Dec 16, 2005  |  By: MARY HUNT  | COMMENTS     

THE VATICAN HAS released a document banning priests “who are actively homosexual, have deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’”

Rome has been floating trial balloons for some time about this document to see what level of anti-gay rhetoric it can get away with. After months of document leaks, the Vatican had already made its point: local bishops and religious superiors will be expected to scrutinize seminaries lest they become hideaways of gay culture.

At this point the actual text of the document is irrelevant. Dictatorships always rely more on self-censorship through fear and intimidation than on actual punishment.

The galling thing about this document is that, while purporting to “clarify” church teaching or “purify” the priesthood, the Vatican is really trying to link the criminal activity of pedophile priests with homosexuality, and to distract from the reprehensible behavior of bishops who covered up their misconduct.

This is an absurd gambit on the part of the Vatican; homosexuality has no relationship to child sex abuse. This scandal has made transparent an untenable “kyriarchal” system — a church that locates power, both sacramental and temporal, in the hands of a few men who literally ‘lord’ over the laity, speaking and acting in the name of all believers when in fact they are but a tiny percentage of the community.

It is time for a Stonewall moment.

CATHOLICS SHOULD RESPOND to the latest Vatican bullying the same way patrons of the Stonewall Inn did in 1969.

After decades of the Vatican enforcing a system that takes authority away from local communities and presumes to impose its will on Catholics who can think for themselves, it is time for Catholics to stand up, speak out and resist.

American Catholics don’t support many of the narrow-minded tenets of their church. In opposition to the male hierarchy’s belief that ordaining women priests is theological treason, more than 60 percent of American Catholics say they would support women in the priesthood, according to the most recent Zogby/LeMoyne poll.

Another poll, conducted by the Boston Globe in the Boston archdiocese — where the incidences of sexual abuse by priests were among the highest — finds that nearly 60 percent of Catholics oppose a ban on gay priests.

Combine this with American Catholics’ clear disregard for the church’s medieval views on marriage, divorce and birth control, and increasing numbers of Catholics who support abortion under certain circumstances, and it becomes obvious that Americans find themselves in a church that does not speak to their everyday concerns in any meaningful way.

The Vatican, in its patriarchal echo chamber, continues to portray tolerance and equality as the fallen morality of a secular society. In so doing, the institutional church treats millions of faithful Catholics in America not as spiritual adults, but as perpetual adolescents in need of discipline.

The time has come for American Catholics to claim their full baptismal citizenship and publicly call for changes in church policies on sexuality, ordination and relationships.

THERE IS EVIDENCE that despite the dissembling of the hierarchy, American Catholics are refusing to let the institution scapegoat gay priests, feminism and modernity for the Vatican’s sins.

Ultimately, as Catholics face their Stonewall moment, where the choice to submit means a choice to violate personal conscience, this is what it comes down to: the meaning of the word “catholic.”

“Catholic” means all-encompassing, universal, comprehensive. “Catholic” does not mean exclusion on the basis of misinformed or capricious reasoning.

This message of universal inclusion was the lesson of the first Stonewall. It is still being learned by society as a whole. The gospel message of love and justice is reason to hope Catholics will be quicker on the uptake.