The Vatican on Tuesday tried a damage-limitation exercise in the wake of sexual scandals in the priesthood by insisting that homosexuals may not be considered for training or ordination unless their orientation is transitory and they have been celibate for at least three years.
In a move that may send shivers through seminaries across the world, a long-awaited document issued in Rome as the first substantive order of Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy reasserted church teaching that gays are intrinsically immoral, that their behaviour is contrary to natural law, that their acts are grave sins and that they are objectively disordered. But it then also called for them to be treated with respect and sensitivity.
The document, which relates specifically to admissions to seminaries and ordinations, states that the church will not ordain ”those who are actively homosexual, have deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called gay culture”.
Critics have pointed out since the document was leaked to an Italian news website last week that the Vatican has not said how such tendencies are to be defined or what the so-called gay culture involves.
The document adds: ”The negative consequences that can result from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies should not be obscured. When dealing with homosexual tendencies that might be only a manifestation of a transitory problem as, for example, delayed adolescence, these must be clearly overcome at least three years before diaconal ordination.”
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of the church in England and Wales, said: ”The instruction is not saying that men of homosexual orientation are not welcome in the priesthood. But it is making clear that they must be capable of affective maturity, have a capacity for celibacy and not share the values of eroticised gay culture.”
Rigid enforcement of the rule, which is a restatement of traditional church teaching, would equally apply to heterosexual sexual activity had the document not separated them out. It would, however, cause problems in a number of seminaries for a church that in many Western countries is desperately short of vocations. Five years ago, a book published in the United States by a former seminary head estimated that 50% of all those in training were gay.
The document, apparently eight years in development, was released on Tuesday without additional comment or clarification by the Vatican. The 1,1-billion-strong worldwide church has been battered in recent years by sexual scandals in the priesthood, by no means all of it homosexual. But paedophile priests have wrought havoc to its reputation in many countries, not least Britain.
Father Timothy Radcliffe, the English former master of the worldwide Dominican Order, who is now based at Blackfriars, Oxford, wrote in last week’s Tablet Catholic magazine: ”I have no doubt that God does call homosexuals to the priesthood and they are among the most dedicated and impressive priests I have met.
”Perhaps [the document] is best understood as meaning … someone whose sexual orientation is so central to his self-perception as to be obsessive, dominating his imagination. This would indeed pose questions as to whether he would be able to live happily as a celibate priest. But any heterosexual who was so focused on his sexuality would have problems too. What matters is sexual maturity rather than orientation.” — Guardian Unlimited Â