Posted on 09/30/2005 11:50:24 AM PDT by Antioch
A top Jesuit official has been contacting leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to protest a soon-to-be-released Vatican document that is expected to reinforce the teaching that gays are not welcome in the priesthood.
The Rev. Gerald Chojnacki, head of the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, said in a letter to his priests that he was asking bishops to tell Vatican officials who are drafting the policy "of the great harm this will cause many good priests and the Catholic faithful."
Chojnacki wrote in the letter, dated Monday, that he had participated in the funerals of several gay Jesuit clergy over the last few years.
"I find it insulting to demean their memory and their years of service by even hinting that they were unfit for priesthood because of their sexual orientation," he wrote.
Chojnacki said he would be working with the Conference of Major Superiors, which represents leaders of religious orders in the United States including the Jesuits, Franciscans and others, and with bishops to fight "for the opportunity of a gay person to say yes to God's call in celibate service of priesthood and chaste religious life."
A priest who supports the protest provided the letter to The Associated Press. A spokesman for the New York province did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
A Vatican official said last week 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. A Vatican-directed evaluation of all 229 U.S. seminaries is underway, and is looking for "evidence of homosexuality" in the schools among other issues, such as whether their instruction keeps with church teaching.
The evaluation was organized in response to the clergy sex abuse crisis.
Priests in religious orders throughout the country said in interviews that anger is building among their members about the prospect of a ban on gay seminarians.
Some have said clergy are considering staging a strike on a Sunday, to show how critical gay priests are to serving the church. Priests who had not disclosed their sexual orientation to parishioners are now thinking about coming out and denouncing the idea of a ban. Others have talked about signing their names to a protest letter to the Vatican.
Estimates of the numbers of gays in the priesthood vary from 25 percent to 50 percent. About one-third of the 42,500 U.S. priests are members of religious orders.
That is true, and the fact that some parishes do not have a reverent mass even in Novus Order is very unfortunate. But schism is a term of art, it means validity of the sacraments and communion with Rome. Those wild parishes with clown masses and what have you, -- we don't like them, I avoid them, but they are not in schism. Again, the Easter rites also look not recognizable to an average American Catholic, who only knows Latin rite. If you wandered into an Eastern rite Catholic church you'd think it is an Orthodox church. So what you see and hear per se is not a criterion of Catholicity.
To say otherwise is to say that the look and feel defines the Church. In fact, the sacraments define the Church.
Now, an individual mass may be rendered invalid, for example, if improper elements are used for Communion. I strongly suspect that clown masses are invalid. But the parish as a whole remains Catholic, unless the priest is defrocked and the Church is closed down.
I do an 8 mile trek by bike to a lovely Latin Mass. That suits me fine- sort of like an orthodoxy fitness plan.
A new president was recoently appointed locally to the local Catholic High School. He is flaminingly effeninate and is becoming a laughingstock of the school. He is proving to Catholic and non-catholic schoolchildren that priests are homosexuals.
Do it!! Do it as a public service so faithful Catholics can identify where the clear and present danger lies. Post the lists on the internet and on every parish bulletin board. The priestly sex scandals flushed out a bunch but there are still numerous sleepers out there.
All of the clergy who are up in arms about this a) do not accept the Church's teaching that homosexual acts are sinful and b)identify themselves by their sexual orientation and are proud of it.
On both counts they fail the criteria for admission to the priesthood.
As for striking, that's a great idea too. It will slash the number of sacrilegious priestly Communions on any given Sunday and likely do the same to loony liturgies. The Mass is not a commodity whose availability is at the whim and beckon of these priests to deny it to the faithful when they wish but they care not a jot about this. It's all about me, me, me!!
Its not funny. But just imagine if that priest did get called to God and the only path he could go-was the one that leads down...no time to turn back then.
I was in NYC last weekend and unfortunately went to mass at St. Ignatius Loyala -- the homily was a pure political rally decrying the Vatican "witchhunt" of gays, which homily was interrupted several times by applause from the congregation. Most inappropriate for the Eucharistic celebration...
Completely disgusting. Do remember that the Jebbies have the highest AIDS rate among male religious orders - that explains a lot.
The homosexual clergy are just upset they will be stymied from further destroying the Catholic Church from within.
Homosexuality=heresy.
Does this mean that every Jesuit in the United States has to keep quiet and fall in lock-step behind this? Is this guy speaking for all the Jesuits in the United States? Is their loyalty to the order or to the Church and the Holy Father? One or more of the orthodox Jesuits needs to show some spine, speak up, issue a statement disagreeing with this.
New Vatican Rule Said to Bar Gays as New Priests (ABOUT TIME)
VATICAN: HOMOSEXUALS ARE NOT TO BE ORDAINED AS CATHOLIC PRIESTS
Homosexuals in the seminary; A Global Church in a Globalized World
Gay Men Ponder Impact of (Anti-Gay Clergy)Proposal by Vatican(Barf Alert)
Aquinas Seminary is First for Scrutiny
Vatican Begins Inspections At St. Louis Seminary (Rector: No homosexuality-pedophilia link)
The Sins of the Seminaries
Notre Dame Experts React to Potential Seminary Rules
Seminary Reviews Not Just About Homosexuality, Says Prelate
Jesuit Official Rips Expected Ban on Gays
Excellent points!
Our Lady of Lourdes in this city is a Jesuit parish and in true cafteria tradition, they're the only ones who hold Dignity Masses
You know, Benedict may be "God's rottweiler" but the Jesuits are God's Marines, except the Jesuits aren't as nice as the Marines.
/Thankful for going to a Franciscan School
//Sure they were hippies, but Jesuits beat the hell out of their students.
"Sorry Fr. Chojnacki. You are just plain WRONG on this one."
Jesuits are wrong on every one.
That's a great comment you made about the idea of a "strike". However, when I link to the article on Yahoo today (Oct 1), I don't find that paragraph anywhere. However, I also heard from a friend of a friend, that this talk of a strike was on Fox News this morning. I've searched around all morning and don't find any other articles online. Probably this was an idle threat, but I'm wondering where there's some more specifics on who said this, what priests were talking of striking, is it a small group or an order, etc. Well, please let us know if you have insight into this mystery. Thanks.
Bingo!
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