Matt Abott received comments from three priests the forthcoming document barring gays from the seminary. One of them in particular gives a very clear exposition of what it is about homosexuality that makes it incompatible with the priesthood (or at least one of the reasons). Father Burns Seeley of the Society of St. John Cantius says:
The key point seems to be that homosexuals possess ‘a serious personality disorder which detracts from their ability to serve as ministers.’ I take this to mean that they are incapable of perceiving human nature as God as created it, consisting of male and female persons meant for mutual attraction, complementarity, and, God-willing, marriage and children.
Instead, they see members of their own gender as mutually attractive in a sexual sense. They do not see females as such. In other words, they do not see or experience objective reality. Since this is so, it follows that homosexual priests possess a serious handicap which makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to serve well as our Lord’s faithful ordained ministers.
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<i>In other words, they do not see or experience objective reality.</i>
I don’t know whether to take this seriously or not. I assure Padre that I experience the same objective reality he does. I think. The only I can make sense of this is if the existentials of particular sexual attraction is the organizing principle of the universe. Even if he’s right, in other words, this excludes us from one aspect of “objective reality” merely. Timbuktu is as much part of objective reality as anything else, and I feel quite comfortable saying I have never experienced it, but still think I experience “objective reality.”
And I’m sorry but as a whole, this is nothing more than the old argument about existential experience constituting the capabilities of one’s soul and thus competence—and believe me, the Church doesn’t want to go there. We’ve all heard “unmarried priests don’t understand married life,” right? That’s the same argument. And so they therefore cannot, for example, “see or experience objective reality” in re the wonders of contraception.
This should go on top of my last note (it got cut off for some reason)
I take this to mean that they are incapable of perceiving human nature as God as created it.
Perceive =/= act upon, or feel in our own particular cases.
Instead, they see members of their own gender as mutually attractive in a sexual sense. They do not see females as such.
The second sentence does not follow, or rather, it follows only if females “as such” are sex objects.
Well, it is undeniable that if all of us suddenly turned to homosexual attraction and abandoned heterosexual attraction, it would take about 100 years for the Earth to be completely depopulated. Then there would be no one left to determine what is objective reality and what is not. I have a hard time believing that is what God had in mind. I’m much more at home with believing that “be fruitful and multiply” is more in line with the thinking of the Almighty.
I have to disagree with Fr. Seeley’s characterization of homosexuals. Certainly, some men’s ability to perceive the meaning of human sexuality may be blocked by their temptations, particularly if they are indulged, but to say that of all would be too grand a generalization. Certainly it should not be impossible for us to believe that a man could have homosexual temptations, but resist them through discipline born of grace and prayer, and that he could so train his mind as to know what is right and proper?
That doesn’t mean that I disagree with a ban such as the one that is purportedly in this document coming out later in the year. The ban, and the length of its term, is a prudential decision, and as a blanket policy is probably better than a blanket policy that says orientation doesn’t enter at all into the decision to accept into seminary. But I think we should beware of saying what someone else is able to perceive, based on their temptations.
I thoroughly agree with that. We are all flawed in different ways, and all disordered in one way or another, and to varying degrees. We overcome it through the grace of God.
Our faith, though, does teach us to avoid the near occasions of sin.
You wouldn’t want a heterosexual to spend his seminary experience in a seminary populated with girls, would you? Try to imagine how you would feel about seminary training that took place in a university with co-ed dorms.
But Carrie, by the time even an eager young man enters seminary (let’s say he’s fresh out of college at 23—which is below the average age now), he’s probably already lived about a decade struggling with *that* in some way, shape, manner or form.
To steal a line from someone else at St. Blogs, an SSA man entering seminary is not some lavender-hued blank slate beamed down from the planet Homotron. Believe me, a man not already sunk into the gay lifestyle by that age will have to have been quite good at controlling himself around other men. And if he’s been able to handle chastity to that point, a seminary situation is nothing different in kind.
He’ll have had about five or six years of post-puberty gym classes in high school (not to speak of the possibility of athletic teams). He’ll have gone to college for four years, likely most of that in dorm, frat house or other all-male communal living situations.
I’m not saying that an all-male environment couldn’t be the source of temptation—of course it could. It seems to me that what matters is that the Lavendar Mafia not be running the asylum, and the seminary be preparing the men properly and with eyes wide open for a life of chastity. Those are big IFs obviously. But if they don’t obtain, and I acknowledge they all too often don’t in late-20th/early-21st century US, then *there* is your problem. If it’s done right, an all-male environment isn’t the big deal one might think. I posted a few words on my site about my experience of last month’s Courage Conference and how it speaks to this matter.
