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November 13, 2008

The rumors are true.

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Here is something very interesting that just came my way.....check it out.

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Vatican flight from reality
By Michael B. Kelly
November 29, 2005

THOSE red-blooded heterosexuals in the Vatican have finally done it. After decades of increasingly shrill condemnations of homosexuality, they have actually banned gay priests. You almost wonder what took them so long.

A document expected to be issued in Rome this week by the Congregation of Catholic Education intensifies the church's stance against gay priests. The document, reported to have been approved by Pope Benedict XVI on August 31, prohibits from the priesthood active homosexuals, those judged to have deep-seated homosexual tendencies and those who support "gay culture".

The Italian newspaper Il Giornale recently quoted the document as saying the church should avoid discriminating against gays, but it could not ordain them. For a priest, it said, homosexuality represents "a situation that impedes the building of correct relationships with men and women".

This is just the latest stage in the Vatican's campaign to halt the progress of civil and spiritual liberation for gay people. This campaign has revealed an ugly side of the Catholic Church — a side that rejects modern science and psychology, forbids dialogue, and uses power as a blunt instrument of control. This latest sally in the campaign, however, is likely to backfire.

First, it makes the Catholic hierarchy look ridiculous and mean. No one who has had any substantial involvement with Catholic priests and bishops imagines that they are all chest-thumping heterosexuals. To say that some cardinals, for example, exhibit a certain sensibility that in other contexts might be labelled "gay", is not to say anything remarkable. You just have to look at some of the outfits. This observation, commonplace among both lay Catholics and the clergy, does not detract from broad acceptance that gay priests have long offered devoted ministry to the Catholic community.

Father Richard John Neuhaus, for example, one of the church's most conservative commentators, wrote in 2002 that "it seems more than likely that, in centuries past, some priests who have been canonised as saints would meet today's criteria as having a homosexual orientation". This was confirmed in modern terms by Bishop William Skylstad, the president of the US National Conference of Catholic Bishops, who wrote just last month: "There are many wonderful and excellent priests in the church who have a gay orientation, are chaste and celibate and very effective ministers of the gospel." Even George Pell admitted to Channel Nine's Sunday show in 2001 that there is probably a higher proportion of homosexual men in the priesthood than in the general society — but he made no claim that these men were not worthy pastors.

Now the Vatican is suggesting that the ordination of all these men was a mistake. Their ministry has been smeared with the unsubstantiated assertion that men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" cannot form "correct relationships with women and men", and so "cannot" be ordained. This crude insult will distress countless gay priests — and it is a kick in the stomach to all gay people. Without question, many young men who would have been fine priests will be lost to the church, and this at a time when the shortage of priests is becoming acute. Catholics have a right to be angry.

They also have a right to be disgusted. Whatever the actual percentages are — estimates vary from 25 to 50 per cent and higher — the clergy at every level includes men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies". Vatican powerbrokers can get their silk robes in a knot, fulminating about gay seminarians, but plenty of Catholics see through the charade. It's a tragic cliche that the bully who beats up faggots is often hiding his own fear of being seen as homosexual.

The Vatican's neurosis around homosexuality is peaking at a time when Catholics are increasingly affirming gay people. Earlier this year a major poll showed that three-quarters of Australia's Catholics do not believe homosexuality is immoral. Spain recently legalised gay marriage with the support of 70 per cent of its overwhelmingly Catholic population. In the United States, even conservative Catholic groups have stated that they have no problem with gay priests, as long as they are celibate.

So what is the Vatican's problem? This document is vague about the reasons for the new ban. It refers to the "urgency" of the "current situation", and the "negative effects that can flow" from ordaining gay men — but there is no clarification. Since no case is made, no response can be given. The Vatican just makes scary noises about gay priests, and expects Catholics to accept its dictates.

This is dishonest and insulting. If the Pope and his cardinals have a problem with gay priests, let them state their case cleanly and openly and let independent research and honest dialogue take place. Let them also face the fact that the arguments they offer may well be used to critique their own priesthood.

In the meantime, gay priests have to face the fact that this is a time of radical choice. They can be cowed into silence and collude in their own oppression, or they can stand up for themselves, expose the lies and claim the power of the gospel — that truth that sets us free. Most of all, they must stand up for their younger gay brothers who are called to priesthood, and refuse to let them be insulted and rejected in the name of Christ.

Michael B. Kelly is a gay Catholic writer and activist. He is scholar in residence at the Easton Mountain Retreat Centre in New York.

An Open Letter from Gay Italian Priests*

Translated into English by William Hood

The recent Instruction from the Congregation for Catholic Education concerning the
criteria of vocational discernment for persons with homosexual tendencies urges us to
present some reflections relevant to that document. We address ourselves to our brothers
in the priesthood, to bishops and religious superiors, to men and women living under
vows, to men and women in society.

We are Catholic priests, secular and religious, with homosexual tendencies, and that fact
has not kept us from being good priests. Some of us have spent our lives as missionaries,
others as parish priests and pastors loved and admired by their people, still others live out
their priesthood teaching with dedication and professionalism.

