…about a document that hasn’t been released yet that no reporter has read. But the stories and reactions are coming in anyway, so here are your links.
Fessio said that if the document did not contain a clear definition, the church would need to follow up with "some standards" so that the decision was "not left entirely to individual seminaries." But he said it was unlikely that the church would take an extremely aggressive or intrusive tack, particularly toward homosexuals who are already ordained.
"I think someone who is living a good, chaste life and may be fighting some temptations, but you don’t even know what they are — I don’t see how that would be a problem for that person," he said. "But if someone is cruising gay bars and promoting a gay lifestyle, someone who is saying it’s all right, that it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got this attraction or not, those kinds of people . . . should be in a different walk of life."
"There emerged a justification, a whole philosophy saying same-sex attraction is one of God’s gifts," he said. "That’s what was so insidious. Now in our present culture — which is obsessed with sex — the church must make sure its own ministers are not contaminated by this secularized worldview."
In 2004, a church fact-finding team issued a report on the clergy sexual-abuse crisis that said 81 percent of the abuse was of boys and young men, prompting the Vatican to decide to revise and update the law.
Monsignor Steven Rohlfs, rector of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., said applicants to the priesthood are asked about their sexuality during mandatory psychological evaluations at the diocesan level.
"It’s been clear since 1961 that [homosexuals] were not to be admitted," he said. "Obviously that has not been adhered to at some seminaries."
At seminary, "we don’t ask the question unless there’s a reason to," he added. "We presume people are heterosexual unless there is a reason to presume otherwise."
and so does Courage Man
More later…we’re off to southern Indiana. Which is a long way from nothern Indiana.
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