Reasonable/ Foolable Mouth-Foamers of the Left on the Document

See, that didn't take long. Already, the Reasonable celebrants of the One Thing that Matters (2.0) have decried the "witchhunt" instituded by the Vatican.

The Australian's Jacquelynne Willcox says Purge of gays will not help Vatican [November 25, 2005]

It's difficult to parse the muddled rhetoric that follows. Ms. Willcox extraordinary ignorance of Catholicism borders on the invincible. Additionally, like far too many Reasonable pundits, she believes that because something ought-to-be, it therefore is. Just take a look at the drivel close up:

AT a time when a significant group of thinkers in the Catholic Church are seriously searching for ways to make priestly vocations more user friendly, others are on a witch-hunt to make them less attractive to a core group ideally suited to the lifestyle: gay men.

Indeed, there must certainly be a significant group of Australian priests and brothers busily praying for divine protection from the church's latest crusade to rid its parish of the hordes of homosexuals its own princes only recently encouraged.

For it is only 10 years or so since some Sydney seminarians were being told not to worry about their homosexuality. Like married and even women priests, the progressives asserted, homosexuality would be overtly, rather than covertly, accepted as an optional priestly lifestyle. I understand that policy relaxation has recently been abandoned, in Sydney seminaries at least.

In the meantime, the wise men at the Vatican who ordered, and are carrying out a purge of homosexual - celibate and active - men appear to have confused homosexuality with pedophilia and sexual abuse. In their zeal to correct and avoid the sins of their past, they have set upon a group particularly well suited to the extraordinary counter-culture that the priesthood is. That is to say, a life without women and children.

It must be no surprise, then, that many successful, devoted and well-functioning gay priests and seminarians fear what will become of them. After all, their chosen careers have provided well-established, near-perfect paths for men seeking to serve God while protected in an exclusively male world.

Priests live "in an exlusively male world?" Since when have parishes become gender exclusive? I didn't get the memo. Great. Another thing to add to the "To-Do list": find a parish for the Blushing Bride!

And don't you just love that loaded rhetoric, like "purge" and "set upon." Indeed, her poor understanding of how counter-cultural the "priestly lifestyle" is rests on the mere accident that priests vow to remain unmarried. Oh, for a catechism that actually forms Catholics in their faith! Or for a faithful Catholic that will make it to Ms. Willcox's roledex!

But, I digress.

Ms. Willcox has already demonstrated the point I made here. Extremists will condemn the Church for not enshrining their ideology on homosexual activity into Canon Law and Pastoral practice. I have to laugh. For once again, God has chosen the Foolish to confound the wise. How amazing that encouraging candidates to affirm and proclaim the faith--not their favorite interpretation of it--should be such a controversial standard to today's Reasonable wise men!

Now, when will the Velvet Mafia RICO squad of com-box commandos voice their opposition to the Church's appeasement of gays? Will I have to wait a day? More? Stay tuned!

Update: David Morrison slices apart another Foolable's mouth-foaming:

Father Gerard Thomas is a Catholic Priest who has publicly self-identified as gay and who, therefore, finds himself on the wrong side of guidelines for the sorts of men the Church seeks for seminary and eventual ordination. Not surprisingly, he is not thrilled about it.

Some of the things he says in the Beliefnet column really do need to be unpacked a bit.

First, no matter how it is applied or interpreted or read by superiors and seminary rectors, this document will have the immediate effect of turning away any gay man who understands that he is gay. Any healthy, emotionally mature gay man will more than likely identify himself as someone with "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies," in the words of the Instruction.

Or, in other words, any man who live with same sex attraction and who accepts the gay movement's understanding and ideology of what that is and means will so identify himself. Notice in Father Thomas view there is no room for anyone who might acknowledge that he lives with SSA but does not accept Thomas' labeling.

This sort of thinking is precisely the sort of opinion I don't want in a priest because from there it is only one small step to the confessional where the same priest whispers into the ears of the man or woman with same sex attraction that they what they really need to do is find themselves a same sex partner.

Please further notice the put down deployed in advance to inoculate Father Thomas from criticism...Men who are gay in Thomas view but refuse to self-identify as gay cannot be considered healthy and emotionally mature.

The "application" of the document, even the portion of the document that says that rectors are ultimately responsible for their men, will be largely meaningless, for this simple reason: Few emotionally mature gay applicants these days will want to enter.

Again, if the definition of emotionally mature means a candidate accepts the ideology that says the same sex attraction he experiences should be viewed as an unqualified good thing or part his creation and that he should self-identify as gay, I can only hope that this document means fewer men with this mindset will want to enter.

But there's more.

The only gay men who will enter will be either clueless, closeted, or lying. This is a disastrous way to prepare men for healthy life as a priest, and gives rise to the very environment that everyone wanted to avoid: the repressed, fearful seminary where sexuality is a forbidden topic.

Or, in the world that doesn't revolve around self-identified gay priests, men who might live with a degree of same sex attraction but who accept the church's teaching that it is an objective disorder and understand that it is only a part of their entire humanity might find enough room to study and become priests without being run out of seminary by self-identified gay seminarians and others who do not believe what the Church teaches.

Bizarrely, the document also contradicts the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which not only says that gay men should be celibate, but can be celibate.)

Actually, that is not what the Catechism teaches. It feels odd to have to remind a priest of this, but the Catechism teaches that men and women living with SSA are called to chastity, not celibacy, and of the two chastity is the far deeper and more difficult virtue. Celibacy is merely a promise not to marry, chastity is the virtue of purity of heart and body. I have sadly known priests in the past who are completely celibate but no where near living chastely.

Read the whole thing!