The Vatican officially released its highly-anticipated document yesterday naming restrictions on gays in the clergy.

|PIC1|The five-page document – Instruction – advising against sexually active gay clergy was issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education and approved by Pope Benedict XVI.

After long speculation since mid-September, the document was published today, barring men who are active homosexuals, have "profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies" or identify themselves as homosexual from admittance to seminary training. Acceptable candidates, however, included those who have "transitory" homosexual tendencies but are required to remain chaste for at least three years.

Instruction was released a week prior to its publishing through the Italian Catholic news agency Adista that had leaked out a copy on its website.

Conservatives responded saying it may help reverse the "gay culture" that has become more prevalent in U.S. seminaries, according to The Associated Press, while liberals said the restrictions will create morale problems among existing priests.

|AD|While the document notes that an inclination toward homosexuality is not itself immoral, the inclination is a disorder, thus disqualifying a candidate for the priesthood.

Critics have said the bar on gay priests would cause an even greater shortage of priests in the United States.

Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, clarified some of the requirements on Vatican Radio saying that the document only applies to candidates for priesthood and not already ordained clergy who may "discover his homosexuality."

The text calls for "painstaking discernment" in appraising the candidates for priestly training and ordination.

In 1994, Pope John Paul II called for a study on the admission of homosexual men to seminary training and to the priesthood. The Vatican document was signed on Nov. 4 by Cardinal Grocholewski and Archbishop Michael Miller, the secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education.







Audrey Barrick
Christian Today Correspondent