ByHannah Brockhaus for CNA
June 4, 2024Catholic News AgencyThe Dispatch57Print
Rome Newsroom, Jun 4, 2024 / 13:52 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis has reportedly encouraged a 22-year-old gay man to continue to pursue a vocation to the priesthood after he was not accepted into a Catholic seminary.
According to the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, the pope responded to an email from Lorenzo Michele Noè Caruso, telling him to “go ahead” with his vocation, just days after the Vaticanissued an apologyfor the pontiff’s use of a slurin reference toseminarians who identify as gay.
The pope’s handwritten note was sentJune1 as an email attachment. According to news reports, it condemned clericalism and worldliness and said: “Jesus calls all, all.”
According to Il Messaggero, Pope Francis told the 22-year-old that “some people think of the Church as a customs house, and this is terrible. The Church should be open to everyone. Brother, go ahead with your vocation.”
Caruso told Il Messaggero that he had sent a lengthy email to Pope Francis on May 28 in which he wrote that he wanted to draw attention to his story and the stories of many who, “like me, live at the margins of the Church, often forced to hide themselves to be included by the community or forced to pay the high price of refusal for being sincere.”
The 22-year-old from La Spezia in northern Italy reportedly told the pope about his belief he has a calling to the Catholic priesthood and how he was not accepted into seminary after revealing his sexual identity. He also asked the Church to reconsider its prohibition on admitting hom*osexual people to the seminary as stated in a2005 instructionfrom the Congregation for Catholic Education.
“This letter gave me hope,” Caruso said. “Now the seminary remains a not-dismissed dream.”
The pope, in his note, also said he was struck by an expression Caruso used in hisownemail: “toxic and elective clericalism.”
“It’s true!” Francis continued. “You know that clericalism is a scourge? It’s an ugly ‘worldliness.’”
He added that “worldliness is the worst thing that can happen to the Church, worse even than the era of concubine popes,” attributing the quote to “a great theologian,” by whom he likely meant Jesuit Father Henri de Lubac.
The pontiff has frequently quoted or paraphrased de Lubac on spiritual worldliness.
“My whole story,” Caruso said, “has been studded with these responses, when a religious person discovered my sexuality, no matter how much he had appreciated my person and my faith up to a minute before, he would retreat, saying things like, ‘There are so many ways to decline a vocation.’ I was effectively denied the possibility of having a priestly vocation. ‘Continue,’ urges Pope Francis.”
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57 Comments
I am speechless.
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Yet, dear ‘logboom’, senior Catholics have not been speechless but have been rebuking PF for years & years. E.G. –
See AlsoBiden signs executive order temporarily shutting down asylum requests - Catholic ReviewSermons about 1 Peter 24 210Sermons about John 663 - SermonCentral.comPhil Wickham and Brandon Lake Announce 'Summer Worship Nights Cruise' for Summer 2025April 30, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Prominent clergymen and scholars including Fr. Aidan Nichols, one of the best-known theologians in the English-speaking world, have issued an open letter accusing Pope Francis of committing heresy. They ask the bishops of the Catholic Church, to whom the open letter is addressed, to: “take the steps necessary to deal with the grave situation” of a pope committing this crime.
The authors base their charge of heresy on the manifold manifestations of Pope Francis’ embrace of positions contrary to the faith and his dubious support of prelates who in their lives have shown themselves to have a clear disrespect for the Church’s faith and morals.
“We take this measure as a last resort to respond to the accumulating harm caused by Pope Francis’s words and actions over several years, which have given rise to one of the worst crises in the history of the Catholic Church,” the authors state. The open letter is available in Dutch, Italian, German, French, and Spanish.
Among the signatories are well-respected scholars such as Father Thomas Crean, Fr. John Hunwicke, Professor John Rist, Dr. Anna Silvas, Professor Claudio Pierantoni, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, and Dr. John Lamont. The text is dated “Easter Week” and appears on the traditional Feast Day of St. Catherine of Siena, a saint who counseled and admonished several popes in her time.
