Upcoming Ban on "Gay" Priests Outrages…. "Gay" Priests

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        On September 22, 2005, Associate press reported that "a soon-to-be-released Vatican document that will signal homosexuals are unwelcome in Roman Catholic seminaries even if they are celibate has devastated gay clergy …"

        So what? "Gay" clergy have nearly brought the Church to ruin throughout North America, and the Vatican — after some 40 years of doing nothing — finally appears ready at least to state in principle that those afflicted by what the Church teaches is the "intrinsically disordered" homosexual condition are not fit for the sacred priesthood.

        The AP report states that "the upcoming ‘instruction’ from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education will reaffirm the church's belief that homosexuals should not be ordained" and that the document "is scheduled to be distributed within weeks, just as an evaluation of all 229 American seminaries gets under way under the direction of the same Vatican agency developing the seminary statement."

        The protests against this document are ludicrous. AP quotes one Rev. Thomas Krenik, who frets that "For some men who happened to be homosexually oriented, they would go further in the closet." Isn’t this rather akin to the argument that if abortion is made illegal, women will simply obtain abortions in back alleys? What if they do? Why should the Church, any more than civil society, make it easy for malefactors to be malefactors?

        An anonymous "gay" priest complained that "'I've spoken to gay priests who feel demoralized…. I've heard priests both straight and gay seriously considering leaving." But that’s the whole idea — leave, as your condition renders you unfit for the priesthood.

        It is really very simple, although in this time of diabolical disorientation in the Church what is obvious is easily forgotten: homosexuality, like any other perversion or psychological disorder, is an impediment to the priesthood. Kleptomaniacs are not admitted to the priesthood on condition that they will promise to refrain from stealing; alcoholics are not admitted on condition that they will promise to lock the liquor cabinet; agoraphobics are not admitted on condition that they will try really hard to get used to being outdoors; and so forth. Thus, men who experience a perverse attraction to other men are rightly denied admission to the sacred priesthood.

        The results of the failure to follow that dictum of common sense and prudence for the past forty years speak for themselves. Perhaps, please God, the new Pope is finally going to restore good order in at least this aspect of the Church’s functioning. And perhaps this will be a first step in a long march back toward ecclesial sanity that will culminate in the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart.