US: The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has said that under the new Vatican directive on homosexuality, men with a lasting attraction to members of the same sex can still be ordained as priests, as long as they are not "consumed by" their sexual orientation.
Bishop William Skylstad's flexible interpretation of the official instruction, which was issued in Rome on Tuesday, was sharply at odds with the position of some other US bishops. They said the Vatican intended to bar all men who have had more than a fleeting, adolescent brush with homosexuality.
"I think one of the telling sentences in the document is the phrase that the candidate's entire life of sacred ministry must be 'animated by a gift of his whole person to the church and by an authentic pastoral charity,'" Dr Skylstad, the bishop of Spokane, Washington, said in an interview. "If that becomes paramount in his ministry, even though he might have a homosexual orientation, then he can minister and he can minister celibately and chastely."
Dr Skylstad's comments are the opening salvo in what promises to be a wide-ranging battle within the US church over the document's implementation. Bishop John D'Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, said on Tuesday that Dr Skylstad's interpretation is "simply wrong" - a rare public clash among bishops, who usually go to great lengths to preserve an image of collegiality, even when they disagree.
"I would say yes, absolutely, it does bar anyone whose sexual orientation is towards one's own sex and it's permanent," Dr D'Arcy said of the document. "I don't think there's any doubt about it ... I don't think we can fuss around with this."
Although each bishop can apply the document as he sees fit in his diocese, the fallout could reach thousands of Catholic schools and parishes as gay men who are considering the priesthood - and some who have been ordained - re-evaluate their place in the church.
Several prelates, including Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington DC, indicated they will continue to ordain seminarians regardless of sexual orientation, as long as the candidates are committed to live in celibacy and to uphold church teachings.
"It is important to look at the whole person. One issue of many that are looked at in the overall evaluation process is in the area of human sexuality," Dr McCarrick said in a written statement. "Applicants for the Archdiocese of Washington must have a demonstrated commitment to living a chaste life and must fully embrace, through belief and action, the church's teachings, including those on human sexuality."
Dr Skylstad took a similar approach. He said the barring of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" refers to those who are "principally defined by" or whose "primary identification" is their sexual orientation.
"You know, a heterosexual person who cannot live the celibate life in fidelity to his mission, in fidelity to appropriate boundaries, is not going to be called by the church to priesthood, either," Dr Skylstad said.
The same point was made by Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester, New York, in a statement on his website; it noted that the Vatican's instruction requires all candidates for the priesthood to show emotional maturity.
"I must concur, and add that such criteria also would be applied to a heterosexual man whose sexual behaviour would in any way interfere with his celibate service to the church and to those to whom he would minister," Dr Clark wrote.
But in Rome, the head of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, said that the problems of homosexual and heterosexual candidates are not equivalent. Although many people think homosexuality is a "normal condition of the human person", he told Vatican Radio, it "absolutely contradicts human anthropology" and violates "natural law".
For the church, denying ordination to gay men is no more discriminatory than "if a person who suffers from vertigo is not admitted to a school for astronauts", the cardinal said. - (LA Times/Washington Post service)