Gay pride, Catholic prejudice

The Holy See has put its foot down on gay men in the seminary but its complex instruction does not explain whether it is sexual orientation or sexual immaturity it is concerned about. Can the Vatican get over its badly-handled investigations of the US child abuse scandals?

How grave a mission is it for the Church to fish out the gay men in the clergy? A nonchalant wave, a campy drawl, or maybe cassocked queens unhappy with their hems?
The Vatican’s recent 1,300-word instruction on the “active discernment” of candidates to the priesthood who might be gay, has presented a new dimension to the identity of the Vatican – evidently torn between its universal message of love and manifest homophobia.
Is the Church being discriminatory by not allowing gays in the priesthood, or is it misguided in equating celibacy with heterosexuality? It is a difficult position: the Catholic Church abhors the sexual act of homosexuality, and yet demands that homosexuals are respected and shown love. From preaching its Christian message of love from the pulpit, it speaks of homosexuality as a disorder which threatens marriage and as having also been responsible for the US child abuse scandals by priests.
The scapegoat that homosexuals have become for the Catholic Church means the institution is pretty much a closed shop for many gays and lesbians. Many of them simply turn away from the Church, some even losing touch with their spirituality. Others just struggle and try to survive.
Critics claim the instruction is misguided, a smokescreen on the real problem in the Church when it comes to sexual abuse and paedophilia. But now it seems the Church is bent on affirming time and again the heterosexuality and maleness of its shepherds, slamming its brawny arms onto the barroom table, drinking beer, talking football: not only does it want it to be an all-male changing room – it wants to keep the cissies out.
The Vatican wants to bar all men “who practice homosexuality, show profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies, or support so-called gay culture” from the seminary and the priesthood. Its theological justification is that priests represent Christ as head, shepherd, and bridegroom of the church – pretty much the same reason women are excluded from the priesthood.
“Now we see that being a man alone isn’t enough,” Bernadette Brooten, professor of Christian studies at Brandeis University says. “The priest also has to be a real man. He has to be heterosexual in order to function as a head of the congregation and as a bridegroom of the church… In a new theological twist, Jesus was not only celibate but also heterosexual.”
This is the red-bloodied, manly identity of a Vatican dogged by allegations and accusations of child abuse scandals by priests in the US. It has convinced few Catholics in America of how accountable its priests can be – it still remains protective of them and has been secretive in its assessment of the damage it caused others and the institution.
But how far is the Church being discriminatory towards gays? Do gay people also have a right to the vocation? In this respect, the difficult position for homosexuals in the Church already makes it an employment opportunity less: why should they bother anyway? Still, critics within the Church argue that orientation has little to do with sexual maturity and celibacy. If the Church is concerned about sexual immaturity, is it happy with those who have sexual relations with women?
Fr Anton Gouder, the rector at the Archbishop’s seminary in Rabat, finds issue with the vocation being termed a right: “it is a gift of God and as such no one has a right to it and no one is qualified to it. This gift is received through the Church, in the Church and for the service of the Church, and therefore it is the Church’s responsibility to define the necessary requirements for receiving the sacraments and discern the suitability of candidates… however this cannot be done in an arbitrary way. It is the Church’s grave responsibility and mission to facilitate and not to hinder unnecessarily anyone who is called by God.””
In so doing, the Vatican has entrusted its superiors to carry an “active discernment” of its candidates, to watch out for “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” or supporters of “so-called gay culture”. But the lack of definition has made these ingredients of unsuitable candidates, a complex affair. Many believe it means an outright ban on those not mannish enough for spreading the good word.
“Until we have an authorative interpretation of this phrase, I take it to mean, a state of mind where a person is continuously conscious of his sexual orientation,” Gouder says about the so-called deep-seated tendencies. “This clearly is a case of serious sexual immaturity and therefore being homosexual or heterosexual, this person is also not suitable to be ordained… If by ‘supporting gay culture’ this is meant, for example, supporting gay marriages, it is against the teaching of the Church. Who supports this position, being homosexual or heterosexual, is not suitable to be ordained.”
Gouder’s argument does expose the effete statement for its prejudice towards homosexuality – other members of the Catholic Church have claimed it is sexual maturity, rather than orientation, that is the key to a life of celibacy. New York Bishop Matthew Clark is reported by the National Catholic Reporter as saying a good seminary formation needs to provide an environment in which “both heterosexual and homosexual candidates can grow to commit themselves wholeheartedly, even joyfully, to chaste and faithful celibacy.”
Fr Joe Inguanez, the director of the Maltese Church’s institute ‘for research into the signs of the times’, says he would have preferred seeing the instruction addressing “sexuality and candidates to the priesthood’, for both homosexuals and heterosexuals.
“The instruction does not prohibit the entry of gay seminarians. Keeping in mind that they take a gradual vow of celibacy over the years during their training for the priesthood, the matter here is a question of not being sexually active. However, many are judging this instruction ideologically. I think the Church felt the need to explain this particular aspect to the bishops. I think if homosexuals read this instruction with an open mind, and if they know the Church’s teaching on the matter, there is nothing to be shocked about.”