Our homosexual tendency, as the document would have one believe, has not been an
impediment to leading a life in the sacred ministry that is animated by the gift of one's
whole self to the Church and by authentic pastoral charity (1). Our homosexuality does
not put us in a situation that gravely impairs appropriate relationships with men and
women, as the document states in the second paragraph: as men and priests we feel
wounded by this absolutely gratuitous assertion. We have no more serious problems than
heterosexuals do in living a chaste life, because homosexuality is not synonymous with
promiscuity nor with uncontrollable instincts: we are not sexually "sick" and our
homosexual tendency has not damaged either our psychological health (2) or our moral
and human gifts (3).

The document requires, as determining the candidate's suitability, that transitory
homosexual tendencies be brought to light and overcome three years before ordination to
the diaconate. Now for the majority of us priests the years in seminary were a time of
sexual serenity. In fact, meeting together on various occasions for retreats or spiritual
conferences, we have noticed that the disturbances, for heterosexuals and well as for
homosexuals, have come afterwards, caused not by sexual orientation but by loneliness,
the lack of friendship, the sense of being little loved and, sometimes, even abandoned by
our own superiors, colleagues, and communities. What is more, and speaking to our
particular situation, some of us have recognized our homosexuality only after ordination.

One has the sense that this document was born as a reaction to the cases of recently
uncovered pedophilia, mostly in the American and Brazilian churches: but homosexual
orientation is not absolutely synonymous with pedophilia.

One also has another impression: that people believe homosexuals are necessarily part of
a gay culture that is exhibitionistic, outrageous, lawless, promoting a philosophy of life
that often appears to many eyes as contrary to any moral law, in which everything is
permissible. Certain manifestations of the gay world are born as reactions to the years of
seclusion and persecution in which the homosexual world has been imprisoned, but the
whole gay world does not share such characteristics. In any case, not one of us behaves
outrageously or embraces a permissive hedonism in which no moral law exists.

The document would make it seem that the greatest problem for being a good priest is
sexual orientation, and the necessity to overcome a certain lifestyle that, in addition to
being unacceptable sexually, creates other scandals among the faithful: we refer to luxury,
to the love of money, to hegemonies of power, to isolation from the problems of ordinary
people. On the contrary, we consider our homosexualty as richness, because it helps us
share the emargination and suffering of many people: to paraphrase Saint Paul, we can be
everything to everyone, weak with the weak, emarginated with the emarginated.

Experience shows that our homosexual condition, lived in the light of the Gospel and
under the action of the Spirit, puts us in a condition to sustain and support our
homosexual brothers and sisters in their journey of faith, making real that pastoral care
that the Church acknowledges as necessary and desirable.

The very Church that has received the ministry of reconciliation (4) needs to reconcile itself
with homosexuality, which is a reality for many faithful people, sons and daughters of
God: men and women of good will who have the right to find a haven for their souls in the
Church.

Obviously, like all upright people, we cannot deny our fragility, which is a condition of
human nature: we carry the gift of God in earthen vessels (5), but our situation is not an
obstacle to being priests according to the heart of God.

Now, after the publication of this document, we experience great pain and discomfort, as
though our vocation had not been authentic. We feel ourselves abandoned sons and
unloved by that Church to which we have promised and given our fidelity and love. We
feel ourselves to be "little brothers" in a priesthood that we seem to have entered almost
by subterfuge.

(1) Cfr. Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 14
(2) Cfr. C.I.C., can 1051
(3) Cfr. Pastores dabo vobis, n. 35
(4) Cfr. 2 Corinthians 5,18
(5) Cfr. 2 Corinthians 4,7

* The original version of this letter was published on December 18, 2005 on the Italian
Catholic website Adista (www.adistaonline.it).

The brain has been thinking again. No matter how many milligrams of ADD drugs I take, there seems to still be brain function. Not sure what my problem is.

I suppose if I were meant to be intelligent I would understand the important things like, the war in Iraq, tax cuts for the rich, genocide, and Karl Rove. Alas, I’m doomed to my blissful ignorance.

Of course I’m only blissful due to the large amount of anti-depressants I take. I would not need the drugs if I drove the fancy cars and lived in the expansive homes I see on television. I don’t, therefore…..anti-depressants.

My doctor wants to put me on a cholesterol lowering drug. He says it is extremely high. I don’t understand it. I always order the salad with my burger and fries and have nuts on my ice cream sundaes.

I went shopping the other day, was feeling a little low and the hottest new gadget that I didn’t need was being advertised on TV. I rushed right out to get it. Couldn’t come home with it though, my credit card got declined. The card was all maxed out. How can I not have anymore credit? I get a dozen or so credit card offers a week. Maybe I’ll declare bankruptcy….oh, wait, that is only for people with money. Hey, send me more credit card offers, I’m running low on money. I want that new gimmick.

I was at an anti-abortion protest yesterday. It was going well until some crazy anti-war protesters marched past on the street. What is their problem? Those foreigners deserve killing! After all, they are shooting at our soldiers.

I saw the divorce rate was up several more points in the past year. It is darn good that we are fighting the gay marriage thing. Last thing we need is gay people getting married. It makes the normal people not respect the vows of marriage. No wonder so many celebrities are getting married and divorced at enormous rates. They work in Hollywood which is in the same state as San Francisco.

I’m really angry at all those import car makers. They make all those cheap little fuel efficient cars that enable almost anyone to own a car. How do they expect there to be enough gas for us huge SUV drivers????? If God had meant all mankind to have cars, he would not have created bikes.

And don’t even get me started on those whacked evolution nuts.

Carry on