http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9436430/
Vatican document reaffirms policy on gays
Homosexuals shouldn't be ordained as priests, Catholic Church says
Updated: 7:38 a.m. ET Sept. 22, 2005
ROME - A Vatican document will be released in the coming weeks that
reaffirms the Catholic Church’s belief that homosexuals shouldn’t be
ordained priests, a Vatican official said Thursday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the document
has not been released, said the “instruction” from the Vatican’s
Congregation for Catholic Education would contain “some new things and
some old things” and would be released well before the end of the
year.
That timeframe means the document will be released just as a
Vatican-mandated evaluation of all U.S. seminaries, ordered in the
wake of the U.S. clergy sex abuse scandal, gets under way.
Several Vatican documents and letters over the years have said gays or
men with homosexual tendencies should not be ordained, regardless of
whether they can remain celibate.
A Feb. 2, 1961, Vatican document, “Instruction on the Careful
Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and
Sacred Orders,” made clear homosexuals should be barred from the
priesthood.
“(Advancement) to religious vows and ordination should be barred to
those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or
pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry
would constitute serious dangers,” said the document from the
then-Vatican’s congregation for religious.
A 1997 letter from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the
Discipline of the Sacraments says “admission may not take place if
there exists a prudent doubt regarding the candidate’s suitability.”
It does not specify that homosexuality constitutes a “prudent doubt,”
but an American official at the Vatican, the Rev. Andrew Baker, has
suggested in an article in the Jesuit magazine America that it does.
'Absolutely inadvisable and imprudent'
In 2002, Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez, then-prefect for the
Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments,
advised against allowing gays in the priesthood in a letter that was
published in the congregation’s publication Notitiae. He said their
ordination would be “absolutely inadvisable and imprudent, and from
the pastoral point of view, very risky.”
The Vatican press office announced in November 2002, at the height of
the U.S. clergy sex abuse scandal, that the Congregation for Catholic
Education was drawing up guidelines for accepting candidates for the
priesthood that would address the question of whether gays should be
barred.
Catholic World News, a conservative news agency, reported earlier this
week that the document had actually been in the works since 1994.
The agency said the new document would indicate that men with
homosexual tendencies shouldn’t be ordained even if they are celibate
“because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder which
detracts from their ability to serve as ministers.”
In an apparently new element, the agency said the document would also
say that already ordained priests, if they have homosexual tendencies,
would be “strongly urged to renew their dedication to chastity and a
manner of life appropriate to the priesthood.”
The American prelate overseeing the evaluations, Archbishop Edwin
O’Brien, said earlier this month that most gay candidates for the
priesthood struggle to remain celibate and the church must “stay on
the safe side” by restricting their enrollment. He stressed that the
church was not “hounding” gays out of the priesthood, but wants to
enroll seminarians who can maintain their vows of celibacy.
The document has been controversial from the start, and there had been
speculation that it may never be released because of its sensitive
nature. Some priests have said the document is sorely needed. Others
say it will do more harm than good, antagonizing existing homosexual
priests and driving others underground.
© 2005 The Associated Press
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Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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