The 20-page document is a follow-up to the 2017 Filial Correction of Pope Francis that was signed originally by 62 scholars and which stated that the Pope has “effectively upheld 7 heretical positions about marriage, the moral life, and the reception of the sacraments, and has caused these heretical opinions to spread in the Catholic Church,” especially in light of his 2016 exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
The authors of the open letter state in a summary of their letter (read below) that it has now become clear that Pope Francis is aware of his own positions contrary to the faith and that the time has come to go a “stage further” by claiming that Pope Francis is “guilty of the crime of heresy.”
“We limit ourselves to accusing him of heresy on occasions where he has publicly denied truths of the faith, and then consistently acted in a way that demonstrates that he disbelieves these truths that he has publicly denied,” the authors state.
They clarify that they are not claiming Pope Francis has: “denied truths of the faith in pronouncements that satisfy the conditions for an infallible papal teaching.”
“We assert that this would be impossible, since it would be incompatible with the guidance given to the Church by the Holy Spirit,” they state.
In light of this situation, the authors call upon the bishops of the Church to take action since a: “heretical papacy may not be tolerated or dissimulated to avoid a worse evil.”
For this reason, the authors: “respectfully request the bishops of the Church to investigate the accusations contained in the letter, so that if they judge them to be well founded they may free the Church from her present distress, in accordance with the hallowed adage, Salus animarum prima lex (‘the salvation of souls is the highest law’). The bishops can do this, the writers suggest: “by admonishing Pope Francis to reject these heresies, and if he should persistently refuse, by declaring that he has freely deprived himself of the papacy.”
May 1, 2019 update: 12 more names of leading Catholics have been added to list of signers of the open letter, bringing total up to 31.
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Very dangerous, evil and demonic decision! 😰 He proclaim not the gospel of Jesus Christ, instead he introduces another Christ, another Gospel, another spirit, another Church!! Read 2 Cori 11.4. That is what is happening through him..
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Spot on with II Corinthians 11:4 –
A different Jesus who we have never heard of . . .
A different spirit who we have not received . . .
A different gospel that none of us accepted . . .Out of the darkness comes this new-fangled, Bergoglian Anti-Apostolic Church, in short: the BAAL church; intended to overturn & evict our venerable Holy Catholic Apostlic Church.
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It’s very dangerous… we have to pray hard. To recite the holy rosary many times.
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Spot on with II Corinthians 11:4 –
A different Jesus who we have never heard of . . .
A different spirit who we have not received . . .
A different gospel that none of us accepted . . .Undeceived by PF’s smoke-screen of: “Now you see me, now you don’t!” Catholics everywhere are waking up to the deviousness of this new-fangled, ‘Bergoglian Anti-Apostolic [BAAL] Church’, clearly intended to overturn & evict the godly tennets of our venerable Holy Catholic Apostolic Church.
Keep praying everybody.
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Where in the gospel are non practicing hom*osexual oriented people barred from positions in the Church. Paul makes references to moral requirements but says nothing about one living as chaste hom*osexual. Ones orientation is not a sin and it doesn’t bar one from exemplary moral conduct or preclude one from being a saint. If this is so, why not a priest?
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For the same reason we don’t allow pedophiles who aren’t acting out to be around children. It’s simply too risky and dangerous. Leaders should be above reproach.
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When an “orientation” is acquired behavior as the result of habitualized sin, secular mythology of innocence notwithstanding, it says a lot about weaknesses of character that would warrant serious negative consideration.
