Rome, Italy, Nov 21, 2005 / 22:00 pm
The Italian news agency Adista has leaked the complete text of the long-awaited Instruction from the Congregation for Catholic Education which definitively excludes the admission of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies to the priesthood.
The Instruction “Concerning The Criteria Of Vocational Discernment Regarding Persons With Homosexual Tendencies In View Of Their Admission To Seminaries And Holy Orders” will be officially released next week at the Vatican, but Adista—which calls itself a “progressive” Catholic news agency—leaked the Italian-language document.
The Congregation says it does not intend the document to address “all the issues in the affective or sexual realm that require attentive discernment throughout the entire period of formation,” but rather to offer norms regarding the particular question of whether or not to admit to the seminary or to Holy Orders candidates who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies.
The six-page document, which appeared on the internet Tuesday, maintains that a candidate to the priesthood should attain affective maturity that will allow him to “to relate properly” with men and women, “developing in him a true sense of spiritual fatherhood for the ecclesial community that will be entrusted to him.”
It also reiterates that the Catechism of the Catholic Church distinguishes between homosexual acts and homosexual tendencies. Regarding acts, it teaches that “these are presented grave sins” and are considered “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law. As a consequence, they can never be approved under any circumstance.”