Pope Benedict opens the can

  • Stand by for the firestorm that’ll fol­low this story: Pope Bene­dict is expected to ban gay seminarians.

    Sort of stands to rea­son, doesn’t it? In a more rea­son­able age, no one would have to defend the ban in the wake of the recent reports of abuse. If you were inclined to view homo­sex­u­al­ity as benign, couldn’t you still con­cede that it has been preda­tory and destruc­tive in the priest­hood? But this isn’t a rea­son­able age, and by say­ing that even celi­bate men would be for­bid­den, the pope is throw­ing down the gaunt­let. Con­sider this quote from the Catholic World News report:

    The text, which was approved by Pope Bene­dict at the end of August, says that homo­sex­ual men should not be admit­ted to sem­i­nar­ies even if they are celi­bate, because their con­di­tion sug­gests a seri­ous per­son­al­ity dis­or­der which detracts from their abil­ity to serve as ministers.

    No one has had the courage to sug­gest the word ‘dis­or­der’ to describe homo­sex­u­al­ity for many, many years. No doubt this is what makes folks on the fringe say that we’re “turn­ing back the clock,” but I can’t see what’s wrong with that, if the clock has been wrong for 30 years.

    I will grant any­one their con­cern as to how the RC author­i­ties are meant to carry out this edict. In the pur­suit of finally doing the right thing, they are cer­tain to do many wrong things, which the media will be cer­tain to cover in detail. Given the amount of evi­dence that the sem­i­nar­ies were fill­ing up with gay men for some time (this author haz­arded the per­cent­age at about 50% in 2000), it may be a mat­ter of too lit­tle too late.


    Related posts:

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    2. Guerilla patri­arch (and pope)?
    3. Pope detente and good lions

    September 20th, 2005 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • Jim N. 09.20.2005

    hmm… but will drive the under­ground sex­ual ele­ment alive in the sem­i­nar­ies of the RCC even fur­ther underground?

  • Grace

    With­out know­ing very much about it (other than what I read), I’d bet you’re right, just because it’s much harder to try to do it this way than it would’ve been to do some­thing preventative.

    I always get to about this point and really, really wish that the Catholics had adopted our tra­di­tion of allow­ing mar­ried priests. I don’t say it would’ve solved all the prob­lem, but I think it would have helped a lot. We’ll never know, of course.

  • Jim N.

    I always get to about this point and really, really wish that the Catholics had adopted our tra­di­tion of allow­ing mar­ried priests.

    My SF looks at the RCC gay priest issue and has said, ‘they brought it on them­selves…’ for that very reason.

  • Grace

    And the prob­lem for them now is that if they were to change their pol­icy, a lot of Catholic purists would think they were open­ing up a flood­gate. And if I was Catholic I might even be one of them. The same way for me that if the Ortho­dox Church had kept women dea­cons, I’d be fine with it, but to insti­tute that now would seem like a big mis­take to me.

  • Jim N.

    to insti­tute that now would seem like a big mis­take to me.

    Ditto.

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