Vatican stance on gay clergy criticized

Boston Globe ^ | March 4, 2002 | Michael Paulson

[Jim Noble]

The Vatican, in its first comments on the clergy sexual abuse crisis, declared this weekend that gay men should not be ordained as priests.

The comments by Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the chief spokesman for Pope John Paul II, were made at a time when a growing body of research suggests that a large proportion of Catholic priests are gay, and scholars who study sexuality and the priesthood said any effort to bar them would lead to a dramatic reduction in the number of priests in the United States.

[07055]

You are mistaken in your statement that I am not a Roman Catholic. I was baptized a Catholic and went to Catholic schools for fifteen years of my life. I am also a former altar boy.

I believe I am entitled to criticize the failings of the Catholic Church, wherever and whenever I choose.

I do not consider myself a Catholic today---in large part because of the abuses of the Church which I have seen first-hand.

[lavaroise]

ha ha! LOL! I read too fast.

[BlackElk]

There is a time and a place for everything. During Mass is not the time and in the presence of the Holy Eucharist is not the place. Let Steve Lynch take his problems to Boston Common or to the Boston Globe if he feels a need for calling attention to himself. If he wants to call attention to himself for revenge, he should talk to the police department and the prosecutors. If he wants to call attention to himself for money, lawyers exist who will be happy to attempt to satisfy both goals.

The practice of exhibitionism, disrupting the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, is no more justified for Mr. Lynch than it is for abortion lovers, gay activists, dog "lovers", witches, NOW gang witches (sp.?), Sandinistas, or any other pathological moron who happens to hate the Church. Nor, before the law, ought such disruption be anyone's right in the churches of other faiths or their temples or synagogues. If a witches' coven is meeting down the street in my neighborhood in a neighbor's living room, I have no business entering to disrupt their fantasies. Whether or not Mr. Lynch has some legitimate grievance is not the only issue in the wide, wide world. His cause becomes no more just and becomes no more truthful for the fact that he is willing to disrupt the worship of God in a place reserved for that worship. Any little old lady in that Church saying her rosary has infinitely more right to say her rosary there or sing Kumbaya, for that matter, than Mr. Lynch has to disruot her worshipo by his brazen antics.

Enough with professional victimhood, already. Assuming that Lynch was, in fact, sodomized by a priest (we can hardly know), that does not relieve Lynch of a moral obligation to respect the right of worshippers to attend Mass without unwanted interruptions by his victimhood.

[BlackElk]

You are certainly onto something there!

[BlackElk]

Your having three beautiful daughters who are being raised Catholic certainly gives you an interest as I specifically stated to you personally in my #26 above where I also stated my belief that you post in good will. The post you are responding to is mine to 07055 or whatever his or her screen name may be who seems to have no such interest and apparently does not post with good will but rather a regular habit of opportunistic Catholic bashing on this and similar threads.

[Jim Noble]

My apologies-read too fast.

I know posting articles like this draws in anti-Catholic psychos, but I thought the issues in it deserved some general discussion.

[07055]

If the rule is that you can't criticize an organization/country/religion/group unless you currently belong to it, than I guess we better lay off on the Democrats since few of us belong to that party. And forget about criticizing Islamic terrorists until we join a mosque. PLO bashing? No can do.

We better limit our criticism to George W. Bush and the Republican Party.

[BlackElk]

Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Walls is a medical doctor and press spokesman for the pope. Of course, he is not the pope. If he, in fact, made the comment that ordination of gays might be annulled, I would like to hear the rest of what he thinks on the subject because I tend to agree with you that the Sacrament of Holy Orders is not likely to be annullable. We do hear of priests being disciplinarily defrocked but I would think that to be disciplinary and prudential rather than a claim that the permenent character of Holy Orders has been removed from the soul. If by annulment, we mean a recognition that Holy Orders was not, in fact, conferred upon one who otherwise appears to have been ordained because of emotional immaturity (a live possibility as to this particular problem), or because the individual was, for some reason, not eligible for ordination or whatever, one would like to hear from someone in actual authority as to whether Holy Orders may be annulled.

