Friday, October 07, 2005
No Gay Ban After All
Vatican reporter John Allen reports the reported gay ban on seiminarians appears to be CWN puffery. Three considerations for SSA candidates are reported:
1. If candidates have not demonstrated a capacity to live celibate lives for at least three years;
2. If they are part of a "gay culture," for example, attending gay pride rallies (a point, the official said, which applies both to professors at seminaries as well as students);
3. If their homosexual orientation is sufficiently "strong, permanent and univocal" as to make an all-male environment a risk.
This seems sensible, given that heterosexual candidates are probably also given the once-over on this.
1. Having engaged in sex the past three years, including looking and doing things with men's mags or women's lingerie catalogues or premium cable/satellite channels.
2. If they are part of the heterosexual culture: attending bachelor parties, strip clubs, porn theaters, military tailhooks, Bluto-style frat parties, etc.
3. There are a lot of risks in the seminary environment for a heterosexual man who is not sexually mature. There are also many more years of risks ahead for priests once ordained who serve the Church in very lonely situations. Celibacy was designed to be lived in a monastic setting. Seminary is not unlike a monastery. But big rectories with solo priests seem to be breeding grounds for trouble we don't need to skirt.
When I was in graduate school, I had problems and stress in my life: academic performance, earning money for next semester (or borrowing it), doubts about my future, relationships, etc.. Life seems much heavier than those mostly idyllic days. Temptations seem much more grave these days than twenty years ago. If priests continue to act as isolated princes in their rectory-castles, who provides the monastic corrective when someone is indulging in too much drink, sex, food, gambling, or other unsafe practices?
