OAKLAND (CA)
Inside Bay Area
By Angela Hill, STAFF WRITER
OAKLAND — If a potential Roman Catholic priest is free from the sins of the flesh, it should not matter if the man is gay or straight, several East Bay Catholics said Wednesday in response to the Vatican's latest policy declaration on gays in the priesthood.
"It's a superfluous comment," said Cecilia McKee, 38, of Berkeley, referring to Tuesday's official statement from the Vatican that the church "cannot admit to the seminary ... those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called 'gay culture.'"
"In my mind, priests are asexual anyway," she said. "You can't be gay, but you also can't be heterosexual. You're not supposed to be having sex. So it doesn't matter which way your desires go. The point is whether or not you act on them."
"It's clearly the church's knee-jerk reaction to the millions of dollars they've had to spend on pedophile priests, and all the years they hid those people and moved them from parish to parish," said Robert Saletta, a devout Catholic who works in Berkeley and attends Mass inSan Francisco.