The Vatican & gay priests.

The Christian church begins its new year with the first Sunday of Advent, and this year, on the same weekend, Americans kicked off a month of holidays, extending from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day. Both observances are meant to foster a sense of hope and new beginnings. Yet this Advent, I was struck by the sad irony that on November 29, two days into the church's season of hope, the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education chose to release its Instruction on the admission of homosexuals to seminaries and to holy orders.

Several years ago, in a talk on Advent, the great German Reformed theologian Jurgen Moltmann pointed out that some languages (German and Latin, for example) have two words for the English word "future." In Latin, futurus is that which develops in a predictable way out of the present. Moltmann said that to think of the future only in this way is a failure of hope; by itself this is "the planner's future," a way of trying to control life and thus a way of posing as God. The other Latin word for future, adventus, indicates the future as coming toward us from God, as breaking into our plans and making a claim on our lives. We are not in charge of this future, but seek to embrace it as part of God's providential care for us. To practice the virtue of hope is to open ourselves to the future's claims on us.

Many things can be said about the Vatican's Instruction on gay candidates for the priesthood. Here I want to argue that it is a failure against hope. It indulges, at least materially, in one of the two cardinal sins against hope, presumption. Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae, wrote of this sin that "one thinks one has ... greater knowledge ... than one has." Jesuit philosopher William Lynch noted that hope "keeps reality open and keeps declaring that not all the facts are in." In at least two places, the Instruction engages in presumption.

First, this is the only Vatican document on homosexuality in recent decades that does not allude, in any respect, to the possibility that we have more to learn about homosexuality. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says of homosexuality that "its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained." The source of this acknowledgment is surely the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's request that theologians "deepen ... their reflections on the true meaning of human sexuality," and, as a result, "make an important contribution in this particular area of pastoral care," a request expressed in its 1986 letter to Catholic bishops on The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.

An openness about what is yet to be learned about homosexuality can be found (more than in Vatican documents) in the 1990 U.S. bishops' statement Human Sexuality: A Catholic Perspective for Education and Lifelong Learning. The U.S. bishops write, first: "The medical and behavioral sciences do not as yet know what causes a person to be homosexual. Whether it is related to genetics, hormones, or some variation in psychosocial upbringing, the scientific data presently seem inconclusive." The bishops then conclude: "Lifelong learning [about sexuality] requires commitment to a process that unfolds and deepens through the years .... We ask you [Christian educators] to grow through prayer, reflection, study, and dialogue as you journey with those you serve. Know that we are with you in that ongoing process of discovery." In contrast, one looks in vain for a hint that the Vatican congregation thinks the church has anything at all to learn about homosexuality.

The second offense against hope in the Instruction is its statement that persons who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies "find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women." This assertion, made without any philosophical or empirical support, is also a novelty in Vatican teaching. Homosexual people are not able to relate "correctly" to men and women? Really? How does the Congregation for Catholic Education know this?

Furthermore, why would anyone seeking to foster hope, especially in a homosexual person, trust the Vatican on this? To do so might even lead to what Aquinas calls the other cardinal sin against hope, despair. Of that sin Aquinas wrote: "one who despairs judges ... that for him, in that state, on account of some particular disposition, there is no hope of the divine mercy." I am not saying that I fully understand homosexuality, but I am saying that the Instruction's bald assertions might rob some homosexual persons of hope.

My hope for our church in this respect stems from a statement by the International Theological Commission in conjunction with Pope John Paul II's Lenten apologies of the year 2000. In explaining how it is possible for a pope to apologize for past, church teachings, the commission wrote: "Not every act of authority has magisterial value, and so behavior contrary to the gospel by one or more persons vested with authority does not involve per se the magisterial charism."

Surely the church will apologize one day for this Instruction's presumption, since our magisterium, by definition, cannot act against hope. It is indeed sad that, as the new year begins for both church and society, we need to turn away from the church's teaching authority to find living models of hope.

William McDonough is assistant professor of theology at the College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, Minnesota.