That having been said, the festivities in Boston and elsewhere well merit a thoroughgoing purge.

The practice of moving these pederasts from parish to parish in the vain hope that they will reform is a forsaken hope. Church authority is well-justified in weighing the damage done by these predators and stripping them of any and all further involvement with Church authority, clerical or lay, and likewise the bishops and other clerical authorities whose only offense is sheltering them. You live near Dallas. You know what Fr. Klass's (sp.?) perverse career has cost that diocese in terms of money, which is, after all, only money. How many will be so scandalized by his behavior and the similar behavior of others as to despair of salvation?

Your argument for allowing a married priesthood because it will expand the number of eligibles from which to choose is certainly a better argument (as I would expect) than the arguments of those less knowledgeable. If the pope should decree that at any time, I would not object. Nonetheless, no bishop need choose ANY unsuitable candidate because of mere numbers. In fact, he must not. It would never be right to knowingly ordain a practicing homosexual to the priesthood any more than it would ever be permissible to ordain a practicing heterosexual to the priesthood, at least so long as the vow of celibacy continues to be required generally. To violate the vow of celibacy is also to violate the vow of obedience, i.e. both of the vows taken by diocesan priests.

Even if the rule of celibacy were relaxed or abolished, as certainly it can be, it will never and can never be so relaxed or abolished as to allow for a romantic relationship with physical expression of intimacy between Father Bruce and his pal Lance, nor a marriage between them, particularly if Lance happens to be 10 years old. A priest involved in heterosexual fornication with 10 year old Suzie, would not seem particularly mature enough in a psychological sense to be practicing his priesthood, either.

Since marriage is not possible biblically between Lance and Fr. Bruce or others similarly situated, and since procreation does not seem to be even a theoretically likely end of such a relationship, and since there is nothing about homosexuality that makes it any more acceptable as a means of fornication than the heterosexual kind, the Church deems the practice of homosexuality to be "intrinsically disordered." That is not going to change. We are Catholics. Our Church is truth. Truth does not change.

Assuming that we have saints whose internal disposition made them incline toward homosexual or lesbian desires with or without indulgence at any time, this would not be news. God is wonderful. He can do anything. We have alcoholic saints, a saint who murdered St. Maria Goretti for not giving in to his rape attempts, Saint Augustine of Hippo (not only a doctor of the Church and a brilliant Church Father but a man intimately acquainted with a wide range of misbehavior before he chose to follow Christ), St. Peter who cuts off the ear of a servant, St. Thomas who doubted Christ's resurrection, St. Paul who marytyred St. Stephen and others, etc., etc. We honor them, not for those sins, but because of their heroic virtue in resisting temptation. Countless anonymous others with forgiven sins as grave or worse populate heaven along with our sinless Blessed Mother.

Just as Judas suspected that his authority was at an end, however, Cardinal Law must understand that withdrawal from the practice of authority so misused, is necessary. So must the other bishops who exposed their flocks to the predators knowingly. So must the predators withdraw one way or the other. May they live saintly lives in the future OUTSIDE of the active priesthood. Let the purge begin as soon as possible. May God have mercy on their and our souls.

[GADIST64]

SIN IS SIN IN GODS EYES!!! The sin of Homosexuality is just as bad as Adultry. I don't want person who has sinful sex of any kind to be a preist/pastor/preacher, including homosexuality. If a spiritual leader has sin in their lives...HOW can they lead a church to do what is right?

[BlackElk]

Your last two paragraphs are probably the nub of our disareement. It is the very essence of AmChurch misbehavior to involve more lay people in the decision-making or governance of the Church. We are not a democracy. We must never be a democracy. It is time and long past time for Rome to bring AmChurch to heel. Calling priests according to the moral or even stylistic preferences of the congregation is a guarantee that we will no longer be one, universal, catholic Church.

[Jim Noble]

>> Truth does not change. <<

Which is why the Roman Catholic Church is indispensable to the Christian project

>>Our Church is truth.<<

That, I'm not so sure about. At least not when stated as to suggest that it excludes falsehood from its visible manifestation on Earth.