Indeed I recall joking with somebody at the conference that, given the … um … makeup of the people there, wouldn’t it make more sense to have the men and women share rooms, so us homos can avoid near occasions of sin.
What concerns me is this: Will those assenting Catholics who are presently taking issue with Rome’s decision on the matter ultimately accept the decision with docility, or will they go the way of the dissenter?
A commenter at David Morrison’s site makes a fair point: Rome has already given some indications in previous statements that don’t treat homosexuality as something intrinsic to the person. Fr. Seeley’s interpretation (“they are incapable of perceiving human nature as God as created it”) seem to clash with those precedents.
I don’t know who’s right about this story: CWN said that Pope Benedict has approved the document, while on the same day CNS said it hasn’t been approved yet. John Allen reports “we don’t yet have the document” and prudently stops there.
CourageMan states, “It seems to me that what matters is that the Lavendar Mafia not be running the asylum.”
Agreed.
Now, what’s the best way to keep said Lavender Mafia from infiltrating diocesan systems and offices? How best to keep them from running the asylum?
I think these statements by the priest should be viewed as speculation.
Homosexuality is disordered and because of the embodied and sexual nature of man such a disorder has to extend beyond a psychological incapacity to perform the sex act.
“The only I can make sense of this is if the existentials of particular sexual attraction is the organizing principle of the universe.”
Human sexuality is an organizing principle of our social universe. But there is no such thing as a “particular sexual orientation.” There is healthy human sexuality and there is perversion – powerful drives to commit acts that are deeply offensive to God and are damaging to the human community.
Imagine someone who talks to stones and eats excrement. Is this person out of touch with reality? He cannot distinguish food from what is dangerous for him to eat and he cannot distinguish people from things. Maybe he knows the General Theory of Relativity – so what.
Miracles happen. Homosexuals can be healed. Homosexuals can attain chastity and marry, homosexuals can live a chaste celibate life. There has to be a profound conversion, however, for a homosexual to be remotely suitable for the priesthood.
This has to be considered a rare exceptional circumstance.
Interesting that, when it comes to *accepting* what Rome is clearly set on doing, even CourageMan writes like DignityMan. His Timbuktu analogy falls apart quickly, I’m afraid. No one outside the mental ward finds Timbukto sexually attractive.
Father Seeley’s insight, which is hardly meant as dogma, brings a different angle to the conversation that highlights the symbolic confusion that is very commonly (according to Joe Nicolosi, ex-gay activist Rev. Mario Bergner, Leanne Payne, Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, Dr. Rick Fitzgibbon, et al) found in persons with SSAD.
To whit, the priest stands iconically and sacramentally for Christ and must relate spiritually—and, in a certain limited sense, affectively—to the Church as Bridegroom to Bride. The homosexual inclination, if strong and persistent enough, represents a profound disruption of this natural symbolism. One “gay priest” even told me he struggled against emotional/sexual temptations related to the Person of our Lord. Talk about profound disruption.
And yes, females ARE sex objects for heterosexual males. Duh. This doesn’t mean that all females are lust objects nor does it undermine the choice to live happily in the world as a vowed celibate.
None of then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s previous statements contradict the essence of what is being proposed now by the Vatican. That persons with SSAD deserve compassion, love, and freedom from unjust persecution, is to me both obvious and rooted in the gospel. But this is hardly argument that they should be ordained.
It’s a sign of the insidious nature of SSAD that we now see otherwise orthodox people (smilingly, respectfully, gently) trying to catch the Holy Father in some telling contradiction.
That used to be the job of the McBriens, the NCR editors, and the Greeleys.
Matt C. Abbott, Carrie, Charles Williams and Father Clarke have asked the key questions.
Too much subtlety. Why can’t we just come out and say it: No more homosexuals in the priesthood. We can’t afford to take the risk anymore.
(No E in Clark, sorry.)
Probably, dymphna, because the International Criminal Court would be listening and getting out the human rights documents. I can’t even imagine the celebration among the enemies of the Church if the Pope were hauled before a U.N. human rights tribunal. Religious freedom doesn’t trump human rights in the ICC, nor, alas, in many foreign countries. Does diplomatic immunity apply on the international level?
