ROME
National
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome
With publication of the Vatican’s long-awaited document on gay seminarians and the subsequent torrent of reaction, two questions now seem to loom as paramount: What does the document mean? How will it be enforced?
While the document has already been a media sensation, how much long-term difference it actually makes in the day-to-day practice of seminaries and religious communities may largely turn on how -- and whether -- these questions are officially resolved, for that could determine whether the ban on gays is absolute or applied on a case-by-case basis.
At the heart of the new document, officially released Nov. 29 but leaked to the Italian press agency Adista the previous week following distribution to the Italian bishops, is that men who are “actively homosexual, have deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called gay culture” cannot be ordained as priests.