A Statement from Quest regarding the Vatican Document on Admission of Gay Men to Seminaries and Holy Orders
24th November 2005
This is a backward step for the Church and will, potentially, have negative effects on three groups of people.
1. Serving gay priests. The implication of the text is that by being in possession of ‘deep-seated homosexual tendencies’, their priesthood is somehow second-rate and not to be valued. This, in spite of the fact that gay men are hugely over-represented in Holy Orders compared to their numbers in society at large and thousands of them are living holy and chaste lives in the service of the Gospel. Quest does not see that as a problem but as a gift.
2. Gay candidates for the priesthood. The logical implication of this Vatican text is to confirm a ‘don’t tell, don’t know’ policy. Gay men with vocations to priestly life will enter training and education in an atmosphere of suspicion and guilt. Young men who are not openly comfortable with their sexuality are likely to encounter problems later in their priestly ministry. Celibacy and being visible as a gay man serving the Church in the interests of promoting the liberating love and unconditional acceptance of the Gospel message are not mutually exclusive categories.
3. Gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the wider church. Same-sex attraction, whether it be in women or men, is once again dismissed by this text as being ‘objectively disordered’, a phrase that appeared in the 1986 document written at the time by the then Cardinal Ratzinger. It confirms that the Church pastors have failed to listen to the voices of modern medicine, science and psychology, which does not see the homosexual state in such pathological terms. Lesbians and gay men are not accepted for who they are, but are condemned by such language to be seen as merely ‘defective heterosexuals’, rather than evidence of a strand of love and commitment which is at the heart of God’s pluralistic creation.
Quest asks lesbian, gay and bisexual Catholics not to lose heart, but to remain faithful to the long-term goal of being visible in the Church. In the fullness of time, the stories and witness they can give will become part of the church’s wider thinking, a process that is sadly not reflected in this document from Rome.
Mark Dowd,
Chair of Quest
Other relevant materials:
http://thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/register.cgi/tablet-01114
Ambiguous tendencies – An article by Robert Mickens, the Tablet’s Rome correspondent (may require free registration)
http://thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/register.cgi/tablet-01110
Can gays be priests? – Timothy Radcliffe’s comment on the Instruction (may require free registration)
http://jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng23.html
James Alison’s reflection on the Instruction