Vatican gay document to be released

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A Vatican document which has
sparked controversy because it restricts homosexuals from
entering the Catholic priesthood will finally be released
officially on Tuesday although it has been widely leaked.

The short document, which takes a strict line on the place
of gays in the clergy, has already been praised by
conservatives and condemned by liberals and set off heated
debate well beyond the Church.

Confronting an issue that has divided the faithful
worldwide, it says practising homosexuals should be barred from
entering the priesthood along with men with “deep-seated”
homosexual tendencies and those who support gay culture.

The document, which has been leaked over the past weeks,
would admit to the priesthood those who clearly overcame
homosexual tendencies for at least three years.

Gay groups have said the Church is using homosexuals as
scapegoats for its sexual abuse scandals.

Conservative Catholics have welcomed the document as an
important step in the reform of the priesthood, particularly in
the United States, where they say some seminaries had become
venues for a thriving subculture.

Many inside and outside the Church have said the document
risks alienating men who would be good priests and would be
able to honor their vow of celibacy.

“Having worked with bishops and priests, diocesan and
religious, all over the world, I have no doubt that God does
call homosexuals to the priesthood, and they are among the most
dedicated and impressive priests I have met,” said Father
Timothy Radcliffe, former master of the Dominican order.

“And we may presume that God will continue to call both
homosexuals and heterosexuals to the priesthood because the
Church needs the gifts of both,” Radcliffe wrote in the British
Catholic weekly The Tablet.

The document reinforces standing policy that many in the
Church believe has not been properly enforced. Its urgency has
been highlighted by the 2002 sexual abuse scandal in the United
States, which involved mostly abuse of teenage boys by priests.

It does not affect those men who are already priests but
only those entering seminaries to prepare for the priesthood.

It restates long-standing Church teaching that deep-seated
homosexual tendencies are “objectively disordered” and that
homosexual acts are grave sins.

The “instruction” by the Vatican’s Congregation for
Catholic Education, makes a difference between deep-seated
homosexual tendencies and “the expression of a transitory
problem.”

It says homosexual tendencies must be clearly overcome at
least three years before ordination to the deaconate, a
position just one step short of the priesthood which usually
precedes ordination by about a year.

It says heads of seminaries have a serious duty to see to
it that candidates for the priesthood do not “present
disturbances of a sexual nature which are incompatible with the
priesthood.”