The Advocate
By Mary E. Hunt
An Advocate.com exclusive posted, December 6, 2005
The Vatican has released a document banning priests “who are actively homosexual, have deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’” Rome has been floating trial balloons for some time about this document to see what level of antigay rhetoric it can get away with. After months of document leaks, the Vatican had already made its point: Local bishops and religious superiors will be expected to scrutinize seminaries lest they become hideaways of gay culture. At this point the actual text of the document is irrelevant; dictatorships always rely more on self-censorship through fear and intimidation than actual punishment to accomplish their goals.
The galling fact is that this document, while purporting to “clarify” church teaching or “purify” the priesthood, is really nothing more than an effort to link the criminal activity of pedophile priests with homosexuality and to distract from the reprehensible behavior of bishops who covered up their misconduct. This is an absurd gambit on the part of the Vatican. Homosexuality has no relationship to child sexual abuse. This scandal has made transparent an untenable “kyriarchal” system—a model of church that locates power, both sacramental and temporal, in the hands of a few men who literally lord over the laity, speaking and acting in the name of all believers when in fact they are but a tiny percentage of the community.
It is time for a Stonewall moment.