Yesterday I remarked that the NYT coverage of the Vatican gay document was rather measured. It would appear they merely held back the scorn for one day. Excerpts:
[P]riests say they are shocked by one easily overlooked clause. It says that spiritual directors and confessors in seminaries "have the duty to dissuade" any candidates "who show deep-seated homosexual tendencies" from joining the priesthood. . .
"The relationship between a seminarian and his confessor or his spiritual director should not be about enforcing church documents, but to serve as spiritual guides," said the Rev. Michael Herman, a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago who has recently publicly identified himself as gay in order to speak out against the Vatican's action.
"They've gone so far as to say your confessor's and spiritual adviser's role is to talk you out of" becoming a priest, Father Herman said.
His reaction to the document was echoed by other priests and Roman Catholic organizations, who said that the church's decree was discriminatory and hurtful to faithful chaste gay priests and would only exacerbate an already dire shortage of Catholic clergymen.
But the NYT is pretty excited about one thing:
[C]hurch experts say [the directive] is intentionally sprinkled with undefined terms and left open to interpretation.
So cafeteria Catholics can relax. It's another vague document from the Vatican that doesn't need to be followed. All is well in the land of permissiveness and relativity.