If I were, I'd be a Catholic.

[tracer]

It serves only to advance the agenda of the Adversary to bash an entire religion on the basis of the sins and misdeeds of a few of its clergy or adherents.

Furthermore, it is a sin, IMO, to attempt to discredit or defame the Roman Catholic Church and other religious bodies on such bases, especially while ignoring or minimizing all of the good and righteous works performed by said communities of faith and members thereof.

Contention and divisiveness are tools of Satan, who seeks to lead astray the children of men.

I never will forget the Christ-like and brotherly concern afforded me by a Roman Catholic priest during the less-than-joyous days of my undergraduate education. That good man kept me afloat in a spiritual way when I was, for a time, lost and searching. He did not attempt to convert me to Catholicism but did provide a listening ear, prayer, inspired counsel, and fatherly concern at a critical juncture of my life when the works of Bertrand Russell and other "philosophers" were having an undue and toxic influence on my developing relationship with the Lord.

Whenever I encounter the ugliness of religious bigotry I think of this goodly servant of the Lord, whose Irish surname escapes me, and renew my thanks to the Lord for looking after me in a way that I had not expected.

Thanks for asking....

[MagnusMat]

Without getting into differences, this is good. I think the Catholic church is going to start tightening things up now.

[Jimbaugh]

Click the banner above to see what has been going on for years.
There is a homosexual plan and it is working.

The homosexuals in the church are killing it. The cancer must be cut out now.

If you want to see the dirt www.rcf.org

 

[BlackElk]

Your reply does not mean that you are a Catholic. It means that you are an apostate from Catholicism as was Luther as was Calvin as have been many people through the centuries.

We have very few actually Catholic colleges in the United States today. The few are mostly colleges created since the 1967 Land o'Lakes Conference organized by the regrettable Fr. Hesburgh of Notre Dame at which all but 6 existing Catholic colleges declared themselves secular. Don't believe the fund-raising propaganda.

Regrettably few of our grammar schools or high schools are very Catholic either. Perhaps you were never properly evangelized in the first place.

I am genuinely sorry that you no longer consider yourself Catholic because of abuses you have seen.

Your posts are those of one who is not Catholic and you say that you do not consider yourself one. You seem to be correct in that respect. I would, however, repeat that, if you had fifteen years of actually Catholic education, you would know that merely being divorced would not make it sinful to receive the Eucharist.

It becomes easier to respond to posts when the poster gives some relevant details as you now have. You do not say whether you believe that the Eucharist is the Real Presence. If you don't believe that, why do you care who receives, having left the Church?

[07055]

I would, however, repeat that, if you had fifteen years of actually Catholic education, you would know that merely being divorced would not make it sinful to receive the Eucharist.

Of course, I know that. I was using the divorced Catholic example as shorthand for "divorced and remarried" Catholic.

I also know all about the big loophole that allows divorced and remarried Catholics like the Kennedys get around the prohibition from receiving the Eucharist by having the Church declare that their marriages (even twenty year marriages with children) were null and void from the inception.

As far as Martin Luther is concerned, I am currently reading a good book that I recommend to all who want to learn more about the history of the Catholic Church. Its called "The Bad Popes" by E. R. Chamberlin.

If you want to know where Luther was coming from, you need to know about the abuses of the Church during that time.

http://www.cpats.org/CPATSAnswerDirectory/Answers_to_Questions/AnyMoreBadPopes.html

I await your defense of Pope Alexander VI (aka Rodrigo Borgia) or Leo X (aka Gio de Medici).

[EdReform]

Bump!

[Texbob]

The Pope is correct, put the Queers back into the Closet of Shame where they belong, If they are clergy, excommunicate them.

[Khepera]

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WWJD? He would not have homosexuals in positions of authority in the church.

[Khepera]

Of course involvement with adult women to whom they are not married is fornication and a sin. Sin should not be tolerated within the body of Christ.