However, interpretations of the instruction differ. The official commentary of the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, by French Mgr Tony Anatrella on 30 November, states that candidates with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies… independently of whether or not they’ve had erotic experiences – may not be admitted to seminaries and to sacred orders.”
In fact Anatrella disagrees with what he termed the “permissive attitude” of those who say celibacy is enough, irrespective of orientation, claiming gay priests experience other difficulties: “Closing oneself off in a clan of persons of the same type; exaggerated affective choices; [becoming] a narcissistic position in front of a community that [the gay priest] disturbs even to the point of dividing it; relations with authority based on seduction and rejection; … an often limited vision of truth and a selective way of presenting the gospel message; particularly in the areas of sexual and conjugal morality, these are habitually zones of relational and intellectual confusion and ideological combat, disapproved by a correct search for truth and the wisdom of God.”
This interpretation, however differs from many opinions expressed by different bishops, who believe the central question here is the sexual maturity of a priest. Certainly there is no universal consensus, especially when the Church is presented with the view that it is scapegoating homosexuals.
Many in the Church however see gay priests as problematic: a unnamed Vatican official quoted by National Catholic Reporter correspondent John L. Allen says gay priests “fixated on sexuality and who have cause all kinds of problems. The church has a responsibility to be sure that adolescent males in its care are not at risk from homosexual priests who are not chaste.”
The official says this also applies to heterosexual candidates, but that gay priests face a different set of pressures, “since a priest is much more likely to have unsupervised contact with adolescent males than with females.” It would seem that once again, it is the child abuse scandals that still haunts the Catholic Church.
Some believe it is the Vatican, which is still refusing to tackle the magnitude of child abuse by priests as seriously and urgently as warranted, turning the spotlight on gay priests, who were in part accused by conservatives of their predominance in the scandals or of promiscuity. Few will disagree with the secret handling of the paedophilia cases in the US by the Vatican, and how it protected God’s shepherds from the accusations. Even Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned amid accusations that he covered up paedophilia by Roman Catholic priests in his diocese, was still present in Rome to elect a new pope earlier this year. The Malta Gay Rights Movements, claims the instruction is “a dirty trick” to get people’s minds off the child abuse scandals and using homosexuality as a scapegoat.
Iguanez says the Church’s official position is not to confuse homosexuality and paedophilia: “it is scientifically so,” he says. “However, I don’t think that homosexuals here are being used as scapegoats because they are not being set against anyone else. The instruction has nothing to do with the child abuse scandals in this respect.”
Yet, when asked whether it was paedophilia that represents a more urgent problem than homosexuality, Fr Anton Gouder claims this assertion is incorrect as to what is the real problem for priests and the Church.
“For example,” he says, “US reports have shown that 80.9 per cent of priestly sexual abuse has been more of a homosexual nature rather than paedophilic. Not so young, underage teenagers were involved. A 400-page Grand Jury Report issued by the Philadelphia diocese in September on the sexual abuse of minors by clergy showed that out of 28 selected case studies listed, the victims in 23 cases were males aged 11 to 18.”
But the reaction seems endemic to a Church which curls up when faced with the nasty predilection for children many of its clergymen have been exposed of. The bare facts, even those outlined by the Philadelphia report Gouder cites, still suggest little where the fine line between homosexuality and paedophilia can be drawn with underage and adolescent teenagers – that they are male confirms their predominance amongst altar boys; that they are young confirms they are more susceptible to moral authority, and this from somebody with a hotline from God himself. Paedophilia is also a question of abuse power. And for Catholic priests, a weakness in their faith.
The gay community has pointed out the contradiction in which the Church finds itself on homosexuals who are sexually active and the respect they still enjoy as God’s children. More than anything else, they feel helpless with the situation. What irks them is the scapegoating: “if the aim of the Church in publishing these instructions is to curb these abuses, can it explain how barring gay priests will help reduce sex abuse inflicted by priests on girls and women? Certainly the Church cannot hold that all the abuse that has happened has only been carried out on boys,” Christian Attard from the Malta Gay Rights Movement says.
“The problem is that it still affects gay men and lesbians through the Church’s influence on Maltese political leaders. It hinders the recognition of their fundamental human rights. For those in whose life religion plays a crucial role, they feel hurt and disrespected when the Church describes their sexual orientation as a ‘disorder’ or ‘evil’.”
Back in Rabat, Fr Anton Gouder says the discernment of candidates has already been going for the decades: “it’s different from simply asking direct questions or carrying out an interrogation… some of the aspects about which discernment is held are origin of vocation, motivation, aptitudes, love and sense of belonging to the Church, vision of the priesthood, relationships, as well as affective maturity. The latter includes psychosexual development.”
But candidates are also psychologically assessed, where their “tendencies” – Vatican-speak for sexual orientation – come into the equation.
“A professional psychologist examines several aspects of the candidate’s history and personality,” Gouder says. “His sexual orientation is one of the areas screened. After four years through the seminary formation another personality assessment is carried out by a psychiatrist. All this has been going on for the past twenty years at our diocesan seminary.

mvella@mediatoday.com.mt