Disordered Objective

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

-- Galatians 3:28

Certain literalists might look at that verse and notice that Paul did not include homosexuals; but neither did he include Chinese people, the disabled, Vikings or Republicans. Parsing this verse to see who is excluded is antithetical to the verse itself: "you are all one in Christ Jesus," without regard to ethnic or national identity, religion, social status or gender.

Pope Benedict XVI seems to disagree, however. In 1992, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he wrote, "Sexual orientation does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc., in respect to non-discrimination." (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who knows something about racial discrimination, responded, "To make someone suffer penalties because of their sexual orientation is on the same level as making people be penalized for their gender, or race.") On this basis, the Vatican has changed its policy regarding gays in the priesthood.

Make no mistake: it is a change in policy. Conservative defenders of the Pope argue that the Church has long taught that homosexuality is "objectively disordered," but as celibacy is a requirement for priesthood, one's sexual orientation has generally been considered irrelevant. Now, however, celibacy is not enough. In the new document, Instruction Concerning the Criteria of Vocational Discernment Regarding Persons With Homosexual Tendencies, Rome argues that homosexuals "find themselves...in a situation that gravely obstructs a right way of relating with men and women."

A gay priest, writing under a pseudonym for Beliefnet, calls this statement "one of the most offensive things I have ever read in any church document about homosexuals. It says to gay men -- and by extension, celibate gay priests who have long been in the ministry -- that they are simply unable to relate to their fellow human beings. After years of dedicated service--after hearing confessions, baptizing infants, preparing people for marriage, sitting by the beds of the sick and dying, and counseling people in trouble--the gay priest is told he doesn't understand people and cannot relate to them."

In purely practical terms, banning even celibate gays from the priesthood is a risky move for Catholics, particularly here in the United States, and it's not clear that congregations understand the math. "If it's part of church doctrine, we'd be better off with 5 percent less priests," Travis Corcoran recently told The New York Times.

But it won't be 5 percent. Indeed, the number of Catholic priests in the U.S. shrank from 59,000 in 1965 to 43,000 today, even as the number of Catholics in the U.S. grew. One analysis predicts a further 45% decline over the next ten years. And by some estimates, 50% of Catholic seminarians are gay. Others predict that banning gays will reverse the trend, as heterosexuals flood back into the seminaries they had shunned.

Catholics shouldn't hold their breath.

To defend this discriminatory purge in the name of addressing the Church's child abuse scandal is to propagate the same kinds of attitudes that brought about the abuse in the first place. Pedophiles abuse children; and, like the general population, the vast majority of people who sexually molest children are heterosexual. That most priest abuse cases involve boys has more to do with population access than sexual orientation.

The ban does not apply to priests who are already ordained and serving; if the Church perceives that homosexual priests, even celibate ones, pose such a threat to children, it does not make sense to grandfather them in. Indeed, Catholics who argue that there is such a thing as a moral absolute are at something of a loss to explain why an ordained gay priest already serving is not in violation of church doctrine but one who might be ordained tomorrow is.

"The only gay men who will enter will be either clueless, closeted, or lying," wrote the gay priest in Beliefnet. "This is a disastrous way to prepare men for healthy life as a priest, and gives rise to the very environment that everyone wanted to avoid: the repressed, fearful seminary where sexuality is a forbidden topic."

The Church's abuse scandal was not just the molestation, but the fact that complaints about priests were ignored and that they were often merely transferred to other parishes where they continued to abuse children. To stop this scandal, the Church should defrock pedophiles, not homosexuals.

Fortunately, there is dissent within the Catholic ranks. "I have no doubt that God does call homosexuals to the priesthood, and they are among the most dedicated and impressive priests I have met,'' Father Timothy Radcliffe, former master of the Dominican order, told the Times.

"I resent the missed opportunity to welcome young men who are gay, but are put off," said an 80-year old Catholic woman in Massachusetts. "We may never know the good priests we have lost from this."

The Vatican, in a bid to uphold destructive traditions of discrimination, is relying upon centuries of secular prejudice to justify a policy, rather than the Gospel. As one gay priest asked, "Where, in the end, is the message of Jesus in this document?"