Posted on 10/07/2005 9:08:56 AM PDT by West Coast Conservative
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."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I think the only disqualification from the Catholic priesthood is interpreting the Bible literally (to judge from numerous other Catholic threads at present).
Incorrect.
Every study has shown that homosexuals are far more promiscuous than normal people.
A comment that is really, really beneath you.
Two Words:
Cardinal Law
I'm Roman Catholic and I have no problem with this.
(My apologies to Father Joe and the rest of the decent Jesuits who have to put up with all this crap from their fellow SJers).
You're an atheist and you're against homosexuality? But you have no grounds for such a position.
Of course, you have no grounds to be opposed to mass murder either, for that matter.
Forgive me if I've mistaken you for someone else.
huh
The post I was responding to said nothing about promiscuity. It said that homosexuals are driven by their sexual urges. So are the vast majority of heterosexuals, more or less. And that "abstinence is not in their vocabulary." Again, the same can be said of most heterosexuals.
The main difference is that homosexuals talk about their sexuality much more than heterosexuals do.
This is less a question about homosexuality (for me at least) than about integrity within an institution that many in my family belong to and that I may rejoin someday.
The same can be said about heterosexuals. Also, I don't understand why Catholic priests have to be celibate anyway? Why can't they marry? In almost every other Christian denomination they can marry. Jewish Rabbis (of which Jesus was one) can marry.
I have no idea why Catholics are so enamored with celibacy. It's one of the many strange things they do that has no scriptural basis.
From the Catholic Encyclopedia under "Celibacy of the Clergy.": Celibacy is the renunciation of marriage implicitly or explicitly made, for the more perfect observance of chastity, by all those who receive the Sacrament of Orders in any of the higher grades...
What if it has only been 2 years and 364 days since the candidate had oral or anal sex with another man? Will they let him slide...
Sorry to be so graphic, but this is absurd.
A_R
This is the very same requirement the Church makes of heterosexuals who present themselves for admission.
It is simply an impossibility to screen all homosexuals out of the priesthood. And, in many cases, totally unnecessary.
My apologies to you, but you and I both know you are a decided minority in your Church, and stand condemned by its establishment (regardless of what Pope Leo XIII might have said over a hundred years ago).
You are probably unaware of this, but I have been duelling quite ferociously with your co-religionists another thread where they are bashing not only creationists but people who think that Jonah was a real person. I have not pinged you to that thread because I didn't want you to see and be hurt by the things I have said in response.
I have a great anger at the Roman Catholic Church because it condemns my people's cultural beliefs (creationism, Biblical literalism) while making room for totem poles and everything else it can find room for. I was a member for six years and made to feel like an evil rebel against G-d simply because I took G-d's word as literally true while "members of the family" (Italians, Irish, Hispanics, Poles, etc.) can get away with bloody murder. I am sick of my people for being ridiculed simply for accepting the literal truth of the Bible by a Church that prays to angels (which its clergy probably don't even believe in) and has neo-pagan devotions in which snakes are wrapped around statues.
I am sick and tired of hearing about Juan Diego's acceptance by your "blessed mother" when she wouldn't accept my own mother. I couldn't even get any Catholic clergyman to even speak to my mother about converting because she was too "simple." So the story of Juan Diego and how G-d loves Aztecs but not rednecks is a very big sticking point with me.
The fact that you and I are friends doesn't mean you have to mute your anger at Benny Hinn. My friendship with you is not going to cause me to be soft on the Church that allows all this crap. And you can tell me "that isn't the Church," but then where is it???
Eventually you have to admit that the Catholic Church can only be judged by its official leaders and spokesmen and not by what it should be but isn't.
I am sorry I have pained you. But I'm in full throttle mode right now and not likely to calm down for some time.
I sense the edge of a slippery slope.
Uh-oh.
This is less a question about homosexuality (for me at least) than about integrity within an institution that many in my family belong to and that I may rejoin someday.
I can understand that position.
What I cannot understand is why so many people who want to selectively accept some supernatural phenomena and reject others are more culturally respectable to atheists than people like me who realize it is illogical to believe a dead man popped out of the ground while simultaneously believing that a six day creation is simply too silly to be taken literally.
How do you prove you have been celibate for 3 years?
Why didn't you speak to your own mother about converting? Or did you not feel up to the task?
It's simple to do, really. Just take your mother to church, to experience the Eucharist.
Speaking of the Eucharist, I notice you didn't, in your post. Did the sacraments mean anything to you while you were Catholic? I notice you place a great stock in the literal interpretation of Scripture, but you say nothing about the very literal signs of God's presence in our lives, the seven sacraments.
You say nothing about Jesus' real presence in the Eucharist, yet, for some reason, you are in a huff that Jonah may not be accepted as a real person.
Eventually you have to admit that the Catholic Church can only be judged by its official leaders and spokesmen and not by what it should be but isn't.
Sorry, but the Church is also "judged" by those who make it up, that is Catholics in the pews. If you can't bring the Faith to your own mother, who are you going to bring it to?
oh no. rats.
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