Don’t know what to make of it, really. I would agree there’s a potentially arguable case against gay lovemaking, according to Scripture, and depending on whose translations you think are more correct, but as Catholic priests aren’t supposed to be doing any lovemaking with anybody, I fail to see the relevance.
And besides, I thought the Church’s official stance on homosexuality was that it’s not a sin to be homosexual, just to have homo sex. Normally these guys are pretty well-educated, so it’s also difficult to understand how the Church leadership would come to equate homosexuality with pederasty. Sure, screen out the pedophiles (whether they like little boys or girls), but why the homosexuals?
I simply don’t understand this potential development, neither on practical nor theological grounds. Of course, there’s scant scriptural argument for celibacy either, but if that’s the background, barring gays is just heaping one folly on another. Color me baffled. Why are they even contemplating this?
I believe they are operating under the homosexuality as mental illness viewpoint. If a homosexual is sexually active, then obviously he’s right out as a candidate, but even if he is chaste, he still has an unnatural, albeit involuntary, desire for homosexual behavior, and so is unsuitable for the priesthood, as is anybody with a mental disorder.
Can people with depression or recovereing from addictions not be priests? Man, the numbers of potential candidates dwindles by the minute. Last I checked, there are no credible mental health professionals left who would define homosexuality as a “disorder” or “illness”. Deviance from the norm, sure, but not a disease. Does the Church not officially recognize all this pesky clinical stuff as valid?
They do, as a general rule. However, the medical establishment does not see homosexual sex as abnormal, but the Church does; hence, the Church sees homosexuality as an involuntary affliction rather than a natural orientation.
They would do better if they simply went after the known abusers that are already “in the system”, instead of just shuffling them around and sweeping them under the rug.
I think that the point is that they are pretending that the gay priests AND the pedophiles are one and the same. It may not be true, but it makes it look like they are doing something.
But that’s such an inane notion, and so contradicted by the evidence, I can’t fathom why they’d buy into it. The Roman Church has shown itself on many occasions, despite its myriad flaws, to be open to at least some of the findings of science, even to the point of adopting radical shifts in doctrine, if necessary. The only good science out there says gay ? pedophile. Period.
One possibility I’ve considered is that, in light of this and some agitating on the part of a possibly ill-informed Austrian cardinal on the subject of intelligent design, maybe the Church is in the process of rethinking some aspects of how evidence informs theology. I’m absolutely not certain of that, hence this thread.
Quite true. However, there is a long running stereotype that “Those damn perverts down at the gay want to seduce and recruit your son.” Thus, they want to take advantage of that stereotype. So maybe it makes no sense. So what? They will take all the shifting blame they can get, as far as I can tell. They are not “buying into it”, but hopeing that others do.
P.S. I tried to cut and past a “not equal” sign from MS Word. Instead, I got a question mark. Odd, it always works when I try to say 非常に迷惑. (Very annoying. So annoying I will start a thread about it.
There’s no maybe about it. Even the present Pope, according to the article, counseled that gays could “control their sexual behavior”, and characterized assertions to the contrary as “unfounded and demeaning”. Now, apparently, it’s homo priests in the seminary can’t be trusted to keep their hands off of little boys, and/or each other. I wonder why heterosexual priests are supposed to truly have a better chance at resisting temptation in the woman-infested world outside the seminary. It’s an illogical position, no matter how you slice it, and uncharacteristically so, even for these guys.
well, this document has not been released by the Church; I’ll save my vitriol for an actual church authority.
I will comment, again, that in the abstract I think such a policy is wrong-headed. The key element for a priest is the dual disciplines of chastity and celibacy; it makes no difference what his urges are, as long as he’s not acting on them. I’m sure it’s difficult for a gay priest to remain chaste… and I’m sure it’s just as difficult for a straight priest to remain chaste. That they undertake such a sacrifice to serve God is a remarkable sign of God’s grace, and that should be the end of that.
I hope you’re right. I happen to know a guy and…well, I think he’d be better off in another profession or vocation for his own sanity, but that’s just my oppinion. He feels a calling where he is, is a fundamentally good and responsible person, and would be, quite simply, devastated by such an explicit reenforcement of the outdated and discredited notion that because of his innate desires he’s “objectively disordered”. I met him through another man who left the RC church to become an Episcopal priest (couldn’t do the celibacy thing), and that fellow is now a very straight father of two. The evidence against enacting such change is blazingly obvious. I find this news, in all honesty, astonishing, and I wonder just what the heck is going on up there in the Holy See.
I would mention that there has been a scandal in an austrian seminary where apparently homsexuality had been rampant for a long time, and it caused a major ruckus within the hierarchy of the catholic church, which decided recently (two or three months ago, maybe) to take the gloves off to deal with the issue. I remember reading articles mentionning that Rome had decided to be proactive and not let this kind of things happen again.
The decision of the catholic church authorities might be more related to this kind of problems than to pedophile priests in the USA.
It would seem that the RCC would be ignoring its own catechism should it carry out this witchhunt.
Then again, the Catholics don’t like to be questioned about it either. When it came down to a Father and a Sister who disagree with the Church’s position:
While gay (does not equal sign) pedophile, I think many in this thread may be overestimating the real world tolerance of the Catholic Church laity for gays as gays, pedophile issues aside. In trying to look up cites for a predominately gay Austrian seminary mentioned in this threadI ran across this book and these cites - GOODBYE, GOOD MEN. Irrespective of the book’s merits or lack thereof there seems to be a strong undercurrent of active disgust and hostility by the Catholic laity as how gay the church (in their opinion) has become.
While the Church may be wrong to conflate gay and pedophile as “evil tendencies” I don’t think they are uninformed about the distinctions they are making in this decision. They aren’t stupid. They are determined to make the seminaries non-gay and by conflating and linking these “evils” they manufacture a stronger position to bar gays from entry, and sidestep the moral and rhetorical arguments outlined in Bricker’s position.
In the end it’s damage control and the Catholic Church will toss gays overboard if that is what is required for institutional survival.
I purposely avoided being more specific, because I couldn’t remember exactly the details. The only things I remember is that there was a lot of gay porn on this seminary’s computers and that a large part of the seminarists and of the professors/administrators were homosexuals.
In any case, the Vatican found that this situation that apparently had been going on for a long time and was notorious had to be dealt with for good and that a general clean-up of seminaries was in order. If I’m not mistaken, it happened soon after the election of the new pope.
What do you expect? It’s the catholic church, not the International Association for Tolerance of Alternate Lifestyles.
There is some tolerance (well…they used to be, at least) for alternate views, but you’d better not, as a priest or theologian express too loudly opinions contradicting the statements of the Vatican, let alone act on them or publish them, lest you’re forbidden to teach and/or preach. And it doesn’t apply solely to the issue of homosexuality, and dates back at least to the reign of John-Paul II, who wasn’t very fond of “dissidence”.
I’ve always held the opinion that the majority of Catholic priests are gay. What better place than the seminary to get the emotional social relationship without all those pesky issues of sexuality popping up in a non-permissive society? No one wonders why a priest can’t get a girl, but lots of people wonder why the machinist down the road can’t. I think that if this were carried out, it would be the death of the Catholic church. Which in my opinion is a good thing. It’s outlived it’s usefulness.