Politics
Wednesday September 28, 2005
Homosexuals in the Priesthood is the Problem and Now Pope Will Fix That says HLI Leader
TODAY'S HEADLINES
E-MAIL
PRINT
FRONT ROYAL, VA, September 28, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Human Life International President Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer has released a strongly worded statement praising reports that Pope Benedict is about to release, through a Vatican Congregation, a document noting men with homosexual orientation are not to be admitted to the priesthood.
The full statement from Fr. Euteneuer follows:
It appears that Pope Benedict XVI has given his approval to a policy statement that men with a homosexual orientation should not be admitted to seminary and should be barred from receiving Holy Orders in the Roman Catholic Church. The Congregation for Catholic Education has prepared the statement for the Pope's signature which will likely be issued in the form of a standard "Instruction" at the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican in October and will be one of the first actual official documents promulgated in Benedict's pontificate.
While this statement and position is not new-it is actually a re-statement of a clear position of the Church since the time of Pope John XXIII-it is nonetheless a controversial stance given our radically sexualized culture, and we expect the reaction from the media gay activist community and from the liberal wing of the Catholic Church to be apoplectic.
Following the priest pedophilia scandal in 2002 and following, the US bishops commissioned a study on this terrible sexual perversion infiltrating the priesthood, and the results were shocking. The John Jay study noted that fully 80% of the supposed pedophilic activity in the priesthood did not so much involve boys as adolescent males which means that the core of the problem is one of homosexuality, not strictly pedophilia. A relatively minor percentage of the abuse cases involved boys, but those were the cases that got the media attention and led to the whole genre of priests being labeled as "pedophiles" the work and authority of the Church in general and priests and bishops in particular. The Church is no stranger to attacks, but it is and always should remain vigilant about scandal in its own ranks.
Thankfully the Church's highest authority has recognized the problem and has now taken concrete steps to address it. It is not that the Church has been silent in the past. It's just that churchmen have not enforced the Church's own teaching. If there have been pedophilic priests abusing their office, committing massive crimes against children and causing scandal to the faithful and society alike, then it only means that they were let through the sanctuary doors by gatekeepers who were either asleep or worse, knowingly allowing them to pass. That era seems to be coming to an end. We could not be more grateful to Pope Benedict and the Congregation for Catholic Education for their courageous guidance on this matter.
Our message to the media, to the homosexual activists and to the liberal church is clear. You can't have it both ways: you can't complain about church negligence in the pedophilic priest problem and also complain about the church's diligence in addressing it. Either you grab the problem by its root and yank it out of the soil of the priesthood or you keep asking the faithful to subsidize deviant behavior and the resulting legal liability. Benedict has made his choice, and we are the better for it.
Back to TopLatest Headlines
- Cardinal Rigali: You Can't Claim to be "Reducing Abortions" but Publicly Funding them in D.C.
- General Electric to Use Embryonic Stem Cells for Testing, Phase out Lab Rats
- Ohio Supreme Court Allows Planned Parenthood to Conceal Abortion Records in Sexual Abuse Case
- LifeSiteNews Canada Day and Independence Day Message. Taking a few days off. LSN returns Monday July 6
- Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation
- Pro-Life Groups Announce New Colorado Personhood Initiative
- Judge Puts Kibosh on DC Gay "Marriage" Referendum
- Al Franken Win Hands Supermajority to Senate Democrats
- Group Funded by Canadian Bishops' D&P Joins with Others to Denounce the "Natural Family" and "Family Rights"
- Financially Troubled Planned Parenthood of El Paso Closes Doors
- Abortion Linked to Subsequent Pre-Term Births, New Research Again Confirms
- New Orleans Homosexual Couple Ask Fed. Court to Overturn Marriage Amendment
- Slim Hope Of New Ontario Progressive Conservative Party Leader Promoting Pro-Life, Pro-Family Issues
- Pope Accepts Resignation of Bishop Caught Involved in Homosexual Encounters
- Young Children Removed from UK Schools for "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour"
- Northern Ireland Politician Cleared of Wrongdoing after Reiterating Christian Teaching on Homosexual Acts
- UK Conservative Leader Speaks at Gay Pride Fundraiser
- More Letters to the Editor on Canadian Catholic Development and Peace Scandal (July 1)
- Letters to the Editor - Readers Respond to Development and Peace Scandal
- Watch This Dramatic New Video on Catholic Bishops Conference Funding of Pro-Abortion Groups
Most Read this Week
- Homosexual Duke U. Director Charged with Offering Adopted 5-Year-Old for Sex
- Famed Fr. Corapi Calls Canadian Bishops' Dissent from Humanae Vitae "Catastrophic"
- Pope: It is a Childish Faith to Oppose the Church Teaching on Life and Family
- LifeSiteNews Detailed Response to Canadian Bishops' Whitewash Report on Development and Peace
- Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation
- Young Children Removed from UK Schools for "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour"
- General Electric to Use Embryonic Stem Cells for Testing, Phase Out Lab Rats
- Is Pro-Choice the New Pro-Life?
- Swedish Parents Won't Tell if Child is Boy or Girl as Gender Experiment
- Cardinal Rigali: You Can't Claim to be "Reducing Abortions" but Publicly Funding them in D.C.
MORE NEWS: 
LifeSiteNews.com Home Page Last 10 Days Archives Special Reports
Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.