Hidden in Pope Benedict XVI's new book, Light of the World, is a story that is not about condoms, but will still be very important to the future of the Catholic church: he claims, on page 152, that even celibate homosexuals must be kept out of the priesthood."The Congregation for Education issued a decision a few years ago to the effect that homosexual candidates cannot become priests because their sexual orientation estranges them from the proper sense of paternity, from the intrinsic nature of priestly being. The selection of candidates to the priesthood must therefore be very careful.
The greatest attention is needed here in order to prevent the intrusion of this kind of ambiguity and to head off a situation where the celibacy of priests would practically end up being identified with the tendency to homosexuality."
This is utterly unambiguous, and only about 100 years too late to be effective.
What he is saying is that the priesthood must consist of men who have renounced the love of women, not those for whom it has never been a major temptation:
"Sexuality has an intrinsic meaning and direction, which is not homosexual. We could say, if we wanted to put it like this, that evolution has brought forth sexuality for the purpose of reproducing the species. The same thing is true from a theological point of view as well.
The meaning and direction of sexuality is to bring about the union of man and woman
And, in this way, to give humanity posterity, children, a future. This is the determination internal to the essence of sexuality. Everything else is against sexuality's intrinsic meaning and direction. This is a point we need to hold firm, even if it is not pleasing to our age ...
Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation.
Otherwise, celibacy itself would lose its meaning as a renunciation. It would be extremely dangerous if celibacy became a sort of pretext for bringing people into the priesthood who don't want to get married anyway."
This is ironic in view of the widely held view that he himself is not a man for the ladies (as a gay catholic once said to me). It's also obviously unworkable.
But his reasoning is interesting, for it shows that he understands one of the problems that compulsory celibacy has brought to the church in the West.
As it became less and less common for men not to marry – and perhaps this was a result of increasing prosperity as much as anything else – the church was one of the few professions in which a gay man could remain "respectable", even to himself.
The consequence is a widespread and rather poisonous culture of camp.
This is well-known and admitted by anyone who has made a serious study of it. And once seminaries are known to be predominantly gay places, the mothers of straight sons become unwilling to send them there.
A tipping point is reached – as it seems to have been in the USA – from which the Church finds it almost impossible to recover.
Even Peter Seewald, the Pope's interviewer, responds to his remarks by saying:
"But there is no doubt that homosexuality exists in monasteries and among the clergy, if not acted out, then at least in a nonpracticed form."
To which Benedict replies:
"Well, that is just one of the disturbing problems of the Church. And the persons who are affected must at least try not to express this inclination actively, in order to remain true to the intrinsic mission of their office."
What will all this matter in practice?
"Pope wrong again" is hardly a headline to set the secular world on fire. But it will certainly encourage the Catholic Right to attempt to weed out gays from seminaries.
This is, as I have said, impossible, but it is also likely to lead to further nasty and bitter infighting.
Until now, liberals have held the line by referring to the passage in the earlier denunciation about "deep-rooted" homosexual tendencies.
This allowed seminary directors to pretend that men whom they thought could stay celibate were not deep-rootedly gay at all.
But these remarks drop that qualification:
"The issue at stake here is the intrinsic truth of sexuality's significance in the constitution of man's being. If someone has deep-seated homosexual inclinations–and it is still an open question whether these inclinations are really innate or whether they arise in early childhood–if, in any case, they have power over him, this is a great trial for him, just as other trials can afflict other people as well. But this does not mean that homosexuality thereby becomes morally right. Rather, it remains contrary to the essence of what God originally willed … For, in the end, their attitude toward man and woman is somehow distorted, off centre, and, in any case, is not within the direction of creation of which we have spoken."
Benedict does also say that gay people "are human beings with their problems and their joys, that as human beings they deserve respect, even though they have this inclination, and must not be discriminated against because of it.
Respect for man is absolutely fundamental and decisive."
But if I were gay, I wouldn't think that he thought I was a proper human being at all, whether or not he treated me like one.
SIC: TG/UK
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