The Sigla Blog

The Vatican has drawn up a new document that plans to ban gay men from entering the priesthood. According to the The Observer, the document has been drafted by the Congregation for Catholic Education and Seminaries.

The article says:

“The instruction was drawn up as part of the Vatican’s response to the sexual abuse scandal that surfaced in the American church three years ago, which has seen hundreds of priests launch lawsuits against superiors whom they accuse of abusing them.”

So now the Catholic church think that all gay men are paedophiles? Brilliant. They have no problem with pederast priests for years and now their response is to vilify men who are sexually attracted to other men - NOT children. If all priests have to take a vow of celibacy, why is this even an issue? This just doesn’t make sense to me. Next they’ll be banning alcoholics from entering the priesthood in case they go crazy on the communion wine (”feck transubstantiation - let’s party!!”).

Quoted in the article is John Haldane, a professor of moral philosophy at the University of St Andrews who says:

“It will be written in a very pastoral mode,’ Haldane said. ‘It will not be an attack on the gay lifestyle. It will not say “homosexuality is immoral”. But it will suggest that admitting gay men into the priesthood places a burden both on those who are homosexual and those they are working alongside who are not.”

Yeah, it’s a real burden working with gay men. All that impeccable grooming and ABBA screensavers tend to drag the whole work experience down for everyone. It’s not a revelation that numbers entering seminaries in Ireland are at an all time low and this quote from the same article would suggest that at a time when no one wants to be a priest, the church is cutting off a demographic that has, according to studies, consistently joined the priesthood in large numbers.

“Studies show that a significant proportion of men who enter seminaries to train for the priesthood are gay. Any move signalling that homosexuals will not be allowed to join the seminaries, even one couched in the arcane language of the Vatican, could reduce the number of recruits to the priesthood.”

Anyway this elitist and patriarchal guff is yet another reason why I can’t be bothered to be a practising Catholic. The hate-filled homophobes over at God Hates Fags are probably burning crosses in celebration. Before they do, they should check out Popbitch’s little rumour from a few months back that cast aspirations on Ratzinger’s own sexual past. Perhaps he was just “experimenting”.