Vatican edict on gays divides U.S. Catholics

By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) – The Vatican’s tougher stand on
homosexuality has divided American Catholics, with some
welcoming it as a renewal of a Church plagued by scandal and
others warning it would further alienate Catholic leaders.

Reflecting the divisions foreseen by some churchmen and
scholars, a Catholic priest in Arizona announced his
resignation because of “aggressive anti-gay positions” at the
Vatican and the U.S. Church.

“I could no longer stay in that institution with any amount
of integrity,” Rev. Leonard Walker, 58, told the Arizona
Republic after resigning from the Queen of Peace Church.

Apparently trying to defuse controversy over the eight-page
Vatican document officially released on Tuesday, the president
of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, Bishop William S. Skylstad,
said priests with “homosexual inclinations” can be good priests
and should not fear discussing the issue.

Widespread leaks of the document last week already prompted
criticism by gay rights advocates and liberal Catholics who
said the Vatican failed to address deeper problems that led to
the U.S. scandal over pedophile priests that erupted in 2002.

Some Catholic scholars said the real issue was the Church’s
fixation on celibacy. Daniel Maguire, a professor of moral
theology at Marquette, a Jesuit university in Wisconsin,
described celibacy as a “failed experiment in human control.”

“It’s highly unrealistic,” he said.

PRIEST SCANDAL

Skylstad, who sets the tone for Vatican edicts in the
United States, sought to calm angry Catholics by stressing that
the first major ruling of Pope Benedict’s reign would not
exclude gay men who dedicated themselves to the priesthood.

“Deep respect should be shown to all people irrespective of
sexual orientation,” Skylstad told Reuters in an interview.
“But a person has to be deeply committed,” he added.

The Vatican statement said homosexuals should be barred
from entering the priesthood along with men with “deep-seated”
homosexual tendencies and those who support gay culture.

Homosexual tendencies must be clearly overcome at least
three years before admission to the deaconate, a position a
step short of priesthood, it said. Decisions on how to put this
into practice rest in part with local Bishops, said Skylstad.

Brian Saint-Paul, senior editor of the Catholic journal
CRISIS, described the document as “liberal” for allowing gays
to continue to enter seminaries at all compared to a 1961 edict
that barred all homosexuals outright but was poorly enforced.

“This leaves the door open for men with same-sex
attractions…this is quite significant but it is one part of a
larger approach to a renewal of the priesthood,” he said.

He added that homosexuality and the pedophile priest
scandal were clearly linked. His position is shared by other
conservatives who point to a 2004 survey by John Jay College of
Criminal Justice that found that, of 10,667 people abused by
priests between 1950 and 2002, 81 percent were male.

The U.S-based Human Rights campaign called on U.S.
Catholics to complain to their pastors and accused the Church
of using homosexuals as scapegoats for the abuse scandals.

“We see it as more hypocrisy from an institution that is
rapidly losing its credibility,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke of
gay and lesbian Catholic group Dignity USA in Boston.

In Arizona, Walker said he no longer felt comfortable
“wearing the uniform” of priesthood. “It’s like a Jew wearing a
Nazi uniform,” he said, declined to disclose his sexual
orientation.

There are currently 64.8 million Catholics in the United
States compared to 45.6 million in 1966 — or 23 percent of the
population compared to 24 percent in 1966, according to the
Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate in Georgetown.