By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Nicole Winfield, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jul 23, 2:37 pm ET
ROME – The Catholic Church in Italy, still reeling from the clerical sex abuse scandal, lashed out Friday at gay priests who are leading a double life, urging them to come out of the closet and leave the priesthood.
The Diocese of Rome issued the strongly worded statement after the conservative Panorama newsweekly said in a cover story and accompanying video that it had interviewed three gay priests in Rome and accompanied them to gay clubs and bars and to sexual encounters with strangers, including one in a church building.
Read it all here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100723/ap_on_re_eu/eu_italy_gay_priests
1 comment:
Perhaps a better way to address the problem would be to tell them to leave the priesthood and reform their lives.
Until the late 1960s, it was customary for seminarians in Roman seminaries to be dismissed if they demonstrated a tendency to engage in homosexual behavior. This even applied to seminarians who might not have this tendency but simply had effeminate personality characteristics.
The reasoning, according to Pope John XXIII, was simple. First, the pontiff said that one had to have emotional maturity to be a father, something that was lacking in those with this tendency. Second, the pope stated that the church has a moral obligation not to place any of its members in the proximate occasion of sin. To allow men with a proclivity for homosexual behavior into the all-male environment of the seminary would be place them squarely in the situation where that particular sin could even be more likely.
Everyone knows by now that the majority of Roman priests are good and decent Christian men who are trying to do a good job. The problem with the homosexual behavior noted in the article is this: Every priest who is exposed for engaging in homosexual behavior undoes the work of at least 10 other priests by undermining the confidence of the People of God in their clergy and breeding an attitude of mistrust for all of their shepherds.
Don't think for a minute that those who are priests in the ACC are not also tarnished by these men who so cavalierly defy Christian decency, morality, and their own canonical promises.
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