The problem for me with homosexual priests is that, in my experience, they are not faithful to the Church’s teachings in areas outside of human sexuality. There seems to be a lack of docility (or obedience) to magisterial teachings, as if in their view, because the Church is unenlightened on human sexuality, it loses it moral authority in other substantive areas of authentic Catholic teaching.
Sigh. You’re right Carrie but it has to be put into practice. No more gay seminarians. No more seminaries that are known to be “party” houses and while we’re at it, no more seminarians with girlfriends. We don’t need those guys either.
Well, Carrie, I’d say you were completely right about “go forth and multiply.” After all it’s in Scripture. That can’t possibly be called into question by a Christian. (Athough some retrograde socially Catholic type might say something asinine like this to which you might rightly object.)
Matt, better that they dissent openly and clearly and be expelled than that they continue to undermine the Church in the most serious way from the inside. The first has the possibility of reform for the individual as well as the Church. The second leads nowhere but evil.
Sorry, dymphna: too much oversimplification. How much healing from SSAD is too little? How long in the past is long enough? The sexual inclination sphere is a spectrum ranging from Marine sargeant to RuPaul fan. We all know there is such things as day and night and that they’re very different, but dusk and dawn provide a margin of grey areas.
I agree with the basic principles of the Vatican policy, but you can’t just apply some Gay Detection spray onto a seminarian and then observe “the obvious.”
The distinctions at hand are not just subtle, they’re necessary.
To naswer Matt: I suspect that virtually all of the people that I read comments form on orthodox blogs such as this one will assent to Rome. In the meantime, all is speculation since we haven’t read the document.
If I might put a slightly different spin on things. The whole world is ordered along nuptual lines. Nature is constantly copulating around us. Evidence of true homosexual behavior in the natural world is non-existent. Heaven is nuptual in its essence. It is the wedding banquet of the Lamb. So I would say that human homosexuality is extremely contradictory to creation and religion. In existential terms, to reason and faith.
It is unreasonable to be ordained into the person of Jesus Christ and have the objective disorder of homosexuality. It is a paradox. A priest is espoused to the Church. Is it reasonable for the Church to have a homosexual spouse?
Faith also suffers in the face of homosexuality. If a person’s faith is such that they can not only admit by (illogical) reason that they should be a priest, despite being homosexual, what kind of faith is it that is built on an illogical presupposition. As Mr. Coffin has noted, homosexual priests are also in particular danger of being tempted regarding Jesus Christ.
Thomas Tucker states, “In the meantime, all is speculation since we havenou’ve shown in the last several decades. So we’re gonna issue a blanket rule that will leave you no fudge room, in the hope of getting the best situation possible,” the Vatican is saying. “We can’t have holy bishops and seminary officials anytime soon, so this is the least-bad alternative, given that status quo,” it would go. I have my doubts about whether that approach would work in the universe that the argument hypothesizes (Ex Corde Ecclesiae, anyone?) and it might even make things worse. But if that’s Rome’s thinking, it’s hard to deny.
Re Charles, at first quoting me:
“The only I can make sense of this is if the existentials of particular sexual attraction is the organizing principle of the universe.p:comment_date>
2005-09-25 19:00:03
Would it be sensible to say that even though it’s possible for a man sexually attracted to other men to see the reality of human life and relationships just as they are, or for that matter at least conceivably to become a saint and the greatest priest of all time, the disordered sexual attraction is an obstacle? If that’s so it would be a reason, along with other reasons, for choosing those who don’t have the obstacle over those who do.
Whether the reason is good enough to justify a flat rule would I suppose depend on all sorts of practicalities. After all, whatever the system is for choosing seminarians it’s going to keep out some winners and admit some losers. Whether things go better if you have some flat rules or 100% subjective criteria and local discretion is something for those who know what the problems have been to decide. Like Benedict, for example. In any case, it seems really really wrong to insist that if the system keeps Bob out or men with quality X out that’s a statement that either Bob or the X-men are bad or worthless, or even that they would necessarily have been bad choices. All any of us can do is our best, and that applies to people who decide how seminarians are going to be chosen just like it applies to the rest of us.
As I understand it, the blanket rule of celibacy for all priests was issued when married priests were abusing their vocation by enriching their families. Now that homosexuality has such a hold on the priesthood, why not go back to more married priests so that heterosexuality is more of a norm in the priesthood? The Orthodox due this, successfully, I think