Pope Benedict opens the can
September 20th, 2005 ~ La Vida IglesiaStand 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.
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September 20th, 2005 at 2:04 pm
hmm… but will drive the underground sexual element alive in the seminaries of the RCC even further underground?
September 20th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
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.
September 20th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
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.
September 21st, 2005 at 9:58 am
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.
September 21st, 2005 at 12:42 pm
to institute that now would seem like a big mistake to me.
Ditto.