Yahoo! News
By William F. Buckley Jr.
Fri Dec 2, 6:43 PM ET
The Vatican ruling on homosexuals in the seminaries is interesting to other than gay-rights hawks. Catholics are at liberty to say that it is not the business of non-Catholics to probe such matters. But they will be speaking mostly to themselves, because the Vatican ruling touches on questions of universal concern.
The ruling against homosexuals in the seminaries isn't on the order of Catholics will not eat meat on Fridays. The ruling isn't limited to disciplinary matters that are indeed only for Catholics to concern themselves with. When one observer pointed out that seminarians also have rights, he invoked a cultural reality, which is that the practices of Catholic clerics cannot be ignored by pleading the isolation of the Catholic vocation. The question primarily addressed has to do with the predisposition to homosexuality, a subject in which everyone is interested.
The Vatican letter says that the church respects homosexuals, but that it "cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deeply rooted homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called gay culture."