Vatican bans gay priests
If this policy is taken seriously, can the American Catholic Church — with its shortage of priests, and a disproportionate number of gays among the ones it has — stay in business?
ADDED — From the Washington Post:
The document does not call for the removal of gay men who are already serving as priests …
well, it has managed to “stay in business” for about 2000 years so far, so yeah. I think so….;-)
I know this sounds bad to you. But really they are just asking of someone gay to adhere to the same rules as someone who is straight, right?
I have known a few gay priests and I honestly think they went into the Priesthood as a way of relieving themselves of the responsibility of their sexuality. That is just not the reason someone should go into the Priesthood.
It’s not about shortages. It’s about an honest sincere holy commitment to the Church. That is certainly more important to me than the numbers.
The Church has survived far worse than Priest shortages before and will again.
I agree that they will survive. They will change, and may need to rely more on lay participation, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
One point of disagreement with the above comment though - it is not forcing gays to adhere to the same rules as someone that is straight. One with deep seated heterosexuality, or one who supports the heterosexual culture (arguably of sex, divorce, pornography) is not banned from entering the seminary.
I would hope that a heterosexual would not enter the Priesthood if he supports sex outside of marriage,divorce or pornography. That is wrong as well.
But what I meant was that the Church asks the same sacrifice of heterosexuals or homosexuals as far as celibacy goes.