Black Friday of a Different Kind

In this weekend's just-posted edition of The Tablet, the former Master of the Dominicans Fr Timothy Radcliffe examines the issues at stake in the coming instruction

The Church has a right and a duty to exercise careful discernment in the admission of seminarians. When the document says that this has been made “more urgent by the current situation”, then presumably it is thinking of the crisis of sexual abuse that has shaken the Church in the West. So there are two questions: does this document provide good criteria for discerning who has a vocation? And will it help to address the crisis of sexual abuse? ...

The document states that the Church “cannot admit to Seminary or Holy Orders those who are actively homosexual, have deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called gay culture”. The first criterion is straightforward. The same could be said of those who are actively heterosexual. The second two need clarification....

It is right that seminarians or priests should not go to gay bars and that seminaries should not develop a gay subculture. This would be to celebrate as central to their lives what is not fundamental. Seminarians should learn to be at ease with whatever is their sexual orientation, content with the heart that God has given them, but any sort of sexual sub-culture, gay or straight, would be subversive of celibacy. A macho subculture filled with heterosexual innuendo would be just as inappropriate....

Finally, there is the question of “spiritual fatherhood”. This is not a concept with which I am familiar. Can only heterosexuals offer this? This is the view of the Bishop to the American armed forces, who said recently: “We don’t want our people to think, as our culture is now saying, there’s really no difference whether one is gay or straight, is homosexual or heterosexual. We think for our vocation that there is a difference, and our people expect to have a male priesthood that sets a strong role model of maleness.” I cannot believe that this is what is intended by the document. There is little evidence of muscular Christianity in the Vatican. If the role of the priest was to be a model of masculinity, then he would be relevant to less than half of the congregation and one could therefore argue that women should also be ordained as role models of femininity. I presume that the “spiritual fatherhood” is above all exercised through the care of the people and the preaching of a life-giving fertile word, but neither has any connection with sexual orientation.

And you thought it was interesting on Tuesday?

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