Vatican: Seminaries must ban active gays from the priesthood

ROME — The Vatican is ordering seminaries to bar candidates for the priesthood who "practice homosexuality," have "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" or support "gay culture," according to a document published Tuesday by Adista, a Catholic news agency in Rome.

The long-awaited instruction to seminary directors was scheduled for official release next week. It has been the subject of numerous leaks that have sparked intense debate and led some Catholic leaders, including the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, to defend the place of celibate gay priests in the church. But until Tuesday, a full text had not been published.

"The church, while deeply respecting the people in question, cannot admit to the seminary and the sacred orders those who practice homosexuality, present deeply rooted homosexual tendencies or support so-called gay culture," said the five-page document, which a Vatican official said appeared to be the authentic, final version.

The instruction from the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Vatican department in charge of seminaries, is not entirely new. Previous Vatican documents dating back to 1961 have called homosexuality an "intrinsically disordered" condition and have declared gays ineligible for ordination.

But Vatican officials say those rules have been loosely enforced, and some have blamed homosexuality for a worldwide scandal over sexual abuse of minors by priests. Other Catholics say there is no connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.

"There are people on the right wing who from the beginning saw this document as a kind of magic wand that would remove the taint of the sex-abuse scandal," said the Rev. John Coleman, a Jesuit sociologist at Loyola Marymount University. "I think that's wishful thinking — and pretty stupid."

The new document delves into the issue of homosexuality in greater detail than earlier instructions and may have greater authority, particularly because it bears the imprimatur of Pope Benedict XVI, who approved it Aug. 31.

The document does not call for the removal of gay men who are already serving as priests, and it does not flatly bar the ordination of anyone who has ever acknowledged a same-sex attraction. It said that men whose homosexuality is "a transitory problem" may be ordained as deacons — a key step toward the priesthood — if they have lived in celibacy for at least three years.

Those who have "deeply-rooted" same-sex attractions, on the other hand, find themselves "in a situation that presents a grave obstacle to a correct relationship with men and women" and are not fit for ordination, even if they are chaste, the document said.

But several priests questioned how the church will define "deeply rooted" and said they feared that the Vatican was leaving no room for gay men who have an understanding of their own sexuality and can live celibately.

"We're going back to the prehistoric, forcing people to live a lie," said the Rev. Richard Prendergast, pastor of St. Josaphat Catholic Church in Chicago. He is a member of Catholics Affirming Homosexual Leadership, a group he said was founded by seven priests, mostly in Chicago.