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VATICAN: HOMOSEXUALS ARE NOT TO BE ORDAINED AS CATHOLIC PRIESTS
BREITBART.COM ^ | September 22, 2005 | Rachel Zoll, AP Religion Writer

Posted on 09/22/2005 6:06:19 PM PDT by BIRDS

"Expected Vatican Ban Roils American Church" Sep 22 4:15 PM US/Eastern

Word that a soon-to-be-released Vatican document will signal homosexuals are unwelcome in Roman Catholic seminaries even if they are celibate has devastated gay clergy _ and raised doubts among conservatives about whether an outright ban can be enforced.

A Vatican official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the document has not been released, said Thursday that the upcoming "instruction" from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education will reaffirm the church's belief that homosexuals should not be ordained.

In recent decades, Vatican officials have stated several times that gays should not become priests because their sexual orientation is "intrinsically disordered" and makes them unsuitable for ministry.

More...

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: homosexualagenda; homosexuality; ordaination; priests; seminary; vatican
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To: BIRDS
Estimates of the number of gay seminarians and priests vary from 25 percent to 50 percent out of about 42,500 priests in the United States. Whatever the percentage, many Catholics are worried that the priesthood is becoming a homosexual profession. As the abuse crisis intensified, church officials discussed their concerns more openly and more urgently, even though experts on sex offenders said that homosexuals were no more likely than heterosexuals to abuse children.

Hm. The 25% to 50% figure sounds like the sort of thing that gets Andrew Sullivan excited -- not that it takes much. I just wonder if the number is backed up by anything more reliable than, say, the Kinsey 10%-are-gay "study". The reference to "children" makes me think that the writer is trying to avoiding mentioning that most of the molesting priests are not pedophiles but ephebophiles, and he also avoids noting that the vast majority of the abused "children" are male. The church abuse scandal consisted mostly of male homosexual priests who abused male adolescents.

101 posted on 09/22/2005 11:25:46 PM PDT by TChad
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To: sinkspur

Please try to read the thread because that point has been answered several times over.

No one suggests a 'witch hunt' unless you feel, specifically, that homosexuals are "witches" and that suggesting homosexuals in the Priesthood at present leave the Church consists of "hunting" them.

No one's said that. However, the article quotes some homosexuals who are Priests at present as being disgruntled and suggesting they would "leave" the Priesthood and the response here by most of us has been, go ahead, leave. It would probably make them happier and would make the rest of the Church happier, is the point -- any Priest that would threaten to leave and be that unhappy in his work, should leave the Priesthood or at least take a sabbatical and rethink their vocation.

If it's a vocation God has intended, they will stay and their work and person will be honorable to God.

However, as to future enrollments in the Seminaries and consequently ordainatiion later in the Priesthood, the Pope is instructing that no homosexuals be admitted and later ordained. There's much support for that and most especially, scriptural support for that.

Celibacy is one aspect of a person. A homosexual who is celibate is still homosexual, they still possess and are possessed by that presence, to use an expression here. Popular culture insists that homosexuality is parallel with heterosexuality and sex is sex is sex but that isn't what the bible instructs nor what is believed by us Catholics and by most other Christians.

However, within the realm of both, celibacy is but one aspect to and about a person. To be specific here, however, sexuality for homosexuals is approached far differently than by heterosexuals, from what I've read and heard, etc. There's a difference in approach to and about many aspects of human life between a homosexual perspective and that of a heterosexual and in my own life, from people I've worked with who were homosexual, I can certainly atest to that that there are miles of differences between the two.

Just by your question alone, you're into an area of excess that is noteworthy, suggesting "witch hunts" and such.

I'll repeat this: a Priest represents Christ to the faithful as Jesus Christ represents love and Savior to his Church. Jesus Christ is the son of God and God the Father says that homosexuality is abominable, an abomination, worse to Him in His eyes than just about anything else, and about which there is a terrible penalty to follow. Christ is holy as God is holy and a human being declaring affiliation with the abominable standing in the place of holiness is therefore a terrible abomination in and of itself. That's how many people perceive the issue, literally and homosexuals in the Priesthood, although celibate, still affiliate as homosexuals -- litarally, with and as the abominable. Therefore, it is an issue of grace in the Priesthood that is questionable and leads to further deterioration of the Priesthood, much moreso by behaviors that may and sometimes do ensue.


