Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders is a document published in November 2005 by the Congregation for Catholic Education, one of the top-level offices of the Catholic Church.
The Congregation for Catholic Education is the Pontifical congregation of the Roman Curia responsible for: (1) universities, faculties, institutes and higher schools of study, either ecclesial or non-ecclesiastical dependent on ecclesial persons; and (2) schools and educational institutes depending on ecclesiastical authorities.
This document denies priestly ordination to men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies."
While the preparation for this document had started ten years before its publication, [1] this instruction was seen by many critics as a response by the Catholic Church to the clerical sexual abuse crisis. [2] Some critics accused this document of implicitly linking homosexuality to the sexual abuse of children. [3]
Cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders in the 20th and 21st centuries have led to many allegations, investigations, trials and convictions as well as revelations about decades of attempts by Church officials to cover up reported incidents. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations began to receive isolated, sporadic publicity from the late 1980s. Many of these involved cases in which a figure was accused of decades of abuse; such allegations were frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.
The 1961 Papal encyclical Careful Selection And Training Of Candidates For The States Of Perfection And Sacred Orders (Religiosorum institutio) [4] stated that "Advantage to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers." Bishops had discretion in allowing the further instruction of offending but penitent seminarians, and held homosexuals to the same standards of celibate chastity as heterosexual seminarians. There is no new moral teaching in the 2005 instruction: the instruction proposed by the document is rather towards enhancing vigilance in barring homosexuals from seminaries, and from the priesthood.
A moral is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A moral is a lesson in a story or in real life.
While the preparation for this document had started 10 years before its publication, [1] this instruction is seen as an official answer by the Catholic Church to several sex scandals involving priests in the late 20th/early 21st century, including the American Roman Catholic sex abuse cases and a 2004 sex scandal in a seminary at St. Pölten (Austria). [5] The document restricts discussion to homosexual candidates: as the vast majority of abuse victims were teenage boys, there is no specific instruction regarding nonchaste heterosexual candidates.
A sex scandal is a scandal involving allegations or information about possibly-immoral sexual activities being made public. Sex scandals are often associated with the sexual affairs of film stars, politicians, famous athletes or others in the public eye. Sex scandals receive attention if a prominent figure is involved, if there is a perception of hypocrisy, if a public figure's sexuality is non-normative, or if it involves non-consensual acts. A scandal may be based on reality, the product of false allegations, or a mixture of both. Whether the scandal is based in fact or not, it may lead to the celebrity disappearing from the public eye or to the resignation of prominent political figures.
A priest or priestess is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities. Their office or position is the priesthood, a term which also may apply to such persons collectively.
Seminary, school of theology, theological seminary, and divinity school are educational institutions for educating students in scripture, theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as clergy, in academics, or in Christian ministry. The English word is taken from the Latin seminarium, translated as seed-bed, an image taken from the Council of Trent document Cum adolescentium aetas which called for the first modern seminaries. In the West, the term now refers to Catholic educational institutes and has widened to include other Christian denominations and American Jewish institutions.
Two months before his death in 2005, Pope John Paul II, troubled by the sex scandals in the US, Austria and Ireland, [1] had written to the Congregation for Catholic Education: "Right from the moment young men enter a Seminary their ability to live a life of celibacy should be monitored so that before their ordination one should be morally certain of their sexual and emotional maturity." [1]
Pope John Paul II was the Pope of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 to 2005.
Reactions to the document
The document has attracted criticism based on an interpretation that the document implies that homosexuality is associated with pedophilia and the abuse of children. [6] [3]
It has also been asserted that, although the preparation for this document had started ten years before its publication, [1] this instruction is seen as an official answer by the Catholic Church to what was seen as a "pedophile priest" crisis. [2] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]
There were some questions on how distinctions between deep-seated and transient homosexuality, as proposed by the document, will be applied in practice: the actual distinction that is made might be between those who abuse, and those who don't. [16]
The Belgian college of Bishops elaborated that the sexual restrictions for seminary and priesthood candidates apply likewise for men of all sexual orientations. [17] Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has been quoted as saying that the Vatican's directive was not tout court a "no-gays" policy. [18]
In response to "numerous requests for clarification received by the Holy See", Pope Benedict XVI reiterated in 2008 that the Instruction applied to "all houses of formation for the priesthood". [19] [20]
Bernard Francis Law was an American cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He was Archbishop emeritus of Boston, former archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, and Cardinal Priest of Santa Susanna, which was the American Catholic church in Rome.
