In a little more than a week, Aquinas Institute of Theology will be one of the first seminaries in the country to be visited by Vatican teams looking for evidence of homosexuality.
I’m sorry, but that lede made me laugh out loud. But it’s to be expected. The seminaries are being visited in order to see, well, if they’re doing a good job, but to the St. Louis paper, it’s all about the gays and their "evidence." Bizarre.
A group of five visitors, led by Bishop Michael Burbidge of Philadelphia, will evaluate Aquinas from Sept. 25-29. The Vatican said the purpose of the visitation was "to examine the criteria for admission of candidates and the programs of human formation and spiritual formation aimed at ensuring that they faithfully live chastely for the Kingdom."
Oh. So now they tell us.
The good nugget in the piece is the news that the questions have been put online, in case you’ve not yet found it anywhere else yet (I’ve been still struggling over Mary Magdalene, and it’s not been a priority) – at the seminary website. Here – it’s a pdf document.
My point, once again, if that the whole structure is sound – if Church teaching is, you know, being taught, and if candidates are expected to buy into that program and live by it, and have to bear consequences when they don’t – like being told to leave when they’re found with pornography or going on dates or in the park – the process will end up being one of largely self-selection.
My previous post on this didn’t deny problems. I have more than a passing acquaintance with seminary issues. There are seminaries, still, where inappropriate behavior of all kinds is tolerated. I know of a seminary in which, at least up until fairly recently, a professor, a former priest, lived off-campus with his male lover. Etc. Fr. Cozzens, no conservative, and Fr. Greeley, no conservative, have both decried the presence of gay subcultures in seminaries.
However, this is a problem that has to be handled in terms of structure, expectations for lifestyle and behavior, and academic and spiritual expectations. And I do think that’s what most in this process believe.
Read Previous Post