Posted on 09/15/2005 12:07:00 AM PDT by Crackingham
Investigators appointed by the Vatican have been instructed to review each of the 229 Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States for "evidence of homosexuality" and for faculty members who dissent from church teaching, according to a document prepared to guide the process. The Vatican document, given to The New York Times yesterday by a priest, surfaces as Catholics await a Vatican ruling on whether homosexuals should be barred from the priesthood.
In a possible indication of the ruling's contents, the American archbishop who is supervising the seminary review said last week that "anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations," should not be admitted to a seminary.
Edwin O'Brien, archbishop for the United States military, told The National Catholic Register that the restriction should apply even to those who have not been sexually active for a decade or more.
American seminaries are under Vatican review as a result of the sexual abuse scandal that swept the priesthood in 2002. Church officials in the United States and Rome agreed that they wanted to take a closer look at how seminary candidates were screened for admission, and whether they were being prepared for lives of chastity and celibacy.
The issue of gay seminarians and priests has been in the spotlight because a study commissioned by the church found last year that about 80 percent of the young people victimized by priests were boys.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Long overdue, but bravo anyway.
The catechism says that homosexuals are called to chastity and unjust discrimination should be avoided. Obviously the Church is contented with lumping all homosexuals (even ones with no sexual behavior for a decade) with pedophiles. This is a practice doomed to fail.
2358...They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
This looks like discrimination. What about homosexual rights and the Boy Scouts? They've been hounded from pillar to post over this. Will the Catholic Church have to...er...back down?
Let's see, for years the Vatican ignores what anyone on FR can find out in one hour, then there finally begins a highly formal, elephantine investigation. Many words can describe the RCC but nimble doesn't seem to be among them.
Almost all the victims were post-pubescent teenage boys,
which doesn't fit the description of "pedophilia".
If this were truly a "pedophilia" problem involving pre-pubescent children, which it is not, then heterosexuals would be as likely to offend as homosexuals. Since post-pubescent teen boys were overwhelmingly the victims, nearly all the wayward priests involved were homosexuals. The church has a particular problem with homosexual priests.
You site the catholic catechism saying that homosexuals are called to chastity and that unjust discrimination should be avoided.
The church calls everyone to stop sinning, and says no one should be unjustly discriminated against.
But priests are justly called to a higher standard than laity. The celibacy vow poses an extra challenge. The bible explicitly details quite a high standard for Bishops, one much higher than that for the laity.
Alcoholics are called to sobriety, and the church also feels they should not be unjustly discriminated against. Keeping them out of the priesthood is not unjust, doing so protects both the Church and laity. (Bishops could make an exception for an inspiring repentant one they had great confidence in). High standards are a good thing. Protecting our teenage children from sexual abuse is not unjust, and being a priest is not a right.
A few seminaries may have been particularly wayward in tolerating ongoing homosexuality. The situation might not only involve those trying and succeeding to be repentent.
bump
Benedict is turning out to be an even better Pope than JPII.
IIRC, there was something about JPII's experiences in WWII that made it difficult for him to accuse people of homosexuality. Benedict does not have these scars, and can thus give the church a much needed house cleaning.
Respectfully agree.
Pedophilia has lately been miss-applied to any deviance involving Older/Younger liasons. Just as older men are attracted to younger girls, the wayward HOMOSEXUAL priests were attracted to younger boys. Clinically, genuine pedophilia is an extremely rare affliction.
I don't think this is correct. Pedophilia is attraction to children--prepubescents. Maybe attraction to boy children is different than homosexuality--frankly, I am skeptical that this is a rationalization; but I will accept that it might be true.
However, pedophilia is irrelevant to the catholic church molestation scandal. As I understand it, the vast bulk of the molested boys were post-pubescent teenagers. Attraction by a man to a sextually mature teenage boy is homosexuality and the attempt to hide that by calling it pedophilia is mendacious. I got hit on by homosexuals (unsuccessfully for the record) when I was a teen and involved in semi-pro drama and I assure you, they were treating me like a sexually mature potential sex-partner who was a young man.
What is mendacious about this argument is that it deliberately uses the word pedophilia in two different senses for the purpose of concealing the homosexual problem in the church. It uses 'pedophilia' in the popular sense to mean sex with any underage person to get the reader agreeing that pedophilia is the problem. Then, without informing the reader, it uses 'pedophilia' in the technical sense (meaning sex with prepubescent children) when quoting the 'experts,' thereby suggesting that the catholic church's problem is not a homosexual problem. It is.
The scriptures clearly disagree with this one. Apparently a homo-promo wrote it.
"... knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them. Romans 1:32.
Of course the application will almost surely fall short of the goals, but setting blunt, pointed standards is a great starting point.
It's not approving of the practice or the lifestyle, but their being a human being, a child of God.
There are people and there are sins. Practicing homosexuality is a sin. But so is all sorts of other things. Encouraging anyone to sin is wrong. Encouraging anyone, including a person who once did homosexual practice to not sin is good.
St. Paul didn't kick out people who had in the past practiced homosexuality. He told them don't do it any more, and encouraged them.
So Catholics are encouraged to hate the sin, not the sinner.
The full quote from the catechism makes it clear that those who have a homosexual inclination must be accepted with respect, as opposed to approving of "those who practice" homosexual sex.
The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect ....
And then goes on with
"homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 .... Under no circumstances can they be approved.” CCC 2357
"Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers."
The Inquisition, what a show.
The Inquisition, here we go.
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