Gays in the priesthood
After years of leaks, hints and speculation, the Vatican’s instruction on the admission of homosexual men to the priesthood has finally been released.
The unwieldily titled “Instruction on the Criteria of Vocational Discernment Regarding Persons With Homosexual Tendencies in View of Their Admission to the Priesthood and to Sacred Orders” is indeed a strange fish. Its provisions are in part so explicit and yet so vague in others as to give vocations directors and seminary rectors much leeway for interpretation.
Thus one could read it as an unequivocal ban on homosexuals in the priesthood, or identify caveats and gaping loopholes to permit the admission of any sexually mature, celibate homosexual.
One may presume that the document’s ambiguities are the result of concessions borne out of long, heated deliberations, some of it going as far as examining whether the holy orders of already ordained homosexual priests were valid.
Instead of issuing an unambiguous ban on gays in the priesthood, as many had feared, the document invites semantic debate about the precise meaning of “homosexual tendencies”, a characteristic it identifies as an impediment to ordination.
The Congregation for Christian Education, which was responsible for issuing the document, mandates that homosexuals “who support the so-called gay culture” should not be admitted to seminaries. This is an evident reaction to frequent complaints that in some seminaries such a sub-culture dominates, with a result that heterosexual seminarians feel alienated.
The congregation is right to confront the dominance of such sub-cultures in seminaries. One presumes that excessively macho heterosexual sub-cultures would likewise be undesirable. Surely the predominant culture in a seminary should be one of service to God and Church, not one that excludes people on account of race, class or sexual orientation.
The congregation is also correct in voicing its concern over the question of celibacy. As long as the Latin-rite priesthood requires celibacy, the Church cannot favour ordaining men who are likely to violate their promise of chastity.
This should be so regardless of sexual orientation. There is no evidence that homosexual priests are inherently less capable of maintaining a celibate lifestyle than their heterosexual counterparts. Indeed, in some regions sexual indiscretions are committed mostly by heterosexual priests.
And therein lies the real problem with the document: it is the arbitrariness of directing it specifically at homosexual vocations when many of the sound principles underlying it apply also to heterosexual vocations.
Arguably, a general instruction that would have outlined those defects of character that should prevent a candidate from admission to Holy Orders or a seminary, with sub-sections dealing with homosexuality, might have presented a preferable option and not create such an excess of bad press and subsequent accusations of homophobia.
More than that, by isolating homosexuals as unsuitable for ordination, as the document implies, the Vatican has produced a most grievous side-effect.
Caveats and loopholes notwithstanding, the document, in tone and nature, denigrates the many homosexual priests (and bishops and surely even cardinals) who have devoted their lives to exemplary service to the Church, but who might have been barred from the priesthood were they to hear God’s call today.
It is difficult to reconcile the good example of these priests with the Vatican’s misgivings about homosexuals with a vocation.
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