Putting the smackdown on heresy since 1981
Posted on 11/22/2005 8:08:48 PM PST by markomalley
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Perhaps.
Bingo. The way I read it, this takes subjectivity away from the question of whether to keep or kick out a homosexual seminarian. This puts the folks who run our seminaries on notice: if there's a violation of these guidelines, they must go, and the onus is on YOU to be obedient to this declaration.
I'm glad they addressed the issue of deception, as well.
Very true, but the bishops are being given a lot less "wiggle room" than before and quite frankly most of these guys don't like to make waves. There are enough of us "hard line" Catholics out here to give them a tough time if they don't adhere to what the Vatican wants, the Internet helps in this regard.
I think that line ("baptized males alone may validly receive Holy Orders") was intended to affirm the truth. Women with "chalice envy" may be disturbed by it, but so what...
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I wasn't surprised or unhappy to see it there, given the amount of attention it has received recently.
Strange as it may sound, if war against the Church needs to occur, let it. Christ Jesus gave us his promise. We will prevail. Let it come, we're ready. None can stand against the Will of God.
Amen.
Priests can be laicized.
There's a critical point here, which I hope has not been overlooked.
The document does not say (as was previously widely reported) that homosexual activity must have ceased three years prior to ordination, or that the candidate must have remained celibate for 3 years.
It states quite clearly that homosexual tendencies must have been overcome. Big, big difference.
This is a critical point which must not be glossed over. It means, in effect, that nobody with homosexual tendencies can be ordained. That includes the celibate homosexual.
This instruction is good. Very good. As always, the problem will be implementation.
yep. I can see some dioceses will turn their backs totally...and others will be saying Hurrah!
The church is asking men who are pondering the priesthood to stop all homosexual relations for 3 years before becoming a priest. If you cannot as a man, stop yourself from having sexual relations with men for three years, than what the hell are you doing even thinking about becoming a priest in the first place. As everyone knows, you are to be celibate for LIFE! So if you are complaining about that guideline from the new Vatican Decree on homosexuality and the priesthood than good riddance to you!
The church is only asking of it's future clergy to wholly and fully abide by church doctrine. Homosexuality is deemed to be a sin by the catholic church. If you want to be a sinner that is your choice, if you want to be a priest than you must absolutely change your ways or do not become a priest. It is that simple!!!!!!
These rules only apply to those who are pondering the priesthood of the Catholic church, so who cares if gay activists or the media in general like it.
Whose to say that the church is not also dealing with those Bishop's who were responsible for the mishandling of the abuse cases in the first place. I am sure that the church is implementing procedures to make sure that this happens no more. The media picks and chooses what it likes to report, we all know that. They would love you to think that this measure is the only thing that they are doing.
I wish people would just stand back and keep themselves out of my religion! Especially the secular left media! I happen to think that this is a good step in weeding out possible abusers. As I said, if you cannot stop yourself from doing homosexual acts or even pondering them seriously for just three years than there is something wrong with the fact that you are trying to become a CELIBATE priest!
Putting the smackdown on heresy since 1981
They are asking all men who are thinking about the seminary that if they have some idea about homosexual orientation, that before they are allowed to enter the diaconate, which is before they get to the priesthood, that they have gone three years without that problem.
Not practice.
Inclination.
Sometimes boys get a bit confused. This is to let those who honestly got confused about this as teens to get time to have their normal adult interests kick in.
If you practice, if you consider yourself gay, if you feel part of the gay culture, you are not wanted, no matter how long it's been since you've been celibate.
It's not saying if you are homosexual, if you can go three years without having sex you can get into the diaconate.
Thnaks for the clarification.
I should know better than to get my information from articles linked from the Drudge Report. Nothing against Matt Drudge, but the articles that his site links you to are a bit slanted sometimes. Stupid on my part.
My first thought was like yours, and how certain bishops were going to run with it. The bad bishops will still run with it, because that is how they are, pray God that what they have done touches their hearts in time for them to repent, but it gives other bishops much more ammunition now to rein in seminaries with problems.
This document dares to make the assertion that these 'tendencies' can indeed be overcome. Horrors!! The secular left looks upon sexuality as a "hard-core" instinct within a person. Something that - whether heterosexual or homosexual - cannot be repressed, or disciplined, in any way. To suggest that the opposite is true is seen as an infringement of 'rights' and freedoms.
Sometime back in the 1960's, the Church - well, some of its more "progressive" members - decided to replace Christ with Freud, and it's been all downhill ever since.
I will admit that even Freud thought that homosexuality was a sign of a personality disorder, but in general, it was Freud's idea that sex was all, that one's so-called "sexual nature" trumped everything else in one's being.
Christianity, of course, simply regarded it as one more part of human life and human being, and by no means the most important one in itself.
In many ways, the 1960's were the full flowering of Freudian thought, which had long been an undercurrent in popular literature and university thought and teaching. It swept the field, not strictly in the form of Freud's initial ideas, but in the sort of popularized conception of it where sex was enshrined as the most important activity in the world and one's so-called "sexual nature" became a sort of independent god-let that had to be cherished and allowed to do whatever it wanted.
What is very sad is that so many in the Church cheerfully followed this particular Pied Piper. I've never been clear on why Catholic thought was so ill prepared to deal with Freud, although perhaps the fact that the modernists had been busy undermining Catholicism for several decades at that point contributed to it.
I also think that the conversion of the Church in the 1960s from Catholicism to Freudianism is one of the great neglected areas of investigation.
After the scandals of recent years, many of which were perpretated while the priests were undergoing "psychological counseling" or had even completed it, the psychiatric profession may be losing its grip on the Church, at least in the US. But the intellectual influence still remains, and many modern Catholics' automatic assumptions about human nature are Freudian and not Christian.
Quite possibly, but such tendencies will be evident in the Seminary. They always have been, but in the last 25 years or so, some Spiritual Directors have chosen to ignore them.
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