NEW JERSEY
NorthJersey.com
Thursday, December 1, 2005
By MARY ELLEN SCHOONMAKER
WHAT DO Catholics who disagree with the Vatican's new "instruction" on gays and the priesthood do now? The church is not a democracy, so we can't vote the pope out of office.
But we find it harder and harder to defend a church that shows such a cruel face to the outside world.
It's bad enough that the Vatican seems to think keeping gays out of the priesthood will solve the sex abuse scandal. It's worse that the church is reaffirming its bizarre definition of gays as "objectively disordered" and insisting that being a gay priest "gravely obstructs a right way of relating with men and women."
Translated into plain English, what exactly does that mean?
And since when do straight priests have a monopoly on wisdom and compassion?
Some American bishops are criticizing the directive. The bishop in Rochester, N.Y., has written that "the key to a life of celibacy is sexual maturity, not sexual orientation."