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Many people still completely miss the boat on this- it’s because SSA is a disorder of the person, regardless of whether they act on it or not. This is to say that it’s very difficult for such a person to be chaste, in what that technically means, which is not abstinence, which seems to be meaning in the question and is most often meant. Thus the issue is also not really whether they can be celibate or have “mastered their predisposition,” in the words of Mr. Beaulieu below. (How could one truly “master” disorder, which would arguably require healing from it, in which case they may no longer have SSA. Otherwise it may be largely physical abstention, which still always provides a struggle within the person.) If one also holds that SSA is more specifically a psychic disorder/mental illness- which all the evidence still points to- this is even more crucial. (There is still zero indication people are “born that way,” and this is now openly contradicted by transgender nonsense, which says there is no biological basis for our sexuality & that someone can change it through will power and thought.) Why would you even risk making someone a priest who may have a psychic disorder? Furthermore, it is well attested that those with SSA, even if one would argue they are born that way, most often suffer from various other psycho-emotional problems and disorders- depression, narcissism, tend to have high rates of substance abuse, suicide, etc. Again, why take a risk? One can also highlight some possible causes of SSA, with having been sexually abused/encroached upon while young as one of the most common. Such a person will have serious trauma, while this often leads them to commit such behavior themselves. This is one reason why hom*osexual men, including abusive clergy, comprise a very disproportionate amount of those who prey upon minors. Bishops especially who think ordaining those with SSA is not necessarily a problem, seem to have no clue that such factors need to be considered.
The lack of masculinity of men with SSA is also an issue, making them unsuitable to act in persona cristi. It also makes them of weak character, providing difficulty to speak and act forcibly about Church teaching or enact discipline. There is perhaps little doubt one reason behind the failure of some bishops and priests to defend Church teaching- especially about sexuality- or enact discipline, fail to reign in abusive priests, is because they have SSA. It may also actively lead them to propagate error, to rationalize their own SSA. One can think of the likes of Fr. James Martin or Bishop John Stowe here.
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Is there any line in the questionnaire for admission that asks, “are you attracted to male or female”?
Unless one acts out on it or declares it publicly, how is a (chaste) hom*osexual (merely by orientation) determined and then barred from the seminary? Doesn’t make sense.
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they ask
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A question, a quote, and an observation…
First, if Caruso’s long letter to Pope Francis disclosed that he (himself) is entirely celibate and has mastered his predisposition, then none of this is really news. But such does not seem to be the case; the exchange almost sounds staged or at least predictably and cleverly timed. It’s hard to tell, again.
Second, a recent reminiscence on the longer trend, from Benedict XVI:
“Until the Second Vatican Council, Catholic moral theology was broadly founded on natural law, with Sacred Scripture cited only for background or substantiation. In the council’s struggle for a new understanding of revelation, the natural law option was almost completely set aside, and a moral theology based entirely on the Bible was demanded” (“The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse,” in “What is Christianity [?]: The Last Writings,” Ignatius, 2023, p. 180).
Third, Benedict adds elsewhere about the Bible, that in the Lutheran bible the word for the universal and Eucharistic “Church” is almost completely replaced by the local “community”—as reduced from the sacramental to simply an office for bottoms-up reading clubs. So, what does it mean, now, when such ecclesial “communities” share the same terminology as the politicized new religion of the LGBTQ “community?” And with the language of gesture, signaling and private notes being passed in school?
In small half-steps, rather than the Church being welcoming, is the Church being annexed?
The pope’s informal, spontaneous, and handwritten note lends itself to a “plausible deniability” of sorts—a very familiar technique imported from corporate boardrooms (the old secular equivalent to the new clericalism!)—the same as informal and spontaneous semi-blessings of “couples” under Fiducia Supplicans.Just some surely random stuff, here; and who am I to judge?
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So what is the cart and what the horse- natural law philosophy or the Bible?
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God is the source of both natural law (because He is the author of all of creation) and the Bible. Therefore they will not contradict… if we understand them both correctly.
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The first as confirmed and elevated by the latter. Almost as if were are made to be receptive to the truth in Person.
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It doesn’t matter. The scriptures clearly teach that actively gay people cannot and will not inherit the kingdom. It’s quite clear.
And now the appointment of three blind trapeze artists to the swinging Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
https://onepeterfive.com/francis-appoints-hom*osexualists-to-shape-doctrine/
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Out with nuptial, sacramental imagery and traditional Church wisdom.