102 posted on 09/22/2005 11:25:58 PM PDT by BIRDS
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To: sinkspur

Please try to read the thread because that point has been answered several times over.

No one suggests a 'witch hunt' unless you feel, specifically, that homosexuals are "witches" and that suggesting homosexuals in the Priesthood at present leave the Church consists of "hunting" them.

No one's said that. However, the article quotes some homosexuals who are Priests at present as being disgruntled and suggesting they would "leave" the Priesthood and the response here by most of us has been, go ahead, leave. It would probably make them happier and would make the rest of the Church happier, is the point -- any Priest that would threaten to leave and be that unhappy in his work, should leave the Priesthood or at least take a sabbatical and rethink their vocation.

If it's a vocation God has intended, they will stay and their work and person will be honorable to God.

However, as to future enrollments in the Seminaries and consequently ordainatiion later in the Priesthood, the Pope is instructing that no homosexuals be admitted and later ordained. There's much support for that and most especially, scriptural support for that.

Celibacy is one aspect of a person. A homosexual who is celibate is still homosexual, they still possess and are possessed by that presence, to use an expression here. Popular culture insists that homosexuality is parallel with heterosexuality and sex is sex is sex but that isn't what the bible instructs nor what is believed by us Catholics and by most other Christians.

However, within the realm of both, celibacy is but one aspect to and about a person. To be specific here, however, sexuality for homosexuals is approached far differently than by heterosexuals, from what I've read and heard, etc. There's a difference in approach to and about many aspects of human life between a homosexual perspective and that of a heterosexual and in my own life, from people I've worked with who were homosexual, I can certainly atest to that that there are miles of differences between the two.

Just by your question alone, you're into an area of excess that is noteworthy, suggesting "witch hunts" and such.

I'll repeat this: a Priest represents Christ to the faithful as Jesus Christ represents love and Savior to his Church. Jesus Christ is the son of God and God the Father says that homosexuality is abominable, an abomination, worse to Him in His eyes than just about anything else, and about which there is a terrible penalty to follow. Christ is holy as God is holy and a human being declaring affiliation with the abominable standing in the place of holiness is therefore a terrible abomination in and of itself. That's how many people perceive the issue, literally and homosexuals in the Priesthood, although celibate, still affiliate as homosexuals -- litarally, with and as the abominable. Therefore, it is an issue of grace in the Priesthood that is questionable and leads to further deterioration of the Priesthood, much moreso by behaviors that may and sometimes do ensue.


103 posted on 09/22/2005 11:26:23 PM PDT by BIRDS
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To: little jeremiah
Each choice defines and changes. Each choice makes the next one, in either direction, easier. Good begets good. And evil, evil. Like art - brush strokes add or take away from the beauty of the painting... No one choice of strokes is the painting, but the total is the picture.

In your case, you're still here, and still painting. So make the brush stokes those that celebrate the goodness of God.

104 posted on 09/22/2005 11:27:12 PM PDT by GOPJ (When incentives are switched, patterns change. Until then, it's same old, same old.)
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To: BIRDS

You understand the concept of incremental degradation of the soul. Interesting.


105 posted on 09/22/2005 11:29:10 PM PDT by GOPJ (When incentives are switched, patterns change. Until then, it's same old, same old.)
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To: GOPJ

Yes, and yes.


106 posted on 09/22/2005 11:30:33 PM PDT by BIRDS
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To: sarasmom
Good for the Pope!

Agreed. I had a good intuition about this Ratzinger fellow right up front; I hope he keeps up the good work.

Now if all the other Christian denominations will start to clean out their own "temples" ...

Other Christian denominations don't seem to have this one particular problem, at least not to this extent.

The liberal ones have, for the most part, totally, openly embraced sodomy, and are undergoing rapid demographic decay. They are overrun with homosexuals, but fortunately, a clericial sodomite can't molest children if there aren't any children in his congregation!

On the other hand, the hardcore moral conservative churches, which are growing, reject homosexuality as vehemently as the Vatican should have all along. Although the homos do sometimes infiltrate anyway; a few years ago, the youth pastor of the church I was then attending, was exposed as a boy molester. (He regularly preached about how we should "Kiss Dating Goodbye"....hmmmm....)

