ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — (AP) Pope Francis reached out to gays on Monday, saying he wouldn't judge priests for their sexual orientation in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip.
"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Francis asked.
His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, signed a document in 2005 that said men with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies should not be priests. Francis was much more conciliatory, saying gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten.
"The Congregation for Education issued a decision a few years ago to the effect that homosexual candidates cannot become priests because their sexual orientation estranges them from the proper sense of paternity, from the intrinsic nature of priestly being. The selection of candidates to the priesthood must therefore be very careful.
The greatest attention is needed here in order to prevent the intrusion of this kind of ambiguity and to head off a situation where the celibacy of priests would practically end up being identified with the tendency to homosexuality."
However, another commentator built plausible deniability into the statement saying "Pope Francis 'is showing a deep respect for the human condition as it is instead of approaching things in a doctrinal way'".
It’s Bergoglio vs Ratzinger on this one. On the topic of homosexual priests, Ratzinger is very clear, whereas Bergoglio punts.
ReplyDeleteFrom the AP story:
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — (AP) Pope Francis reached out to gays on Monday, saying he wouldn't judge priests for their sexual orientation in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip.
"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Francis asked.
His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, signed a document in 2005 that said men with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies should not be priests. Francis was much more conciliatory, saying gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten.
Here are a couple of other links:
http://www.catholiccourier.com/commentary/father-mcbrien/will-gays-be-banned-from-admission-to-seminaries/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/dec/03/religion-catholicism-benedict-gay-priests
Quotes Ratzinger saying this:
"The Congregation for Education issued a decision a few years ago to the effect that homosexual candidates cannot become priests because their sexual orientation estranges them from the proper sense of paternity, from the intrinsic nature of priestly being. The selection of candidates to the priesthood must therefore be very careful.
The greatest attention is needed here in order to prevent the intrusion of this kind of ambiguity and to head off a situation where the celibacy of priests would practically end up being identified with the tendency to homosexuality."
However, another commentator built plausible deniability into the statement saying "Pope Francis 'is showing a deep respect for the human condition as it is instead of approaching things in a doctrinal way'".
So its also "pastoral vs doctrinal" I guess.
"Who am I to judge?"
ReplyDeleteI thought he supposed to be the Vicar of Christ on earth. Did he not read the job description?