Posted on 10/07/2005 5:26:14 AM PDT by Abathar
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican will allow gay men into the priesthood if they can show they have been celibate for at least three years, leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported on Friday.
But it said the Vatican will ban men who "publicly manifest their homosexuality" or show an "overwhelming attraction" to homosexual culture "even if it is only intellectually."
The Vatican views on gay priests are contained in a secret 16-page document which is expected to be released next month.
The document, an "instruction" by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education, covers one of the most sensitive issues in the Roman Catholic Church.
Officials at the Congregation for Catholic Education and the Vatican press office could not be reached for immediate comment.
The Corriere report said: "Candidates who show a homosexual tendency will not be allowed into the priesthood unless they can demonstrate that they have been able to remain chaste for at least three years."
Media reports last month, primarily in the United States, said the document would bar all gay men from being ordained priests, even those who are celibate.
Those reports caused concerns in many quarters in the Church that many good men would be excluded by a total ban.
The Church teaches that homosexuality is not a sin but that homosexual acts are, and it expects all priests, whether homosexual or heterosexual, to remain celibate.
Corriere and the weekly Panorama magazine both reported on Friday that Pope Benedict had approved the document this summer.
Panorama said its release would be accompanied by a written explanation by "an internationally known psychologist."
WIDESPREAD CONTROVERSY
Reacting to earlier reports that the document would ban even celibate gays, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin told the British Catholic newspaper The Tablet last week:
"You don't write off a candidate for the priesthood simply because he is a gay man."
Martin told the Tablet that seminaries did not in the past give men enough support to help them mature in their sexuality.
"We need to provide services of support for these priests and this will involve helping them along their personal journey and reassuring them."
In his book "The Changing Face of the Priesthood," Father Donald Cozzens estimated that some 40 percent of U.S. priests are gay but only a tiny minority are practicing homosexuals.
The Corriere report by the paper's respected religious affairs correspondent Luigi Accattoli, which he said was based on "verbal indiscretions," said the testing period for celibacy would be the last three years of seminary study.
Some conservative Catholics cheered last month's media reports that the new document would ban even celibate gays.
Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, head of the U.S. Archdiocese for Military Services, caused a storm when he said that even homosexuals who had managed to remain celibate for 10 years or more should not be admitted into seminaries.
Such positions were met by much criticism in the rest of the Church, particularly in the United States.
The Vatican has been working on the instruction on homosexual men and the priesthood for years. It will be a reform of a 1961 document which said men with "perverse inclination" to homosexuality should not be ordained.
There's more to being homosexual than acting out sexually. The Church teaches that God's design is that man and woman enjoy a sexual relationship, in the state of Holy Matrimony while open to procreation. Any other sexual desire, whether acted out or not is illicit. Someone who refuses to accept that as the ONLY proper and licit teaching on sexuality is not fit for the priesthood and is not a fit teacher or preacher.
Aren't all Priests supposed to be celibate?
Aren't all Priests supposed to be celibate?
***
Yup...but many are not.
What the church needs is more gay priests. That will fix everything.
I'm not Catholic, or even religious, but I don't think this is good policy. For one thing, the Bible takes a pretty strong opposing position, if that means anything.
Homosexual priests are not just about sex. There surely is something seriously psychologically dysfunctional about a person who follows unnatural sexual desires specifically condemned by the religion he is supposed to uphold..
"If they can show they have been celibate for at least three years."
No Vatican document would ever say this, because "celibate" means unmarried!
All candidates for the priesthood are supposed to be celibate!
If the idiots who made this article up meant "chaste" - how can you prove chastity in men?
It's impossible.
People with this inclination have objectively disordered affections. They're spiritually disabled and should never be ordained under any circumstances.
Whoooo.. I am surprised. This in my opinion ENCOURAGES homosexuals to join the church. I don't like this... does not seem right somehow.
Ding Ding Ding... Let the man choose his prize....
Right On!!
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. Leviticus 20:12-14
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=3&chapter=20&verse=12&end_verse=14&version=9&context=context
Morning BC,
Are they on the crack pipe at the vatican? Letting the fox in the hen-house to guard the chickens?????????
Kennedy and kerry must have some relatives in the vatican.
Reality Is,
NSNR-CSAOTL
this is nothing but BS in the first degree
A Proverbs 31 young woman with lovely physical features and a heart that yearns & burns for JESUS and HIS holiness & Righteousness..
...and who agrees to a strict Constitutionalist view of the 2nd Amendment.
Currently in the US there is one priest for every 4700 parishioners. If the 40% of priests said to be homosexual were removed, there would be one priest for every 11,000 parishioners.
how can you prove chastity in men?
castration? make the priests eunochs. problem solved.
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