[NYer]

I pray that this will be signed and enacted during this pope's reign.

[NYer]

Father Baker said that if a man has a predominant or exclusive same-sex attraction that in itself is grounds for bishops to have "a prudent doubt regarding the candidate's suitability" for receiving the sacrament of orders.

Yes, but what about the homosexual bishops who are mandated to follow these norms?

[Desdemona]

One thing that bugs me about this is that the language is not strong. "Should" does not adequately replace "will" and "must", etc.

I'm glad that psychology is finally getting the criticism it deserves, but the norms need to be stated more emphatically. It's a little too fuzzy, touchy-feely. There is a level between this and outright hellfire and brimstone.

[yendu bwam]

Homosexuals, as the Catechism points out, are deserving (as is anyone) of the church's compassion and love. But homosexuality IS a serious disorder - it is not 'ordered' or 'normal' for men to desire to engage in sex with the rear ends of other men. The promiscuity of typical homosexual men is also highly disordered, and of course, the acts in which they engage have nothing to do with procreation. Such acts spread disease, create tensions among men (both heterosexual and homosexual), and raise disordered (and often filthy and disgusting) sexual acts to a high plane in the typical homosexual's life. Further, homosexual priests, even if chaste are subject to enormous temptations, as they live in the close company of other male priests, and are often put in charge of teenage boys - for whom they obviously have a (perverted) sexual attraction. It's high time to recognize that while we should love and have compassion for homosexuals, it's a really BAD idea to have people with a serious and sometimes dangerous sexual disorder as priests. Our sons and families have paid a huge price in ruined lives. Our lay people have paid a huge price in broken trust and suspicion. Let's have strong, virile (in the right way), normal men for priests.

[Romulus]

Maybe I don't understand the players as well as I thought, but I'm surprised to see the Congregation for the Clergy not mentioned here as an active participant in the drafting of this document.

[Askel5]

Splendid ... how best to support these folks?

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

Vatican

[Snuffington]

Not sure what good this would do. The bishops have repeatedly demonstrated that they will ignore the pope on this sort of issue. And the pope has shown no interest in disciplining them as a result.

[RobbyS]

Psychological methods "do not eliminate every type of difficulty and tension, but favor a wider sense of awareness and a freer exercise of liberty" when it comes to the challenging choice of a priestly vocation, he said.

Many Vatican officials have privately voiced apprehension about over-reliance on psychological methods to screen candidates to the priesthood. The document is said to address those concerns by stressing a balanced approach that recognizes the potential contributions of psychology, but within a limited sphere of competence.

[Looking for Diogenes]

The document is said to address those concerns by stressing a balanced approach that recognizes the potential contributions of psychology, but within a limited sphere of competence.

A big surprise for me in the child-abuse scandla is the extent to which the church has 'bought into' the modern psycho-therapeutic regime. From using psychologists to evaluate seminarians to using therapists to heal abuse victims, the church has relied on the psych community rather than on its own traditional methods.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"...how psychological sciences can be used in discerning vocations -- another hotly debated issue at the Vatican in recent years..."

That's interesting. Thanks for the post. Considering that there is no coherent peer-reviewed consensus among psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, or philophers of science regarding what would constitute a working scientific model of the human psyche, this should prove fascinating territory. Just peruse Out of its Mind: Psychiatry in Crisis by J. Allan Hobson and Jonathan Leonard. If Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins medical schools, together with the APA, AMA, and the various international Freudian/Lacanian juntas can't agree where the id meets the elbow, or the conscious self ends and the amygdala begins, where does that leave seminary review boards?

The last thing needed is a bunch of goofy diocesan bureaucrats scrying over Myers-Briggs scores, Rorschach Inkblots, and serum serotonin blood levels. While it would nice if "Catholic experts" could make sense out of this, secular psychdom does not exactly offer a coherent working model for precision. Just imagine the kind of people Cardinal Mahony or, heaven forbid, Rembert Weakland might have hired to see if any seminarians needed Ritalin, Prozac, or sex-addiction counseling. Get the picture? Will psychologists from the NEA be picking our new priests? If the picture Michael Rose painted is accurate, it doesn't really require a PhD or M.D. to spot kooks, pervs, and people who swing the wrong way. Character screening, as in other public safety and security professions, does not necessarily require a psychobabble paradigm to weed out the pathological and unfit. Let's hope the Vatican places the right emphasis on these matters. We certainly could use a few heroes to clarify this well-known penumbra.