The Vatican certainly is no friend of the GLBTQ community; this comes as no surprise to anyone. The Holy Roman Catholic Church is almost by definition a rigid hierarchy, slow to let go of ideas - let alone dogma - and its views on sexuality are firmly rooted in the Middle Ages, or at least the 19th Century. When it comes to homosexuality, the learned clerics who toil away in the bureaucracy of the Holy See, never mind the thousands of diocesan and parish priests, really don’t seem to “get it.” Not just the priestly bureaucrats, but the entire hierarchy seems to have difficulty understanding the subtleties of human sexuality and certainly the subtleties of homosexuality. This blind spot around homosexuality (as well as bisexuality, lesbianism, and transsexuality/transgenderism) reaches all the way up to the papacy.
It should be remembered the current Pope was once Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (AKA the “department” in charge of The Inquisition) who in more than one official document labeled homosexuality as “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to God’s plan.”
Following the liberalizing of the Church after Vatican II under Pope John XXIII, homosexuality, while still seen as a disorder, was not in and of itself sinful; only the practice of it was a sin. If a gay man or lesbian was celibate, the Church accepted them, or so the theory went.
Even under the papacy of John Paul II, one of the more conservative popes in recent history, the state of being homosexual was not a sin; only homosexual behaviour was.
It was within that understanding that a friend of mine sought entrance to a variety of monasteries over the years. He understood theology and he understood the views and practices of the Church. He genuinely felt a vocation not just for the priesthood but to live his life as a monk. He saw little or no conflict between being an openly gay man and his desire to live a religious life in a religious community. He firmly held to the belief that he could, within the canons (laws) of Mother Church be an openly gay celibate priest and monk. But he was repeatedly tossed out of every single community he sought to join. The toll this took on his psyche, to say nothing of his attachment to the Church, was severe.
The Vatican is now calling for candidates to the priesthood to undergo psychological testing in order to, according to a recent Reuters article posted by Philip Pullella from Vatican City, “screen out heterosexuals unable to control their sexual urges and men with strong homosexual tendencies.”
The document in which this is set out is apparently in response to the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Church in recent years. The Vatican and various dioceses came under heavy criticism for doing so little or, in some instances, actively protecting priests involved in the abuses by moving them to other parishes or dioceses.
The Vatican has said the early detection of “sometimes pathological” psychological defects in candidates before they are ordained as priests would help avoid “tragic consequences.”
Vatican officials stated during a news conference that the tests would not be obligatory and decided on a case-by-case basis, such as when seminaries needed to ensure a seminarian was, in fact, suitable for the priesthood. Such tests would be administered by a psychologist or psychotherapist and would aim to detect what the document describes as “grave immaturity” and “imbalances” in the candidate’s personality. These would include “strong affective dependencies, notable lack of freedom in relations, excessive rigidity of character, lack of loyalty, uncertain sexual identity, and deep-seated homosexual tendencies...”
I have no idea what “strong affective dependencies” means or what a “notable lack of freedom in relations” might be. Certainly anyone who aspires to be a priest, or any of the other “helping professions” should have an openness to their character and a certain “warmth”, so I quite understand the difficulty with “rigidity of character.” That the hierarchy into which such a person is entering is extremely rigid does rather make the requirement against rigidity seem somewhat...I don’t know...ironic? I suppose the Church wants a personality type that is malleable to its way of being and not someone so rigid as to fight them every step of the way. They dealt with that back in the 15th Century with some upstart German monk called Martin Luther, and look where that lead....
Of course, it is not surprising given the recent history of the Church that the Vatican also stated it was “not enough to be sure (a candidate for the priesthood) is capable of abstaining from sexual activity,” but that seminary rectors would also need to “evaluate his sexual orientation.”
Ahhh...there’s the rub, so to speak. Again, Holy Mother Church is kicking Her homosexual sons up the you-know-what, and/or in the you-know-where. It’s no longer good enough to be homosexual but celibate and have a vocation; now The Holy Roman Catholic Church doesn’t even want celibate gay men as priests. If you have “tendencies” you are out, period. Forget that a comfortably and openly gay (albeit celibate) priest would bring a wealth of compassion and caring and love and talent to his vocation. Nope. Not interested. Oh, sure, the Church will accept heterosexual men no problem - unless of course they turn out not to be able to control their sexual urges. Homosexual men, apparently, don’t even get that much consideration. I guess Rome figures we queers can’t control ourselves.
Getting back to the Church’s somewhat superficial and unsophisticated understanding of homosexuality, it has always confused pedophilia (a sexual attraction to children, of whatever gender) and hebephilia (a sexual attraction to teenage boys) with homosexuality (a sexual and affection attraction to members of one’s own sex). Out of this ignorance - and I use the word in its truest sense of ‘not understanding’ rather than its common definition of consciously nasty - came the laying of blame over the sexual abuse scandal at the feet of homosexual men.
The priests involved in the abuse were, first and foremost, abusers; sexual orientation really had nothing to do with it. Secondly, not all those involved in the scandal were what I would call homosexual in orientation, although certainly some were - and particularly closeted due to the environment and culture of the Church. One could safely assume a certain degree of self-loathing as well, given the teachings of the very Church they were trained and lived to promote.
It might be worthwhile to note at this juncture that there is a difference between “being homosexual” and “being gay.” The terms are not always synonymous. All gay men are homosexual, but not all homosexuals are gay, gay being an identity while homosexual is the orientation. This is where the Vatican continuously misses the point. In the Vatican view, “homosexual” means deviant sex with other males (the act of sex alone is deviant, but the fact it is with another man compounds the severity). In the eyes of the Holy See you are going to be unable to control yourself around the boys in your parish. Homosexuality equals boy-raper.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Roman Catholic Church welcomed and celebrated homosexuality, instead of placing a blanket of dread, shame, repression and suppression over something as beautiful and self-affirming as the love and appreciation one man can have for another? (And, yes, I believe that can also include the desire of one man for another or others.)
Celibate or not, that’s not really the issue - though I have issues with enforced celibacy, but that is probably a whole other column! If the Church still insisted on celibacy but was open to celebrating human sexuality in all its forms, I could deal with that. But the Church is slow to change. It has held anti-sex beliefs for a millennium and shows no signs of re-evaluating its position any time soon. And when it does adopt modern ideas and methods, it goes in the wrong direction as is evidenced by the use of psychological tests (which, like IQ tests, are not terribly reliable and highly subjective) to weed out individuals who happen to be homosexual, but could be otherwise totally compatible with the priesthood.
There is another biblical image that comes to mind here...that of the Scapegoat. The Tribes of Israel would symbolically transfer all their sins to a goat and release it into the desert, carrying their sins and transgressions with it. When the goat perished in the desolation of the desert, so too would their sins perish. In the modern sense, being a scapegoat has come to mean someone or something that gets blamed for some wrong or misdeed when, in fact, that individual had nothing to do with the situation. The Church is using homosexuals and by extension the gay community, as its scapegoat. It is heaping the whole sex abuse scandal upon us.
As a spokesperson from SNAP, a US-based group for survivors of sexual abuse, said, “Catholic officials continue to fixate on the offenders and ignore the larger problem: the church’s virtually unchanged culture of secrecy and unchecked power in the hierarchy. These broader factors are deeply rooted in the church and contribute heavily to extensive and ongoing clergy sex abuse and cover-up.”