In with inner conflict, imprecise speech (“all” as in women, e.g.?), misplaced ecclesial “clericalism” and the “tenderness” that “leads to the gas chamber” (Flannery O’Connor).Reply
How great is this? That whole repentance thing is so backwardist!
No more sin any more! We are free from our suicidal boxes!
So eat, drink and be merry! (Or Mary, if that’s the way you play.)
Jesus calls all! All!
You, your neighbor’s wife, your German Shepherd Giselle, and even your Electrolux washer when it’s on the spin cycle!
Oh yeah! It’s open season on anything that moves! Bergoglio says so!
And Bergoglio knows his O’s!
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Let’s face it. Bergoglio’s right. Christianity just isn’t that much fun.
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Daft!
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Obviously the Pontiff still hasn’t gotten around to reading
from February of 1961 which reads in part:
30. Those To Be Excluded; Practical Directives:
Advantage to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to hom*osexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers.
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It is in that same stack of reading material with the dubia. I’m sure he will get to in soon.
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I actually proposed betting odds with several very orthodox Catholic friends of mine regarding how long the other side of his Peronism would take to show up after his crude but appropriate comment on the condition of Italian seminaries. I won. They thought it would take a couple of months. I said less than one month. They owe me a beer.
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Ridiculous.
Wake me up when it’s over.Reply
Confusion is the consistent product of the words of pope Francis. He beats the drum of anti-clericalism to placate the desire for a host of other sins. There is the pose of humility and holiness, but it is tarnished by the support for those behaviors God has condemned from the beginning.
I pray for him.Reply
Any time soon to call an Imperfect Council?!
Bishops, Cardinals?
Any?!Reply
Once again we confront Jorge Mario Bergoglio performing what has become a wearisome spectacle that some have called his “Peronist” maneuver; namely, saying one thing which is Catholic and actually doing its opposite which is not only non-Catholic but also morally evil. What surprises me after all this time is that those in the Church observing this resolutely wish it away and refuse to answer the unavoidable questions: “Is Bergoglio a hom*osexual?”, “Is Bergoglio a heretic?”, and “Is Bergoglio an apostate?”
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He has reportedly used gutter language for gays frequently, and always has been keen for gossip on moral failings of other churchmen, where he then surrounds himself with these failures, them afraid of exposure, while he protects them as long as possible, which pattern has repeated numerous times in this pontificate….he uses others for power…his latest word games only more of same, from which he has drawn support from both sides…while always plausible deniability either direction, only his official acts pointing the way of his true agenda, which ain’t good.
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IS he Pope? If not WHO?
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I don’t believe this is correct: …said: “Jesus calls all, all.”
at least not for a vocation
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Cold and hot. Just to let people more confused. The Word of God is the Truth, the Path and the Life.
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Is it just me, or is that a decidedly evil grin Bergoglio is sporting in the St. Peter’s Square photo, above?
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It’s not just you, brineyman, it is anyone who would project their own fears and shame onto a person smiling. The abyss may be looking back at you.
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The problem is language or misuse of it.
A man isn’t called a philanderer if he has an inclination to look at another woman not his wife, but fights it and resists.
The same should be for Lorenzo he shouldn’t be barred from the priesthood in the same way if he can bridle his instincts and look to God.
The Pope is right, the priesthood should be open to all dispositions of sin, the challenge surely then for all is to double down on the narrow path.
Where it’s unclear is if Lorenzo has professed his rejection of sin, vs. the culture’s language (which is completely wrong and the church and all should stand against) that “I was born this way”. Again, a man might be born in such a way as to have feelings towards another woman not his wife, but the church and Christ set a higher standard for all.Reply
hom*osexual inclinations are not an instinct. They are intrinsically disordered desires that result from deep and unhealed wounds, quite distinct from the wound of original sin that we all share. Those wounds have wide-ranging effects well beyond disordered sexual desires, which make it a bad idea to put such people into the more difficult life of a priest (more difficult in part because demons target priests more than laity) and also to expect them to be capable of behaving like a father to so many different people.
