Madam, - The Vatican document on homosexuality in candidates for the priesthood excludes "those who practice homosexuality, show profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called gay culture". That does not amount to discrimination since the same criteria largely apply to heterosexuals also.
No sexually active man, regardless of orientation, can be admitted to a seminary. In today's highly sexualised culture, a candidate has to have lived celibate for a couple of years before applying. If he hasn't done so, it would be silly for him to apply and irresponsible of the seminary to accept him.
The term "deep-rooted homosexual tendencies" could refer to men conflicted about their sexuality and tempted to escape facing it through an emotionally immature option for the seminary. It would not be hard to think of "deep-rooted heterosexual tendencies" that would constitute a similar bar. As the document emphasises, the decisive criterion is whether the individual has come to terms with his sexuality in a mature way. The priesthood is not the place to work out one's sexual identity.
As regards the term "gay culture", the objection is to a mindset that takes sexual identity as determinative of personal identity, generating acute group consciousness of sexual orientation, thereby leading to exclusivity and divisiveness.
Occasionally a heterosexual "macho" culture has emerged in seminaries, though of late the problems have been almost entirely with the "gay" side. A strongly sexual sub-culture, gay or macho, can also lead to unwillingness to accept Catholic teaching on sexuality. In any case, both are destructive to the group and unhelpful to the individual. - Yours, etc,
Fr SEAMUS MURPHY SJ, Lecturer in philosophy, Milltown Institute, Dublin 6.
Madam, - The Vatican document on homosexuality is deeply disturbing. It goes further than addressing the issue of homosexuality and the priesthood and seems to present a flawed view that homosexuality is tantamount to the subversion of morality and all good human values. Like others, I consider the instruction another source of disillusionment with, and disenfranchisement from, a church that I have loved.
The church is correct to state that ordination is not a right. Neither that nor the church's mission to articulate its teaching is not in dispute. The church, however, also has a responsibility to speak its truth with love. This document fails to do that. Some comment on the new instruction has focused on the mistaken belief that the same demands are made of heterosexual men applying for admission to the priesthood. This view represents a denial of what the church is actually saying about the experience and innate goodness of gay men and women.
Apart from the obvious fact that its views on homosexuality are at odds with the evidence from psychological literature, the church fails to recognise that its understanding of homosexuality is confused and hostile. This will continue to contribute to the distress that many people experience in coming to terms with their own sexuality or with the homosexuality of someone they love.
When I was in the seminary during the mid-1980s, there was never any real discussion about how one experienced sexuality. True, as the present document also states, discussions could take place within the privacy of spiritual direction, but this rarely went further. I know that many of the gay men in the seminary, during my time, chose to remain silent or ignore their sexual identity - enduring, as a result, great inner pain. This document will do nothing to enhance the sexual maturity of men presenting for priesthood. It will encourage gay men to be silent or retreat into self-loathing because they may suppress the truth about themselves or walk away from the seminary, feeling rejected for something that is merely an aspect of their lives, and not their defining identity. Good men will be lost from the priesthood, not because they cannot be celibate but rather because this instruction demands that they view their gayness as something transitory and a thing to be rejected.
This document seems to demand that candidates for ordination reject "gay culture", whatever that means. Surely this so-called "gay culture" is nothing more than the quest for equality and parity of esteem of which the church seems so afraid. Among advocates for gay rights, there is no movement to subvert family life, overturn marriage between men and women, or promote sexual irresponsibility.
This document is a step too far and further damages the present Pope's view that the church is "the lover of freedom". - Yours, etc,
Dr COLM L. HUMPHRIES, The Tramyard, Inchicore, Dublin 8.
Madam, - The gay and lesbian "community" (or whatever term of warm embracement its members like to have applied to them) has been all too successful in intimidating almost all the media into prejudicial and indiscriminate tolerance of its position. The anti-Christian community, not the least virulent members of which are some lapsed Christians, has been no less successful in promoting intolerance of several 2000-year-old tenets of Christian belief. Yet we have all been equipped with reason, and our duty is to use it objectively.
We ought to be able - and, indeed, unafraid - to challenge the notion of a right to seek and take sexual gratification in absolute accordance with the preference of the individual. Why should equal respect be given to that preference wherever it lies, with no consideration of the evidence of what nature intends?
Surely the profound sense of defilement suffered by an innocent child, a victim of a paedophile's preference, even when pursued no further than inappropriate touching, is proof that human sexual activity is intrinsically defiling unless confined within a very specific sphere? Surely it is a noble cause to try objectively to specify that sphere, in which instead of defilement the activity is transformed into a richly fructifying one, emotionally and spiritually as well as physically? Is it not despicably snide so seek to disqualify from the pursuit of that noble cause those who nobly have abjured sexual gratification?
But the modern media are nothing if not snide. They have even spun the fundamental Christian precept into "Love what your neighbour does as what you do yourself". So people of reason need to go beyond the media to absorb properly the meaning of Vatican publications. In your own treatment of the most recent case, they will find it instructive to see how far your voluminously tendentious coverage has departed from your simple (though, apparently, not fully accurate) reproduction of the text itself. - Yours, etc,
FRANK FARRELL, Lakelands Close, Stillorgan, Co Dublin.