107 posted on 09/22/2005 11:48:26 PM PDT by Rytwyng
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To: All

Does not the Catholic church believe in the infalibility of the Pope?

Seems the left wingers who CLAIM to be faithful have no wiggle room to dispute this decree. It is a religion not a San Francisco affirmative action program.


108 posted on 09/22/2005 11:53:31 PM PDT by longtermmemmory (VOTE!)
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To: GOPJ

It seems that our understandings are similar. I would put it that every action we take has a reaction - reaping what we sow - and the reactions to choices made in opposition to the desire of God place more and more darkness over our hearts and minds.

Actions done to please Him take that darkness away, bit by bit, so we gain spiritual health. And yes, a little bit of evil makes more evil "go down" easier, and serving God gives us a little taste of Him, so that we become more accustomed to His service and more attracted by His goodness and mercy.


109 posted on 09/22/2005 11:53:35 PM PDT by little jeremiah (A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, are incompatible with freedom. P. Henry)
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To: BIRDS
a human being declaring affiliation with the abominable standing in the place of holiness is therefore a terrible abomination in and of itself

Well said. A "celibate gay" is still attached to his abomination in the core of his identity, even if he doesn't actually practice it physically. The phrase "celibate gay" is about as nonsensical as "nonpracticing racist" or a "nonusing drug addict". If you reject the behavior as immoral under all circumstances -- as a faithful priest must -- then, why identify with it at all?

The comparison with priests who experience heterosexual impulses is utterly bogus. Heterosexual attraction is a natural, necessary precursor to marriage, and even for a priest, marriage is at least a theoretical possibility; as Catholic freepers have explained to me in the past, the celibacy rule for clergy is not a fundamental doctrine but simply a church rule that could in theory be changed, and to which exceptions are occasionally granted. Indeed a small % of Catholic priests ARE married -- mainly clergy from Anglican and other denominations who converted, and already had wives.

110 posted on 09/23/2005 12:04:02 AM PDT by Rytwyng
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To: Rytwyng

Thanks, and yes, to what you've written, also well said!


111 posted on 09/23/2005 12:32:56 AM PDT by BIRDS
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To: BIRDS

Excellent news. Will celebrate when it's official.


112 posted on 09/23/2005 4:50:26 AM PDT by Aquinasfan (Isaiah 22:22, Rev 3:7, Mat 16:19)
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To: A.A. Cunningham
Negative.

That has no connection to the Vatican or the Roman Catholic Church at all.

They just put the name "Catholic" in there to announce that they operate in what they perceive to be the Catholic tradition. CINOs?
113 posted on 09/23/2005 4:54:43 AM PDT by bill1952 ("All that we do is done with an eye towards something else.")
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Comment #114 Removed by Moderator

To: Melas
Show me the scripture that would apply to the man who has never lain with another man and who never intends to lie with another man.

Show me the scripture that would apply to embezzling money from employees' 401k's.

It's simply prudent to bar from the priesthood men who are sexually attracted to other men.

115 posted on 09/23/2005 4:56:58 AM PDT by Aquinasfan (Isaiah 22:22, Rev 3:7, Mat 16:19)
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To: BIRDS

Well dog my cats. If the news doesn't fit......Change it.

Good posts. Thanks.


116 posted on 09/23/2005 5:06:21 AM PDT by bill1952 ("All that we do is done with an eye towards something else.")
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To: BizzeeMom
Because, you see, while the media wanted something done, it didn't want THIS

Bingo. Isn't it great when you get what you ask for?
It reminds me of that story about the genie and the three wishes. He had his wishes granted, but the results were not exactly what was wanted.

117 posted on 09/23/2005 5:11:11 AM PDT by bill1952 ("All that we do is done with an eye towards something else.")
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To: MSSC6644

No. What are they?


118 posted on 09/23/2005 5:12:36 AM PDT by bill1952 ("All that we do is done with an eye towards something else.")
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To: TonyRo76
Correct. Especially so, he is not entitled to teach, or be a role model for, my children.
119 posted on 09/23/2005 5:28:51 AM PDT by bill1952 ("All that we do is done with an eye towards something else.")
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To: bill1952

Here's one explanation, and from a liberal source. Do a google search and read.

http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2003c/082903/082903v.php


120 posted on 09/23/2005 6:19:53 AM PDT by MSSC6644
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