The idea that they were “born this way” is nonsense. What is not nonsense is that their brains are distinctly, physically different. Unhealed childhood trauma or neglect will do that.
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Thanks for these illuminating facts, dear Amanda.
In consequence it would be highly irresponsible to encourage such people to become seminarians.
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I’m sharing the thoughts of a theologian I highly respect, which I believe summarize what we should consider about the papal office (even though expressed five years ago, I still consider these considerations valid)
“The Pope is surrounded by impostors – those whom Cardinal Mueller calls the ‘magic circle’ – and who are more traditionally called ‘courtiers,’ partly because he seeks them out and partly because they attempt the mad endeavor of establishing modernism in the Holy See, in accordance with the wishes of the famous modernist Ernesto Buonaiuti at the beginning of the last century.
However, despite the machinations of the modernists, the Pope, when moved by the Spirit to infallibly teach some Catholic truth, cannot resist the sweet and strong impulse of the Spirit, which keeps him from error, because the Spirit itself infallibly moves the Pope’s will to desire to speak the truth. No Pope ever intends to deceive the faithful in matters of faith. It is blasphemy to even think so.
Therefore, no Pope, thanks to the gift of the Petrine ministry, can ever wish to renounce, at the appropriate time, his infallibility, not out of negligence or false humility, but precisely in obedience to his duty to confirm the brethren in the truth of faith. The Holy Spirit prevents him from sinning in faith without forcing him, but for the good of the Church. A Pope can have all the vices, but not that of unbelief, heresy, or apostasy. Pope Francis is not without sins, but in matters of faith, he cannot be wrong. Let us trust him and try to understand him even when he is unclear or ambiguous. Let us criticize him on everything, but not on matters of faith. Above all, let us help him in guiding the Church and pray for him.”Reply
That “theologian” is absurdly wrong. A pope can even be an atheist, although, like most atheists, not likely with a conscious awareness that his beliefs are atheistic.
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As usual, you are defending the indefensible and committing a grave sin in the process. You should not be professing faith and simultaneously defending the pope’s error here. A gay man should be firmly discouraged from seeking the priesthood and any application to seminary should be rejected on that basis.
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A large number of comments reveal an acceptance of hom*osexuality usually conditioned by willingness to live a chaste life, others make no mention. Although the Pope’s response for an admitted hom*osexual to continue toward the priesthood is a message with far reaching implications. It affirms that to be, to consider, to choose to be hom*osexual is acceptable for the Church whether priest or layman. Not that it is simply tolerable, but that it is now universally accepted as a moral good.
That informal position by Pope Francis gives license to everyone to follow disordered thoughts regarding their sexual behavior at least insofar as preference. It informally [as distinct from a formal ex cathedra pronouncement] declares what the Church formally declares a moral disorder is not a moral disorder. It affirms the positions of Cardinals McElroy, Hollerich, and Fr James Martin. Although informal it’s the most sweeping repudiation of perennial Church doctrine on moral behavior in the history of Catholicism.Reply
Fr. they also impute and sometimes make it explicit that those who stand against their disordered inclinations/appetites, etc., are the disordered category. That that standing against is a disorder. It adds to their error yet they try to make it seem a virtue.
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Arn’t we all born with moral disorders having original sin? We all have to deal with it differently.
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No James Connor, we have to respond to the grace of God.
But incidentally, your adverbial “differently” confounds your question on Original Sin. You landed your frisbee into electrical wires there expecting me to run into them and get it for you; high tension, but I didn’t.
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No James, original sin does not imply predestination for sin. And the intrinsic willful moral corruption of hom*osexuality is made clear by how the behavior correlates with affectations of a refusal to fully grow up, an obsessive pursuit of comfort, the retaining of children’s toys and attire, etc. And an evil mindset creates a near unanimous support for abortion among gays despite not deriving any personal convenience.
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No. Don’t defend the indefensible. The call is the same to all – repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. Jesus’s own words.
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We are all born with original sin & because of that are more vulnerable to moral disorders.
