MINNESOTA
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Warren Wolfe, Star Tribune
Last update: November 29, 2005 at 9:07 PM
The key to enforcing a new Vatican document that bars homosexuals from entering seminaries or the priesthood could hinge on interpreting the phrase "deep-rooted homosexual tendencies."
"It's a new term for us, and it's going to take awhile to figure out exactly what it means, how to measure it," the Rev. David Kohner said Tuesday, hours after the Vatican officially released the document. A copy of it was widely disseminated last week.
As director of spiritual formation at St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, Kohner is one of the people the Vatican says are responsible for enforcing the teaching.
The instruction from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education says the church "may not admit to the seminary and Holy Orders those who practice homosexuality, show profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies or support the so-called gay culture."