Vatican shocks its critics, endorses Catholicism

Vatican Defends Policy on Gay Priests

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican defended a policy statement designed to keep men with "deep-seated" homosexual tendencies from becoming priests, but said there would be no crackdown on gays who are already ordained.

The Vatican document, the first major policy statement of Pope Benedict XVI's papacy, was officially released Tuesday after being leaked earlier. Conservatives have said it may help reverse the "gay culture" of many U.S. seminaries, while liberal critics complain the restrictions will create morale problems among clergy and lead to an even greater priest shortage in the United States.

The Rev. James Martin, a U.S. Jesuit who has written on the issue, said American theologians, canon lawyers and other Roman Catholics will "hope that the document won't really mean what it says." But he believes it's clear the Vatican wants to keep gay men from being ordained — even if they're committed to celibacy — and hopes bishops and seminary rectors will act accordingly.

Martin predicted "a slow, silent attrition among celibate gay men who cannot accept the idea of staying in an organization that condemns their existence in the priesthood."

Matt Foreman of America's National Gay and Lesbian Task Force called the document "appalling," saying it was an affront to thousands of gay priests. He accused the Vatican of "a calculated campaign to blame gay men for the church's own criminal conduct in fostering and covering up decades of sex abuse."

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Predictably, the Usual Suspects have reacted with wailing and gnashing of their lace panties.

Our response is the same as it was when these folks shrieked like schoolgirls whose ponytails had just been dunked in an inkwell when the Church dared to select a Pope who is ... CATHOLIC: Don't like it? Don't be a Catholic!

Nobody got a gun to your head.

We feel their pain, however, for The Church has acted to obliterate the favorite cudgel of the anti-religious Left, the sexual abuse of young men by priests.