The new February-March issue of Crisis Magazine features an article by yours truly on the recent Vatican Instruction on Homosexuality and Seminaries. The article is titled "Homosexuality and the Seminaries: How to Read the New Vatican Instruction". I try to provide some context and analysis of the document, and the issues surrounding its implementation.
I also explain the theological foundation of the Instruction, such as in this passage:
Because of the complementary and spousal nature of human sexuality, “the masculine identity is ordered to paternity,” said [Bishop Allen] Vigneron. Men are meant by God to be husbands and fathers, and this is “built in” to our nature. “Masculinity is by nature heterosexual,” Gotcher added, because men are ordered to fruitful love by heterosexual attraction to and relationship with the opposite sex. Anything that misdirects or deflects that capacity to love the opposite sex is disordered, because it frustrates God’s plan for human beings to mirror His creative love.
That homosexual tendencies would constitute a deflection or misdirection of this divine intention for paternity is obvious enough. Homosexual desires and acts don’t have the same life-creating capacity as heterosexual ones. Because of the sterile quality of homosexuality, it cannot participate in God’s plan for fruitful human love. A man, as the document says, who either practices homosexuality or has deep-seated homosexual tendencies isn’t suitable for Holy Orders because his masculinity has been disordered to such an extent that he cannot participate in complementary, fruitful, spousal love.
Please go over to the Crisis site and read it! And while you're there, if you don't already, go ahead and subscribe to Crisis!
