UNITED STATES
Albany Times Union
First published: Friday, October 7, 2005
Andrew Greeley
Has anyone seen the document that alleges gay men cannot be priests?
No one apparently has seen it, read it, or is able to quote from it. Yet, based on one story in The New York Times, an epidemic of commentary on it has swept the country. How the heck, I wonder, can anyone comment on a document they haven't seen?
Editorial writers, columnists, cartoonists, conservative Catholics, liberal Catholics, letter writers, priests, gay and straight, Vatican II and John Paul II priests have all expressed firm and forthright and incisive opinions. A delegation of priests who are superiors in the men's religious orders (Jesuit, Dominican etc.) are rushing to Rome to protest, as if the Vatican gives a hoot about what American Jesuits think.
Only Richard John Neuhaus in his ultra-conservative journal, First Things, and John Allen, Rome bureau chief for theAbuse Tracker , have suggested there might be some exaggeration in the reactions to the document no one has seen. Allen did so in an op-ed piece in The New York Times.