CLGS Responds

Recent Roman Rumblings

By an anonymous Catholic priest and theology professor
February 2006

The Visitations, the Instruction, and the Cover Letter-that almost sounds like a C.S. Lewis/Disney Narnia sequel. But it summarizes by title the Vatican's three pronged attack on gay seminarians, professors and rectors that has caused much consternation, pain, and media attention. The good news is that the response from the various Catholic national churches has been remarkably strong, insisting that gays have made splendid seminarians and priests, and that the Vatican position has to be interpreted as simply excluding inappropriate sexual acting out by gays (and by implication, by straight men). Thus the President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops affirmed that there would be no homophobic witch hunt, and that "the answer lies in the lives of those men who, with God's grace, have truly been dedicated priests." Similarly, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men issued a statement insisting that there could be no exclusion of men based simply on sexual orientation, but that the aim of it all is "men who are well integrated and psychologically mature"

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster, England said, "The instruction is not saying that men of homosexual orientation are not welcome in the priesthood." The former General of the Dominican Order wrote that the Instruction does not ban men with a "permanent homosexual orientation" because "there are many excellent priests who are gay and who clearly have a vocation from God." And so other archbishops, bishops, seminary rectors and staff have interpreted the documents in the most optimistic and even affirming ways, indicating that there will be no significant change in policy regarding local seminaries. Such public and official recognition of the gay contribution, not to mention the extensive lay and media support for Catholic gays, constitutes a positive result of the controversy that several of the Vatican authors of the documents weren't perhaps anticipating or desiring.

The documents will certainly promote more homophobia in Catholic schools and parishes, in homes and at the workplace. They are also hurtful to all Catholics, since our church is so emphatically eucharistic yet struggling so much today with the dramatic shortage of priests. The documents will reduce significantly the number of seminarians and then new priests in many dioceses and thus put additional burdens on stressed-out priests, straight as well as gay, as they attempt to fill the gaps. It is certainly damaging to the prestige of the hierarchy, currently so low because of the various proclamations that simply are not accepted, and particularly because of the ways that the pedophile scandal has been covered up by leadership. The suspicion out there is that the documents are intended to scapegoat gays, thereby diverting attention from church leaders who have been, in the words of the National Catholic Reporter, complicit in criminal activity. Scapegoating is certainly to be found in Scripture, but it is not something that Christians, let alone hierarchies, should ever engage in.

The startlingly basic and evangelical principle that the documents ignore is that vocations come ultimately and essentially not from cardinals or archbishops, or even from the pope -- they come from God. Regarding an exclusion prior to the present documents, the hierarchy would have to admit that it is certainly a historic fact that married men were called by God to the Catholic priesthood for centuries. Did God suddenly change God's mind? Or rather, did not issues of control and even finance cause the Vatican to decide at a certain point to exclude married men? It is also a fact that women were ordained deacons in the full sacramental sense, certainly in the early Syriac church; and the deaconate, according to official Catholic theology, is a first participation in the one sacrament of orders. If there can be women deacons then there can be women priests and bishops. This exclusion has evidently more to do with misogyny than with the will of God.

There have clearly been holy and generous gay deacons, priests, bishops etc. down through the centuries. One thinks of St. Aelred, the towering poet Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, Fr. Henri Nouwen, renowned for his spiritual writings that have been profoundly helpful to so many, and the revered Fr. Mychael Judge, who gave his life ministering to firemen in the 9/11 attack in New York City.

Again, I ask: has God changed God's mind about calling such gay men, or rather do not these most recent documents stem from cynical scapegoating and longstanding Vatican homophobia? At least the hierarchy is no longer blessing the torture and burning at the stake of gays and lesbians. So some progress has been made. But what a grotesque presumption it is for a group of elderly males in the Vatican to say "no" to multitudes of men and women whom God has providentially endowed with the clear gifts of ordained ministry in a time of such urgent need in the church!

And in this ecumenical age one needs to ask what are the consequences of all this for other churches? Certainly the "hardliners" among the other denominations will feel confirmed, their homophobic resolve strengthened. And so, by extension, will the "fundamentalists" of other world religions.

But, as Churchill said of Dunkirk, this is not the end, nor the beginning of the end. It is perhaps the end of the beginning. And God will not be checkmated. Over the centuries God has demonstrated amazing capacities that only an absolutely omnipotent God could possess to work through and beyond all the dishonesties and injustices and phobias of the Vatican hierarchy. The institutional Roman Catholic Church is being dragged, though kicking and screaming, into the new, quite remarkable "age of the laity." The number of active priests just in the U.S. has dropped from 57,000 to 42,000 since 1985, and many of these priests are not actively ministering in parishes. On the other hand, the number of the faithful has been growing.

To meet the dramatic pastoral and ministerial needs thus created the church now has more than 30,000 salaried lay ecclesial ministers who work at least 20 hours a week, a 53 percent increase since 1990. And thousands more lay minister volunteers. In fact, there are now more laity than clergy ministering in Roman Catholic parish churches! These lay ecclesial ministers -- frequently women, frequently gays and married men, frequently on the front lines of Catholic church life -- hold significant leadership positions in 66 percent of all U.S. parishes. It is the laity, including gays and lesbians, women and married men, who will save and transform the Roman Catholic Church despite the hierarchy, its homophobia and misogyny. There will always be need of priests also, and as the pressure builds, the hope is that the hierarchy will sooner or later have the decency to re-examine its prejudicial exclusions of gays, of women, and of married men and women. And in the meantime, goodly numbers of Catholics will have pilgrimaged to other more inclusive denominations and ministered fruitfully there, carrying elements of the Catholic heritage with them. And those denominations, by their examples, offer an ongoing challenge to the Roman Catholic hierarchy, an ongoing inspiration and reference for Catholics struggling for a more just, inclusive church.

As the Good Book assures us, nothing, neither heights nor depths nor principalities nor Vatican princes, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Where sin abounds grace does more abound.

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