admitted into seminaries even if they are celibate, because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder that detracts from their ability to serve as ministers. The Congregation is said to have produced the document after consulting bishops, psychologists and moral theologians. There are 113,000 seminarians worldwide.

CWN News (September 19, 2005) believes the document indicates a Vatican determination to improve the quality of priestly ministry and to protect the Church from further scandals of the sort that have shaken it in the recent past.

Liberal media, of course, are upset. "No one believed they would do it, but it looks like they're going to," remarked Rev. Thomas Reese, who was recently forced out as editor of the Jesuit magazine America. "The deceptive guy who is going to gay bars and fooling around ... is not going to get caught" (Washington Times, September 23).

Father Gerald Chojnacki, head of the New York Jesuit province, expressed his opposition in a letter to his priests, claiming it would do "great harm." He is calling upon the American Conference of Major Superiors to fight "for the opportunity of a gay person to say yes to God's call" (AP, Toronto Sun, Oct. 2).

The liberal New York Times said the document "has set off a wave of anger and sadness among gay priests and seminarians." It cited two homosexuals, one a seminarian, the other a priest, as the source of this sweeping claim (September 23).

University of Notre Dame professors, including the notorious Fr. Richard McBrien, blasted the document on homosexual seminarians. And an Oregon seminary rector commented: "I don't know how to feel about it" (Silverton Appeal Tribune, Sept. 29/05).

Toronto's Globe and Mail, which has been on the pro-homo-sexual track ever since homosexual William Thorsell began his tenure as its former editor-in-chief, published an editorial entitled, "A homosexual hunt." It claimed homosexuals are being scapegoated and that "tolerance for homosexual priests [is] not to blame for the pedophilia scandal" (September 19).

Comment:

A 2004 Church fact-finding team on the clergy abuse situation reported that fully 81 per cent of abuse victims were male adolescents, rather than little children. They had become victims of a homosexual subculture in the Catholic Church.

In 2000, the U.S. lay organization Roman Catholic Faithful, produced a 63-page report, "The Homosexual Network's Death-Grip on the Roman Catholic Church" (available through its website, www.rcf.org). In it, RCF includes a homosexual network flow chart, illustrating the inter-relationships among various homosexual elements both within and without the U.S. Church. It exposes Communication Ministry Inc., "a secretive, Chicago-based organization for homosexual clergy and religious;" St. Sebastian's Angels, a pornographic website and internet support group for homosexual priests and brothers founded by Fr. John Harris of Portland, Maine; and the Catholic AIDS network, which promotes "safer sex practices." Also included are transcripts of explicit internet conversations among homosexual religious.

Michael Rose's 2002 book, Goodbye Good Men, describes a seedy underground of homosexuals in seminaries. The Wanderer newspaper has shown that the vice extends into the ranks of bishops, eight of whom have been forced to resign (C.I., October 2002).

Catholic Insight's April 2003 issue ("Clergy scandals summarized") reported that the increase in abuse by clergy over the last thirty years has coincided with the drive for homosexual equality and acceptability in society at large. Today, many bishops and religious superiors still ignore the issue of homosexuality or even flatly deny it.

A ruling against the acceptance of homosexual oriented men into the priesthood h much needed and would be most welcome.