Vatican Renews Rejection of Gay Priests, Says Homosexuality Not Normal

c. 2005 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ The Vatican on Tuesday (Nov. 29) officially published a document barring openly gay men from entering the priesthood and immediately rushed to defend the guidelines, renewing its rejection of homosexuality as normal. Although the document draws from decades of church teaching that regards gays as “objectively disordered,” […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ The Vatican on Tuesday (Nov. 29) officially published a document barring openly gay men from entering the priesthood and immediately rushed to defend the guidelines, renewing its rejection of homosexuality as normal.

Although the document draws from decades of church teaching that regards gays as “objectively disordered,” a Vatican cardinal who signed the document and the Vatican’s official newspaper stepped forward to buttress the new guidelines, which have come under heavy fire inside and outside of the Catholic Church.


Critics have claimed that the widely leaked document’s ban on men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” is too ambiguous for local Catholic officials to effectively screen the sexual orientations of priestly candidates.

But the Vatican forcefully responded Tuesday, asserting that the ban was clear, since the church regards homosexuality as a condition akin to a medical disorder rather than a fixed sexual identity or orientation.

Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Vatican department that issued the document, rushed to defend the ban in an interview with Vatican radio, saying it was wrong to consider homosexuality “a normal condition of the human person _ almost like a third gender.”

Such a position “absolutely contradicts human anthropology. It contradicts natural law according to the church,” Grocholewski said.

A few hours later, Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, published an editorial that called homosexuality a “sexual tendency not an identity.”

The article, authored by Monsignor Tony Anatrella, a French Jesuit and psychologist, warned that “homosexuality has become a phenomenon that is always increasingly worrying and in many countries is considered a quality that is normal.”

The ban on openly gay candidates for the priesthood bases its guidelines on the Catholic Catechism, which regards homosexuality as an “inclination which is objectively disordered.”


According to the Rev. Robert Gahl, a professor of ethics at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, such terminology reinforces church teaching that considers people inherently heterosexual.

“The document advances the church’s understanding of the homosexual condition,” he said. “With this instruction the church has avoided speaking of persons or of the homosexual condition as some permanent and stable thing.”

The new guidelines stipulate that homosexual attractions that are “transitory” would not disqualify candidates from the priesthood if they are “clearly overcome” three years before the candidate is ordained a deacon _ a key step to becoming a priest.

In his interview with Vatican Radio, Grocholewski said “transitory” tendencies could include impulses experienced as a result of “incomplete adolescence,” long-term imprisonment, or “accidental circumstances” that occur in a “state of drunkenness.”

It remains unclear whether the Vatican’s understanding of homosexuality will resonate among local bishops.

Spokane, Wash., Bishop William S. Skylstad, president of the United States Bishop’s Conference of Catholic Bishops greeted the norms as a “timely document,” but appeared to embrace the concept of homosexual orientation.

“We live in an era when the issue of sexual orientation is much discussed,” he said, affirming that “the dignity of all human beings and the respect that should be shown all people irrespective of sexual orientation.”


Some observers warn that strict enforcement of the Vatican rules will lead to a lack of transparency in seminaries, rewarding candidates who attempt to suppress their homosexuality and punishing those who are open.

“The seminarians who are most transparent, most open with superiors will be thrown out,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit American priest and seasoned Vatican analyst. “Those who are most in the closet, those who are most deceitful, those who are most dangerous, will in fact not tell you.”

MO/JL END RNS

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