CTA editorial: Tragic injustice in the Vatican ban on gays in seminaries
Nov. 29, 2005 the Vatican released a document signed by the pope which erects huge barriers to gays in seminaries. The full text, and the detailed Vatican guidelines for investigative visits to every U.S. seminary, are available at www.dignityusa.org. CTA immediately and strongly assailed the new document in press releases and public statements (see www.cta-usa.org), including this editorial was written by Paul Scarbrough, CTA co-president and Linda Pieczynski, CTA national spokesperson.
When Ratzinger became pope, we were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. We hoped his reactionary agenda as head of the Vatican doctrinal department had reflected the thinking of John Paul II more than his own. Free from JP II’s shadow, we thought this deep intellectual would want to make his own unique mark on the 21st century Church. We were wrong.
In a move as clumsy as it is brutal, Benedict XVI has reaffirmed a long-ignored church teaching and placed major hurdles in the path of celibate gay men who are called to the priesthood. Rather than ask whether a candidate is prepared to live in accordance with Church teaching on priestly celibacy, the new instruction directs seminary rectors to discern whether someone’s homosexual tendencies are “deep-seated” or only “transitory.” The document perpetuates long-discredited views about homosexual orientation and makes gross, unsubstantiated generalizations about the capacity of gay men to develop meaningful relationships with the men or women they would serve as priests. In dioceses that follow it rigorously, the instruction will effectively ban gay men from the priesthood or at least seriously discourage them from applying.
With the stroke of a pen, the pope has discarded a significant and apparently dependable source of future priests. A strange move when the priest shortage is growing and knowledgeable Church officials openly admit that at least 20 percent and perhaps 50 percent of U.S. priests are gay.
Some see this decree as the Vatican response to child sex abuse by clergy. They argue that since over 80 percent of the known victims are boys, the perpetrators must be gay priests. Never mind that the U.S. Catholic bishops have not yet completed an in-depth study of the causes of the abuse crisis, which they promised to the people in the pews. But even without a study specific to priests, we know from other pedophilia research such as the work of Gene Abel, M.D. and Nora Harlow (The Stop Child Molestation Book, Xlibris 2001) that over 70 percent of the men who sexually abuse boys identify as heterosexual and only eight percent as homosexual.
Scapegoating gay priests
Others call this policy a diversionary tactic: scapegoating gay priests diverts attention from the abysmal failures of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and their fellow bishops in the sex abuse crisis. Thus pope and bishops can go back to business as usual and avoid calls for lay participation in selecting bishops, more transparent financial management, and a host of other reforms recommended by the U.S. bishops’ own National Lay Review Board — changes that would require true accountability of church leaders to the people they serve.
Both points of view
miss the larger context. Both points of view see it as a tool for some other
end rather than as an end in and of itself. In truth, the new instruction is
the latest salvo in Benedict XVI’s war on lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gendered
people.
Almost 20 years ago — Oct. 1, 1986, Ratzinger signed the infamous “Letter
to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.”
It required bishops to ascertain whether ministry programs to the gay community
were advocating changes to Church teachings on homosexuality, and if so, to
bar such programs from Church sponsorship and facilities. Almost overnight such
ministries were thrown out on the street. In tortured logic as dispassionate
as it was unChristian, the letter deplored violence against lesbian and gay
people but said we should not be surprised when it occurs. As with many issues
in the papacy of John Paul II, the letter closed the door on even simple discussion
of church teaching on the matter.
Later Vatican pronouncements have argued against gay civil rights laws (1992),
railed against same-sex marriage (2000 and 2003), and portrayed the adoption
of children by lesbian and gay couples as tantamount to doing violence to children
(2002). Even when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops tried to soften Vatican
rhetoric with their 1997 pastoral letter, “Always Our Children,”
the Vatican demanded that the letter be subjected to revision in Rome. And now
gay priests are Benedict XVI’s target.
Yet the new instruction applies only to future priests. Here Benedict XVI seems to have lost his nerve. If a homosexual orientation makes a person unfit for priestly ministry, why not purge the ranks of current priests and bishops? Maybe he knows that rooting out gay priests and bishops would infuriate the laity, alienate priests and poison his relationship with bishops everywhere.
The new instruction is an assault on human dignity and an affront to gay men who have served the People of God with distinction for centuries. It is the very antithesis of Christ’s message of love and acceptance of all people. It will inflict a profound wound on the soul of the Church, undermine her credibility as an agent of truth and justice in the world and destroy the moral authority of the pope at the outset of his papacy. Like the Church’s rejection of Galileo and its earlier flawed teachings on slavery and the nature of women, this decree will not stand the test of time. Rather it will serve as an embarrassing reminder of the all too frequent fallibility of the pope.
One priest has suggested that gay priests, supportive straight priests and lay people should wear pink triangles to symbolize their opposition to this decree. Pink triangles were used to identify lesbian and gay prisoners at Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps. It seems fitting that resistance to the actions of this pope be symbolized by recalling a powerful image of Nazi oppression, brutality and dehumanization.
Jesus Christ bequeathed to us a Church founded on justice and truth and illuminated with compassion and love. We call on all Catholics of peace and goodwill to express their outrage at this unjust act.