BishopAccountability.org
 
  The Papacy's Prime Focus on Gayness
New Pope Retains His Stern Stance

By Daniel Williams
Philadelphia Inquirer [Rome]
October 16, 2005

ROME - In the first five months of Pope Benedict XVI's reign, stern opposition to homosexuality in and outside the Roman Catholic Church has quickly become a prime public message for the Vatican.

The new pontiff soon plans to issue guidelines designed to inhibit homosexuals from entering seminaries to train for the priesthood. Church inspectors have embarked on a tour of U.S. seminaries and, according to their working papers, are instructed to ask: "Is there evidence of homosexuality in the seminary? (This question must be answered.)"

Benedict also has vigorously fought legal recognition of same-sex couples.

Observers have noted that for the quarter-century before becoming Pope, Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was the Vatican's enforcer of orthodoxy, drafting official positions on homosexuality.

"No doctrinal chief has ever written and spoken about homosexuality as extensively as Ratzinger has, because homosexuals have never had the freedom to organize and demand recognition they enjoy today," author John L. Allen Jr. said in a biography issued before Benedict became Pope.

His papacy's early focus on homosexuality is a reaction to outside events, some analysts have said: the spread of civil unions or marriage rights to same-sex couples, and the disclosure of sexual abuse by priests. Some Vatican officials have largely blamed the abuse on homosexuality.

"Given that the church is in the world, action in political life to increase public recognition of homosexual relations is bound to mean more church activity in response," said Rome-based theologian Robert A. Gahl. "Such liberalizing trends in the outside world have also intruded in the seminary, and the church must respond as well."

Critics have said the Pope is simply preoccupied with sex. "It's an obsession," said Alessio de Giorgi, who founded an Italian gay Web site and supports legal rights for same-sex couples.

New rules to inhibit gays in the priesthood have been in the works for several years. The Corriere della Sera newspaper reported that the rules will permit gays to enter the priesthood so long as they have been celibate for three years and don't keep in touch with homosexual society via the Internet or movies. One Vatican official confirmed the basics of the article, but added that the document would also insist that aspiring priests not participate in gay solidarity events, such as parades and seminars that treat homosexuality in a "positive way."

As early as 1961, the Vatican told church officials that "advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers."

In 2002, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, head of the Congregation for Divine Worship, repeated the ban: "Ordination to the deaconate and the priesthood of homosexual men or men with homosexual tendencies is absolutely inadvisable and imprudent, and from the pastoral point of view, very risky."

What about homosexuals who practice celibacy, as is also required of a heterosexual priest or seminarian? Some priests and bishops - including Philadelphia's retired Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua - have argued that it is a distortion to put abstinence from something the church regards as sinful (homosexual acts) on a par with something it sees as noble (sex in married life).

In any event, the issue is one of prudence, a Vatican official argued. Life in a seminary among men, and a ministry that may put a priest in close contact with men and boys, is too risky for homosexuals, he contended.

Concerning same-sex couples, Benedict and a host of close aides have recently opposed moves to grant them legal status in Italy. The Vatican voiced its opposition when Romano Prodi, a candidate for prime minister in upcoming Italian parliamentary elections, pledged that if brought to office, his government would back so-called solidarity pacts, both for unmarried heterosexual couples and same-sex couples.

The pacts would grant rights of inheritance, pensions and other social privileges that are due married couples. Fourteen European countries already provide some sort of legal recognition to homosexual couples, ranging from simple registration to rights of adoption.

Two years ago, when he ran the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict issued a document attacking homosexual unions as a misrepresentation of marriage.

"Within homosexual unions," he wrote, "the biological and anthropological elements of matrimony and the family, on which foundations for legal recognition of such unions could be reasonably laid, are totally absent."

The document stated that among the missing elements are a "conjugal dimension" for "transmission of life."

Vatican officials have called on civil servants in Spain to refuse to provide services that are due homosexual couples under new laws that legally recognize their relationships.

On questions of homosexuality generally, the words of Benedict himself are a major Catholic reference point. In 1975, he issued the "Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics," which distinguished between homosexuality that "is transitory" and homosexuality resulting from "some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable."

The declaration went on to appeal for empathy: "Homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties."

 
 

Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.