Admitting gay seminarians to a school full of men?

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glorybe said:
Then explain the abuse in the Protestant churches with married men (you don’t hear of as much because it’s not popular with the media, but it’s definitely going on). And if disordered men are attracted to the church why would they stop being attracted if priests were allowed to marry? Married priests would require private family homes, not rectories, and who will pay for those homes, the education, health care, and all other expenses of their wife and children? What if there are 2 or 3 priests in a rectory who are married men with families? Many/most parishes have a hard enough time just paying the expenses of the parish. Then with marriage comes adultery and divorce. Let us not be wannabe Protestants, that just creates different problems.
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I’m sorry but you don’t have much experience here. First mainline Protestant churches deal with the issue. I know of at least a few incidents recently in which pastors were stripped from the roster. aka no longer Pastors. They also tell every Pastor in the area about it. Also these churches also deal with families just fine, some provided housing some just provide money. More amazingly many mainline Pastor’s have to self-finance their education, which is exactly what seminarians receive, which is a Masters of Divinity. Then they a saddled with this debt doing jobs that in many situations don’t pay all that well. Parishes have the benefit in that Priests have had that provided for them.
 
I’m sorry but you couldn’t be more wrong about the priest sex abuse scandal. The facts don’t lie. This data isn’t just coming from the Church. It comes from independent sources. You have no proof that the numbers are somehow intentionally skewed to push blame on homosexuals.

Now you are correct about overall sex abuse in the general population, but only because the general population is overwhelmingly heterosexual.
 
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Chris-Wa1 said:
Well that’s setting the bar pretty low. I think most good men are capable of much better than that. Celibacy is a serious commitment, and serious men who want to devote their lives totally to the Church are quite capable of it.
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Then why does the Communauté St. Martin in France, inspired by Benedictine spirituality, insist than their good holy men not be assigned alone to a parish?

Priests are human, they are not some kind of race of supermen.
 
It’s only confusing because too many priests and even some bishops have muddied the waters with political correctness and their own personal agendas. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is official doctrine and teaching of the Church, and is quite clear on the matter, and rogue priests or bishops have no authority whatsoever to try to change what it says no matter how much they want to. Our Popes have also been quite clear with regards to homosexual sexual activity.
 
rcwitness said:
So should seminarians who have sex continue with seminary?
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It depends. If a seminarian has gone to confession for fornicating, then they should talk to their vocational director to help them discern things out. Past sexual sins should not bar a person from the priesthood. A complacency about sin or a persistent lack of chastity should help to discern out. Remember, chastity is the strength to control yourself. So if person is persistently demonstrating a lack of ability to avoid fornicating either with a member of the same or opposite sex, then they should be excluded out UNLESS we’re going to start allowing married men to enter the priesthood. In that case, the question needs to be about adultery and not fornication.

I think occasionally confessing masturbation or sexual fantasies is within the realm of “doing okay.” Cultivating chastity is a lifelong process that is never fully mastered.
 
Picking one group in France to generalize on the entire worldwide Church is not much of an argument. That may be their practice, but it certainly doesn’t mean it needs to be done everywhere.

And you don’t need to be a superhero to control your sexual urges.
 
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You misunderstand me. I’m not talking about priests trying to promote homosexual activity.

I’m talking about the typical Catholic teaching – gays should be celibate and chaste – along with the implication among many that gays (Catholics with SSA) cannot be celibate and will inevitably become sexual deviants.

This is the major implication from the dominant online Catholic world. Including posts like this on CAF.
 
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Chris-Wa1 said:
And you don’t need to be a superhero to control your sexual urges.
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Go back and read what I meant about “going off the rails”. It can also include alcoholism, depression, or other non-sexual disordered behaviour.

I don’t think people realize how hard it is to be a solo diocesan parish priest. As one said, “we are the un-hugged”. Almost a lifetime of no physical human contact (not just sexual).
 
Pope Benedict I believe wrote about this after the first big abuse scandal. He said men with strong homosexual tendencies should not enter the seminary because, among other things, it is very hard for them to remain chaste in the environment they are in as seminarians and later as priests (living with other men). I don’t know if I have that totally correct but I think that was the gist of it.
 
I think past sins and homosexual sex during seminary, with other seminarians is a big difference.

Fornication with opposite gender is also different than with same gender. It’s a compounded sin.
 
chessnerd321 said:
In my experience both the preaching and counsel in confession of most any priest is almost the exact opposite of this.
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I don’t think it’s phrased as “boys will be boys” but the attitude definitely is present that men are held to a lower standard than women because it’s presumed they struggle with chastity more. I’ve gone to confession with some older priests, confessing only impure thoughts during my single years. And mind you, I don’t even have a very strong sex drive. I’ve heard women with much stronger sex drives with me complain about how it’s been difficult to get priests to acknowledge that women can indeed have strong sex drives and struggle with masturbation and porn.

There are a lot of stereotypes and presumptions about what sort of sexual problems should show up in a marriage. And I think a lot of viewing marriage as a way to deal with concupiscence lead to a lot of resentment when sexual desires mismatched. The men blamed their wives for their temptations and a lot of arguments developed that ended up psychologically coercing women into unwanted sex which further decreased female desire which thus spawned stereotypes.

Heck look at traditionalist websites that insist foreplay is immoral.
 
So again, along this trail of thought:

The Church says gay Catholics must be celibate.

The Church implies it’s a near impossibility for gay Catholics to remain celibate.

And so I maintain that it’s perfectly reasonable for the gay Christian to ask himself why he remains in the Catholic Church.
 
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catholic1seeks said:
As a SSA Catholic guy, I’m increasingly becoming confused as to what the Catholic Church wants from gay people. Or at least, what several Catholics in the online world want from gay people.

On the one hand, they want us all to be celibate and chaste.

On the other the other hand, they imply that this in an impossibility for gay people.

Maybe they just want us out of the Church altogether?
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I don’t think it is unclear.

Maybe the sexual drive for people with SSA is stronger. I am male and think the male sex drive is generally stronger. That notion doesn’t bother me. Knowing it is stronger actually helps me as it tells me I have to be more careful in this area. The drive doesn’t make me a bad person. And in fact if I can chasten myself in this realm then I will be especially virtuous.
 
I would think that if one lived in a strong community of a good parish family most priests would be just fine and not fall into serious problems like alcoholism, porn addiction, etc. If they do then they are probably not suited to be priests. Being lonely is hard on anyone, but it doesn’t take superhero qualities to refrain from serious sin or other problems.
 
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Where is the Church saying it’s nearly impossible for a gay man to be celibate?
 
I’m saying it’s been implied, especially with how certain sectors of the Catholic world are talking about the abuse scandals.
 
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rcwitness said:
I think past sins and homosexual sex during seminary, with other seminarians is a big difference.

Fornication with opposite gender is also different than with same gender. It’s a compounded sin.
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I don’t agree. If a heterosexual seminarian and a homosexual seminarian fornicate to the exact same degree, both men are as unchaste as the other. It is not a compounded sin. Homosexuals called to live a chaste do not have the benefit of being able to segregate themselves from the ones they’re attracted to because of cultural norms. Moreover, they are not permitted the hope of marrying one day and expressing themselves sexually. As such, remaining chaste requires celibacy regardless. If they struggle with chastity, we need to support them, not shun them. But as for the priesthood, the priest should be one who can live out his vow of chastity and celibacy.

There is no special virtue in being attracted to the same sex.
 
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