In the first major ruling of his seven-month papacy, Pope Benedict has reaffirmed unambiguously and unapologetically Catholic Church teaching on the incompatibility of the priesthood with practising homosexuality and its prohibition from the priesthood on those who "show profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called gay culture".
The much-leaked Instruction from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education will be welcomed by many who will find comfort in the unwavering assertion of old certainties. But for many Catholics, in Ireland and throughout the world, the document will cause much soul-searching and even pain as, once again, their church stigmatises brothers, sisters and friends in gay relationships as moral outcasts living in "grave sin".
For what matters as much as the precise rules governing the accession to Holy Orders, in the end a matter for the church alone, is what the church is saying about homosexuality as a human phenomenon. In reinforcing the prejudices that have made up a social climate traditionally deeply hostile to equal treatment of gays the church contributes to perpetuate discrimination even as yesterday's Instruction explicitly condemns it.
The Instruction distinguishes between "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" and "the expression of a transitory problem" which, with maturity, can be shaken off. But deep-seated homosexual tendencies are, in words the Pope has used before, "objectively disordered".
It is a deeply dubious formulation - "objectivity" conjures up spurious implications of a rational scientific basis for the definition, while "disorder" conflates moral disapproval and medical diagnosis. Today the overwhelming consensus of psychiatry accepts that homosexuality represents simply a facet of natural human sexuality, one present in all societies and in most people in varying degrees at different times in their lives. Accommodating diversity is the challenge we face as a society, not curing or rooting out the diseased.
Most defenders of the Instruction will reject the charge that its tone also reflects a confusion by its authors, deliberate or accidental, of homosexuality with paedophilia.Yet, in its response to both very different phenomena, the church has used similar language and approaches, and manifested similar denial. Indeed it has struggled to deal with sexuality of any kind.
The Vatican had nothing to say yesterday about the many conscientious and celibate priests already within the ranks of the church who must live a daily lie in hiding their own homosexual instincts. Their celibacy is their sacrifice, given freely as all those who chose their vocation. Should that not be enough? Archbishop Diarmuid Martin hinted recently that gays could perhaps be admitted to the priesthood on the same celibate terms as heterosexuals. Such an enlightened spirit was not visible in yesterday's Instruction. This may be a matter for the Equality Authority?