The new Pope faces his first controversy over the direction of the Catholic church after it was revealed that the Vatican has drawn up a religious instruction preventing gay men from being priests. The controversial document, produced by the Congregation for Catholic Education and Seminaries, the body overseeing the church's training of the priesthood, is being scrutinised by Benedict XVI.
It been suggested Rome would publish the instruction earlier this month, but it dropped the plan out of concern that such a move might tarnish his visit to his home city of Cologne last week. The document expresses the church's belief that gay men should no longer be allowed to enter seminaries to study for the priesthood. Currently, as all priests take a vow of celibacy, their sexual orientation has not been considered a pressing concern.
[Interesting - there is a right and wrong way to not do something. Kind of like saying you can't be a vegetarian if the reason you don't eat animals is because they are gross and smelly; you have to be a vegetarian because you love animals.]
Next month the Vatican will send investigators to the US to gauge the scale of the scandal. More than 100 bishops and seminary staff will visit 220 campuses. They will review documents provided by the schools and seminaries and may interview teachers, students and alumni, then report directly to the Vatican, which could choose to issue the instruction barring homosexuals from entering the priesthood as part of its response.
[So the problem is still anything but the official policy of the Vatican as approved by Pope Benedict. Just because the Roman Catholic Church has been hiding and relocating known child molesters since the 1960s doesn't mean that's wrong. Gay men not having sex, now that's wrong. Praise the Lord!]
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