Vatican welcomes straight-acting, celibate gay priests in training...for now

It’s OK for those studying to become priests, called seminarians, to be gay as long as they don’t act gay, have sex, or support the “gay lifestyle,” the Italian Bishops Conference said in a press release Thursday.

Entitled “The Training of Priests in Churches in Italy” the 89-page document was divided into multiple sections covering all aspects of the selection, training, and moral expectations of seminarians. The document contains a note saying they have been reviewed and approved by Pope Francis.

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‘In relation to people with homosexual tendencies who approach the Seminaries or who discover this situation during their training, in lie with their own Magisterium, the Church, while deeply respecting the people in question, cannot admit to the Seminary and to Holy Orders those who practice homosexuality, present deeply rooted homosexual tendencies or support the so-call homosexual culture,” the document declares.

The document does not fully accept the LGBTQ+ community, saying that nonstraight folks live “in a situation that seriously hinders a correct relationship with men and women.”

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The new guidelines stress that celibacy is a foundational element of the priesthood and that gay and straight seminarians should welcome and celebrate the chance to go through life without having sex.

“It is a specific grace that the Lord gives to those who are called to the priesthood for which they will be able to remain in the celibate condition as long as they accept it freely and guard it responsibly,” the document says. “In this way, they will gradually discover to be loved by their Lord with spousal love and to belong to Him in an exclusive.”

Later, the document hails the benefits of saving one’s love for Christ and the Church.

“Chastity is freedom from possession in all areas of life. Only when a love is chaste is it truly love. Love that wants to possess, in the end always becomes dangerous, imprisons, suffocates, makes unhappy,” the document says. “This does not only mean controlling one’s sexual impulses but growing in a quality of evangelical relationships that overcomes the forms of possessiveness, which does not allow itself to be seized by competition and by comparison with others and knows how to respectfully guard the boundaries of one’s own privacy and others.”

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While some may criticize the church for not fully accepting the LGBTQ+ community, Francis DeBernardo, the executive director of the LGBTQ-affirming New Ways Ministry, views the new guidelines as a ‘big step forward” despite the restrictions on gay candidates.

“It clarifies previous ambiguous statements about gay seminary candidates, which viewed them with suspicion. This ambiguity caused lots of fear and discrimination in the church, way beyond the arena of seminary admissions,” DeBarnardo said in a statement. “This new clarification treats gay candidates in the same way that heterosexual candidates are treated. That type of equal treatment is what the Church should be aiming for in regards to all LGBTQ+ issues.”

The new guidelines took effect Thursday and will undergo a three-year test period.