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Vatican gay document to be released

Posted on: Monday, 28 November 2005, 18:32 CST

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."

Source: REUTERS

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