The canon law of the Catholic Church requires that clerics "observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven". For this reason, priests in Roman Catholic dioceses make vows of celibacy at their ordination, thereby agreeing to remain unmarried and abstinent throughout their lives. In 2005, the Church clarified that men with "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" cannot be ordained. Nevertheless, a senior Vatican official confirmed a report in Corriere della Sera that gay men who are closeted and chaste for at least three years will still be allowed to become priests, and others have argued that the church would be unable to enforce an outright ban even if it tried.
Christoph Maria Michael Hugo Damian Peter Adalbert Schönborn, O.P., is a Bohemian-born Austrian Dominican friar and theologian, who is a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He serves as the Archbishop of Vienna and President of the Austrian Bishops' Conference. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 1998. He is also the chaplain of the Order of the Golden Fleece, of which he has been a member since 1961. He is a member of the formerly sovereign princely House of Schönborn, several members of which held high offices of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church as prince-bishops, prince-electors and cardinals. In March 2019, he revealed that he was suffering from prostate cancer. He later survived surgery which removed the cancer on May 9, 2019 and began his recovery without complications.
Norberto Rivera Carrera is a Mexican prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was the Archbishop of Mexico City from 1995 to 2017. He was made a cardinal in 1998.
Pope John Paul II was criticised, amongst other things, for lack of any response to sex abuse of children in the Catholic Church.
Fabian Wendelin Bruskewitz is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was the eighth Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, and retired in 2012. He is known for often taking conservative stands on social issues.
Timothy Michael Dolan is an American cardinal prelate of the Catholic Church. Appointed by Pope Benedict XVI, Dolan serves as the tenth and current Archbishop of New York.
Rembert George Weakland is an American Benedictine monk, who served as Archbishop of Milwaukee from 1977 to 2002. Shortly before his mandatory retirement at the age of 75, it was revealed in the press that Weakland had conducted a sexual relationship with a male associate, Paul Marcoux, several decades before, and that the diocese had paid $450,000 to Marcoux to settle litigation arising from the affair.
Joseph Ratzinger was named by Pope John Paul II on 25 November 1981 as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Office and, especially around the sixteenth century, as the Roman Inquisition.
The priesthood is one of the three holy orders of the Catholic Church, comprising the ordained priests or presbyters. The other two orders are the bishops and the deacons. Only men are allowed to receive holy orders, and the church does not allow any transgender people to do so. Church doctrine also sometimes refers to all baptised Catholics as the "common priesthood".
The Catholic Church prohibits sexual activity between members of the same sex. This teaching has developed through a number of ecumenical councils and the influence of theologians, including the Church Fathers. Historically, the Catholic Church has resisted the acceptance of homosexuality within Christian society and has on occasions punished those who have transgressed.
Sex Crimes and the Vatican (2006) is a documentary film filmed by Colm O'Gorman, who was raped by a Catholic priest in the diocese of Ferns in County Wexford in Ireland when he was 14 years old.
Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States are a series of lawsuits, criminal prosecutions, and scandals over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy.
The debate on the causes of clerical child abuse is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding Catholic sex abuse cases.
The ecclesiastical response to Catholic sexual abuse cases is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding the Church's child sexual abuse scandal. The Catholic Church's response to the scandal can be viewed on three levels: the diocesan level, the episcopal conference level and the Vatican. Responses to the scandal proceeded at all three levels in parallel with the higher levels becoming progressively more involved as the gravity of the problem became more apparent.
The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe has affected several dioceses in European nations.
The Curial response to Catholic sexual abuse cases was a significant part of the Church's response to Catholic sexual abuse cases.
André-Joseph Léonard is a Belgian prelate who served as the Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels and Primate of Belgium after his installation on 27 February 2010. He had previously served as Bishop of Namur from 1991 until 2010 under the name André-Mutien Léonard. Pope Francis accepted his resignation on 1 June 2015.
Charles Jude Scicluna is a Canadian-born Maltese prelate of the Catholic Church who has been the Archbishop of Malta since 2015. He held positions in the Roman curia from 1995 to 2012, when he became Auxiliary Bishop of Malta. Both as a curial official and since becoming a bishop he has conducted investigations into sexual abuse by clergy on behalf of the Holy See and led a Vatican board that reviews such cases. He has been called "the Vatican's most respected sex crimes expert". Since November 2018 he has also been Adjunct Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the curial body responsibile for dealing with clerical sexual abuse cases on minors around the world.
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