Activists hit out at Vatican ban on gays

GAY rights activists have accused the Vatican of incitement to hatred in an official Catholic Church directive banning homosexuals and their supporters from the priesthood.

The “Instruction” issued from Rome yesterday excludes from seminaries “those who practice homosexuality, show profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called gay culture.”

It restates the Church view that homosexual practices are “intrinsically immoral and contrary to natural law.” The only concession it makes is to candidates for the priesthood who have “overcome” their homosexual tendencies at least three years before ordination.

Eoin Collins, director of policy change with the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network, said the order was “invidious” and harked back to a time when it was believed homosexuality was a problematic condition that could be cured.

“It’s totally unworkable. It’s outrageous. It’s incitement to hatred. It goes back to this continuing prejudice and hatred that the official Church has for gay people,” he said.

Chief executive of the Equality Authority Niall Crowley described the directive as “clearly damaging to any ambitions for equality in relation to gay and lesbian people.”

“It ends up diminishing and degrading and lowering the status of gay and lesbian people in any society, and when that status and standing gets diminished, it creates a context where abuse and discrimination can happen,” he said.

Some have interpreted the directive as conflicting with the views of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin who was quoted in Catholic newspaper The Tablet last month as saying: “You don’t write off a candidate for the priesthood simply because he is a gay man.”

A spokeswoman for the Archbishop said yesterday he stood over his remarks in The Tablet but would not be commenting on the latest directive from Rome.

Desmond O’Donnell, an Oblate father and psychologist who works with seminarians, however, said there was no incompatibility between the Archbishop Martin and the Vatican.

“Sexuality is only part of the person,” he said.

Fr O’Donnell denied any link between the directive and the Church’s crisis with clerical child sex abuse.

It states in one place: “These people [homosexuals] must be received with respect and delicacy; one will avoid every mark of unjust discrimination with respect to them.”

Language elsewhere, however, refers to homosexuals as bringing “sexual troubles” to the Church and says homosexuality “gravely obstructs a right way of relating with men and women.”

Mr Collins said the language suggested homosexuality was to blame for the crisis. “It’s scapegoating gay people for the problems the Church is facing,” he said.