Vatican to Define Its Policy on Gay Seminarians

The Vatican is preparing to release a document, years in the making, that will bolster the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine against admitting gay men into the priesthood.

Despite an acute shortage of Catholic priests in many parts of the world, church leaders under Pope Benedict XVI are advocating a more careful screening of aspiring clerics to keep out homosexuals. However, rather than an absolute ban feared in some circles, the pope is expected to adopt a somewhat more nuanced approach in the final document.

The Vatican announced in 2002 that a year earlier it had begun revising guidelines on whether gays should be allowed to enroll in seminaries. Officials were responding to two concerns: what some Catholics saw as a growing gay subculture within seminaries and in church life, and the explosion of sexual abuse scandals in the United States and elsewhere, the majority of whose victims were boys.

Benedict has been clear in upholding church teachings that condemn homosexuality as “disordered” and potentially evil, both in his decades as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer, and since his election as pontiff in April. He has repeatedly emphasized traditional moral doctrine, condemning same-sex marriages and other perceived crises of values in the secular world.

“We are all very worried about the shortage of priests, but the answer is to improve and strengthen the selection process,” Cardinal Julian Herranz, who oversees the Vatican council for interpretation of legislative texts, said in a recent interview. “The answer is not to loosen the standards.”

The new instructions, expected to be issued with Benedict’s approval this month, will update a 1961 prohibition on gays entering seminaries. That ban declared that men of “homosexual tendency” were “not fit” to be ordained.

But indications are that the new document, which will set out more specific guidelines intended to enforce a rule that everyone agrees has often been ignored, also will leave a small degree of flexibility or discretion.

The final document has not been made public, and the clerics who drafted it have not spoken publicly on its contents, following the Vatican practice of avoiding comment until the pope has formally published any new instructions. Consequently, the precise language remains unknown, and in Vatican documents even the most minor inflections of language can make a world of difference.

Still, the most reliable reports suggest the following strictures will be included: Men who have been celibate for at least three years, regardless of their sexual orientation, would be eligible to be admitted to seminaries. In addition to celibacy, they should not participate in a “gay lifestyle,” including the use of books, movies and Internet sites with gay content or themes. Nor should they join related political activities, such as pride marches.

These details were first published last month in Corriere della Sera, a leading Italian newspaper, and confirmed in general terms by Vatican officials.

On Friday, the conservative Il Giornale daily, saying the decree would be published Nov. 29, quoted from the document: Men with “deeply rooted homosexual tendencies” would not be admitted to the priesthood, but allowances would be made for those with transitory homosexual impulses who are celibate.

Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, the senior official in charge of the new instructions, recently expressed concerns to a gathering of bishops that the training and education of priests left something to be desired.

“This formation of seminarians is of maximum importance and must be underlined because the way [Mass] is celebrated, and the way it is perceived and lived by the faithful, depends principally on the priest,” Grocholewski said. “There is still a great deal to be done

Anyone watching the church has been aware for years that the document was forthcoming, but fresh alarms sounded in September when Archbishop Edwin O’Brien said that even celibate homosexuals should be barred from the priesthood. O’Brien is in charge of ongoing inspections of all U.S. seminaries, so his comments were seen as a warning.

Ahead of the inspections, mandated by the Vatican in the wake of the abuse scandals, O’Brien told a conservative Catholic newsletter that anyone “who has engaged in homosexual activity or had strong homosexual inclinations” need not apply to the ministry. He said there was no statute of limitations.

Although he later said he was expressing his own views and not those of the Vatican, O’Brien’s comments triggered fears of a witch hunt, especially in some circles of American and British clergy.

Many critics suggested the Vatican was attempting to make gay men scapegoats for the failure of church leadership to better handle the sex abuse scandals, which revealed that senior clerics in several dioceses, including Los Angeles, failed to dismiss abusive priests and instead moved them to new posts.

“This is the worst kind of prejudice,” a self-described gay priest wrote in the liberal Catholic weekly Tablet, using the pseudonym Father Paul Michaels for fear, he said, of reprisal. “What I can say for sure is that the vast majority of [gay] men who I know and work with are not only compassionate, hardworking and faithful priests, they are also celibate.”

Critics of the church’s policy also have questioned this apparent contradiction: If a priest is celibate, as is mandatory under church doctrine, of what importance is his sexual orientation? A gay priest should be as chaste as a heterosexual one.

But church officials maintain that men training to be priests in seminaries are surrounded by men; for gays, they say, there would be temptation.

Another dilemma: What would happen to gay men already in seminaries? Should they not be ordained? And what about gay men who have already been ordained? Church officials have said that the new rules are intended to address future priests, not current ones.

Some critics said banning gays diminishes the already shrinking pool of seminary applicants. However, those who favor tighter restrictions said the opposite would be true because many heterosexual men are reticent to enter seminaries.

On both sides of the argument, many agree that new rules will not necessarily change anything. Several theologians noted that an outright ban could not be enforced, and that applicants, gay or straight, could easily lie about their sexual history. The difficulty of defining homosexuality further complicates imposing a broad ban. And several experts on the Catholic Church said that documents handed down from Rome often allow for interpretation in their application, even if dogmatic-sounding language makes it seem otherwise.

Some priests said the Vatican might be tackling the wrong problem. The priority ought to be teaching men to live a “chaste, celibate and happy life,” said Father Mark R. Francis, superior general of the Rome-based Clerics of St. Viator, who has worked extensively with seminaries.

“The problem is not an issue of homosexuality but of basic sexual immaturity,” Francis said in an interview, referring to the root causes of the sexual abuse scandals. “If [officials] are going into the seminaries to teach morality and ethics, that’s fine. But if they are trying to turn the clock back and rigidly refuse to talk about sexual issues, then the results may well be the opposite of what they are looking for.”

For some senior church officials, the overriding concern is discipline.

A priest “must wake up every day thinking of his love for his family of God, a spiritual family, not a family of flesh and blood, and must think of living for such a life,” Herranz, the cardinal, said. “That is what makes a great priest.”