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The point is that hom*osexuals do not accept it or speak of it as a “moral disorder.” Quite the contrary, they embrace it as a “gift,” a God-given “identity.” Just imagine a serial adulterer talking about his moral failings as an “identity.” Complete nonsense.
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“Moral disorders”? Or, rather only an “inclination” to possibly choose and act upon such disorders.
So, none of us is totally depraved (the false premise of Martin Luther), but our created-good human nature is now marred by an inclination. A critical distinction, this, leaving room for free will…
And, a distinction that still required clarification (in defense of human nature) even after the Lutheran/Catholic Joint Declaration of Justification (1999). Readers can notice that the brief Preface reads in part, “The solemn confirmation of this Joint Declaration on 31 October 1999 in Augsburg, by means of the Official Common Statement with its ANNEX [!], represents an ecumenical event of historical significance.”
The integral ANNEX provides the cleverly-blurred and yet irreducible distinction between salvation by grace alone (elsewhere verbalized, in words attributed to Luther, that we remain as “dung covered with snow”), versus the Catholic doctrine that fallen man is not totally depraved, but rather suffers only from concupiscence—the tendency toward sin—and is free. The five-page Annex reads in part:
“The concept of ‘concupiscence’ is used in different senses on the Catholic and Lutheran sides. In the Lutheran Confessional writings ‘concupiscence’ is understood as the self-seeking desire of the human being, which in light of the law, spiritually understood, is regarded as sin [!]. In the Catholic understanding concupiscence is an inclination [!], remaining in human beings even after baptism, which comes from sin and presses toward sin [….]”
The Preface explains that the Declaration is to be read in conjunction with this clarification, and not without it (omitted in Lutheran versions and by aligned gender-theory ideology). This distinction in defense of the human person refutes the sloppy thinking of der Synodal Weg, holding instead that the hom*osexual inclination by itself (like all such inclinations) is not a sin, but that it is an objective evil to be resisted with the aid of grace from beyond ourselves—as are all other temptations of whatever stripe.
Summary: don’t eat yellow snow.
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Then they wonder why we have good people leaving the Catholic Faith… hom*osexuals are on the move and want every possible way they can to get into the church and all areas of society–look at all the Gay Pride parades and Drag Queen events. No knowing hom*osexual should be allowed to become clergy. Period!
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Read Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13. If this man has renounced his hom*osexuality, then he should become a seminarian. Apparently, he has not.
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Same as above post, Francis fancies himself an unpredictable Machiavellian/Peronist who knows the way to maintain power is to be unpredictable to friends and foes alike. Folk trying to shoehorn him into rational or even Catholic patterns will always be disappointed. He has reversed decisions dear to him, purely because the decisions leaked and spoiled his suprise. The only thing predictable was his about-face.
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Gays don’t belong in the priesthood. The church sex abuse issue was overwhelmingly male priest to male seminarian or male child. These actions have served to bankrupt several dioceses and seriously impacted the ability of the church to function. Encouraging men with a serious emotional problem such as hom*osexuality to enter the priesthood seems like an obviously poor decision. It is clear by now that this pope has a conflicted idea of this issue. Lets hope the next Pope has appropriate priorities where hom*osexuality is concerned.
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The mere fact that this young man prattles on and on about “sexual orientation” (which does not exist), instead of recognizing temptation to sin and the need to resist it, demonstrates clearly that he has no vocation. He would be a disaster in many functions a priest must exercise.
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I suggest to Lorenzo Michele Noè Caruso, knock any jesuit organization door. They will welcome him with open arms. He is recommended by the higest jusuit at this right moment.
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The logic of our current pontiff that allows for a hom*osexual to enter a seminary would seem also to allow for a straight male to join a monastery of straight females, or for a straight female to join a monastery of straight males. I suspect that our pontiff doesn’t seem to think that sexual lust or behavior–whether it be sodomy, fornication, or masturbation—would interfere with the formation in the Spirit, let alone thinking they are serious sins. It is better to believe his predecessor, St Peter, in his second letter (2Peter 2) who strongly warns against lust and the sins of the flesh.
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