Gay Priest Ban: The Real Story

If that title doesn't gain attention, I don't know what will...

John Allen reports from Rome with the most concrete details to date on the rumored "gay priest ban". As I'd been expecting, it sounds like the actual directive from Rome will be more nuanced than various rumors had suggested:

A forthcoming Vatican document on homosexuals in seminaries will not demand an absolute ban, a senior Vatican official told NCR Oct. 7, but will insist that seminary officials exercise "prudential judgment" that gay candidates should not be admitted in three cases.

Those three cases are:

• If candidates have not demonstrated a capacity to live celibate lives for at least three years;


• If they are part of a "gay culture," for example, attending gay pride rallies (a point, the official said, which applies both to professors at seminaries as well as students);


• If their homosexual orientation is sufficiently "strong, permanent and univocal" as to make an all-male environment a risk.

In any case, the Vatican official said, whether or not these criteria exclude a particular candidate is a judgment that must be made in the context of individual spiritual direction, rather than by applying a rigid litmus test....

The document will likely be approved in forma specifica, the official said, which means that although it is a document of the Congregation for Catholic Education, the pope has nevertheless imparted his personal authority to it.

(HT Amy Welborn) This report smells right to me in a way that previous more extreme ones did not, in that it seems in keeping with the Church's refusal to consider same sex attractions to be an ontologically defining characteristic. This sets the Church apart from 'progessive' elements who tend to assert "I am gay and thus deserve to be able to marry" but also from extreme 'conservative' elements who might say "gay people are evil". The Church says, rather, that all people contain temptations to various forms of disorder, and each person is responsible for resisting those temptations and living according to God's law, however hard that may be for him or her.

UPDATE: Catholic blogger and Courage (the only Vatican approved ministry to Catholics suffering from same sex attraction) member CourageMan offers some good thoughts on the news about the pending document.