For Immediate Release: November 23, 2005
Contact: Rea Howarth 301.699.0042
office, 301-538-4420 cell

Catholics Speak Out Condemns Ban of Gay Seminarians

Catholics Speak Out, a program of the Quixote Center, condemns in the
strongest terms the Roman Curia’s decision to ban gay men from admission to
seminaries unless their orientation is “transitory.”

“It is an insult to countless good priests and is rooted in a fundamentalist,
literal reading of the Scriptures,” says Rea Howarth, a co-director of the Quixote
Center.

“It is obvious the Curia officials have either no comprehension of the subject matter or are possessed of a singular and sinister hypocrisy, all the more frightening because so many priests, bishops and cardinals are themselves gay men. Yet, the Congregation for Catholic Education and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI, repeat the canard that homosexuals are ‘objectively disordered,’ something no self-respecting medical professional would do.”

The instruction is wrong. The core of the church’s objection to homosexuality itself is based on Old Testament proscriptions and “constant tradition”—as if human beings have not learned anything in the past 2,000 years. Furthermore, it makes a mockery of vows of celibacy and chastity.

“What is even more regrettable about this ill-constructed directive is that good, psychosexually mature men will not seek ordination, despite experiencing a deep call to ministry in a church crying for priests. It is an invitation for religious gay men to hide their innermost beings deep in the closet. And it is an invitation to self-respecting gay priests to quit their ministry in a church that arbitrarily condemns them for being who they are,” says Howarth.

Moreover, this religious justification for discrimination excites in some people and even children, an abhorrence of gay men and women. Such fear and revulsion is played out in society in uncounted acts of overt discrimination and horrific violence.

The men who soon will issue this “instruction” and continue “tradition” should resign rather than be complicit in such a deeply unchristian act, Howarth adds.

The Quixote Center is a national social justice organization founded in 1976. The Center's Catholics Speak Out program encourages Catholics to speak out for justice in the Roman Catholic Church. To learn more about the Quixote Center's Catholics Speak Out program, visit www.quixote.org/cso.