By Fr. Mario Alexis Portella
Crisis Magazine
January 17, 2025
The term "openness" is one of those flexible notions which, like those of "public order," "good faith," or "proportionality," evade the exercise of definition.
We know the important function of "standards" in legal technique. Legislators and judges deliberately use these words taken from ordinary language, the meaning of which varies according to the context and dominant ideas. They serve to establish rules of law and to identify jurisprudential solutions that escape the requirements of logical reasoning using legal concepts. They authorize them to establish and interpret the law according to a certain common sense, with a margin of flexibility that allows them to resolve the tension that a lawyer, for example, necessarily encounters when confronted with the complexity and mobility of social life.
In the spirit of openness, the Italian Bishops' Conference recently approved, with the apparent blessing of the Roman authorities, new guidelines that stipulate that an applicant for the seminary cannot be rejected simply because he identifies as a homosexual.
The document "La formazione dei presbiteri nelle chiese in Italia. Orientamenti e norme per i seminari" ("The formation of priests in churches in Italy. Guidelines and norms for seminaries"), states that seminary directors should consider sexual orientation as only one aspect of a candidate's personality. While this does not change the Roman Catholic Church's teaching that "homosexual tendencies" are "intrinsically disordered," it nevertheless departs from its constant position that such men should not become priests:
...persons with homosexual tendencies who seek admission to Seminary, or discover such a situation in the course of formation, consistent with her own Magisterium, "the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called 'gay culture.' Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women."
The new norm says that so long as a candidate remains chaste, his sexual orientation should not disqualify him from seeking the priesthood. The dilemma in this is that, as taught by the Church, only heterosexual men can become priests since only they are objectively capable of sacrificing a family, that is to say, marrying a woman and having children for the service of God's Church. Those with homosexual tendencies, while they can equally achieve holiness, are objectively incapable of making the same sacrificial act. In other words, the vocation to Holy Orders is a call, not an open invitation to anyone and everyone who desires to become a priest.
In an effort to do damage control, the president of the Italian bishops' Episcopal Commission for the Clergy and Consecrated Life stated:
[It is] an accompaniment to self-knowledge that is often lacking in the younger generations and that does not exclude even the boys who arrive in the Seminaries...when reference is made to homosexual tendencies, it is also appropriate not to reduce discernment only to this aspect, but, as for every candidate, to grasp its meaning in the global framework of the young person's personality, so that, knowing himself and integrating the objectives proper to the human and priestly vocation, he reaches a general harmony.
What this means, I do not know. But it is certainly an ambiguous statement, to say the least, when in today's age, we need clear-cut clarity. This is equally on par with what, just prior to the Vatican document, Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, stated in support of same-sex couples adopting children:
"Many of our LGBTQ Catholic sisters and brothers value community life," said Cupich.
Many LGBTQ people also learn and know what sacrificial love is, as they take on the role of parenting children who otherwise would not have a home. This also happens when LGBTQ people put the social Gospel into practice by volunteering for good causes and by dealing compassionately with others, as so many of them already know what it means to feel excluded.
The cardinal argues that LGBTQ+ individuals cannot be treated as third-class citizens. Yet the campaign for same-sex couples to adopt children not just undermines the traditional family made up of a father, mother, and children, it degrades the natural reality that we were created in the image and likeness of God: "male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27).
This "openness" vis-à-vis the aforementioned Vatican document and Cupich's support of gay couples adopting children is nothing other than scandalous political correctness. Yet the real scandal is the reticence—or rather the fear—most clergyman have to defend the truths and disciplines as stipulated by the moral natural law. It reminds me of what Bede the Venerable, in his comment on the Gospel of Mark, said:
We must sometimes fear scandalising our neighbour when we act well, and other times despise this risk. As long as we can avoid scandalising our neighbour without sinning, we must. But if this scandal emerges from the truth, it is more useful to let it be born than to leave the truth aside. There are actions that are good in themselves but which are sources of scandal. It is appropriate to renounce it, to avoid scandal, unless this renunciation implies sinning, i.e., renouncing the truth [emphasis added].
This was practiced by Blessed Clemens August von Galen, Cardinal Archbishop of Münster, who, as per his episcopal motto Nec laudibus, nec timore (Neither by praises nor by fear), maintained that "Neither the praises of men nor fear of men shall move us. Rather, our glory will be to promote the praise of God, and our steadfast effort will be to walk always in a holy fear of God."
Throughout his entire episcopacy, von Galen publicly spoke up against the National Socialists' euthanasia program and racial theories, that of the superior German Aryan race. He was the most outspoken of Germany's bishops during that era, and he assisted the writing of Pope Pius XI's 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. If only other bishops in Germany had done the same. All things considered, perhaps the ultimate scandal today, as it was during Nazi Germany, is the reticence or fear on the part of the clergy to take a public position when necessary.