Edward Pentin’s Vatican Notebook

For all the acres of newsprint and harrumphing editorials it produced, the teaching behind the Vatican Instruction on the vocational discernment of persons with homosexual tendencies is anything but new.
Speaking two days after the document’s publication last week, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, stressed that its purpose was simply to “highlight the teaching of the Church for all and to those who might have doubts”. Probably, he went on, “most people haven’t any doubts about this matter”.
Church documents have already covered this issue and “this doctrine is very clear”, the Cardinal explained. “But various currents of thought have found their way into the Church that don’t respond to this anthropology [on sexuality, family and marriage],” he said. In particular, the Cardinal pointed to “erroneous opinions concerning homosexuality”, ones which portray these tendencies “as normal” and that criticise any labelling of homosexuality a disorder as a “discrimination against the person”. The Vatican therefore thought it appropriate to “recall” established teaching on the subject.
When asked whether it would put an end to a “gay sub-culture” in some seminaries, the cardinal downplayed the problem, saying it only “concerns certain regions” and that “in most nations, this problem doesn’t exist”.
Where there is a problem, the Cardinal added, it is “in the first place” the responsibility of bishops to ensure that a candidate with deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not allowed to be ordained, followed by rectors and spiritual directors. If a candidate declines to end his formation, his confessor “will refuse him absolution”, he said.
He doubted the Instruction would encourage a homosexual candidate to cover up his tendencies, saying it would be a “very grave dishonesty” to do so, and a “contradiction” of what a priest should be.
The Polish Cardinal said the document does not concern already ordained priests who have deep-seated tendencies, but added that, for them, they “might have to try harder” to live chastely, should go more often to confession, and “take up the cross” in order to exercise their ministry as well as possible.
Cardinal Grocholewski was categorical the Instruction would not hinder vocations, but hoped it would attract “more quality than quantity” to the priesthood. He reiterated that a candidate for Holy Orders must have “affective maturity” and a sexuality that is “coherent” with his masculine identity.
“We demand that the possibility of homosexuality be eliminated for the simple fact that this enables paternal spirituality to be better exercised,” he explained. The document, he concluded, “is a step forward towards clarity and transparency in the Church, and a testimony of Christian life to the world”.