Responding to the Vatican
By Lacey A. Louwagie, Duluth, Minn.
I’m writing to address the Vatican’s proposed instruction against allowing gay seminarians. In the Catholic church, the number of people in need of spiritual leaders far exceeds the leaders available. I’m shocked that the church wishes to close its doors on yet another population of God’s people.
The church’s teaching concludes that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, are sinful. Because the priesthood calls for celibacy, the sexual orientation of the priest should not be at issue. It is a fiction perpetrated by a homophobic public that gay individuals think about or are tempted by sex more often than straight individuals.
The church states that access to the priesthood is not a human right, but a call from God. I agree. But no one except God has the right to decide who can be and who cannot be called. The idea that the church would willfully stand between a gay man and God’s call for him is arrogant.
According to one much-talked-about study by Alfred Kinsey, one in 10 people are gay — in a parish of 1,000 people, 100 parishioners are gay. It’s all too easy for priests or parishioners to say, "Well, there aren’t any gay people here." But statistically speaking, that’s unlikely.
This instruction from the Vatican can be dressed up however you like, but the message is clear: Gay people are second-rate citizens and second-rate human beings, as far as the church is concerned.
Nov. 28, 2005
