The Italian bishops’ conference told The Pillar Monday that its recently published norms do not change the Church's policy on homosexuality and seminary formation.
The episcopal conference spoke after worldwide reporting on its norms last week claimed that Italy's bishops had taken steps toward the priestly ordination of men who identify as gay and broken with Vatican policy.
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The Italian bishops garnered unusual attention last Thursday, when they published an updated version of the country’s norms for priestly formation and seminary administration.
While such a document would not usually attract attention outside of ecclesial circles, “The Formation of Priests in Italian Churches: Guidelines and Rules for Seminaries,” did exactly that, as large secular media outlets began to report that the text was a change to the Church’s existing policy on the formation of seminarians who identify as gay.
The Italian text repeated guidance from two Vatican dicasteries which explains that formators “cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’”
But media outlets circled in on a subsequent paragraph of the Italian document, which said that “In the formative process, when referring to homosexual tendencies, it’s 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.
That sentence was widely interpreted as contradicting the Vatican’s own 2016 Ratio Fundamentalis, and doing so with approval from the Dicastery for the Clergy.
But a spokesman for the bishops’ conference told The Pillar Monday that the rules in question had not changed, and sent a statement published Jan. 10 in Avvenire, the Italian bishops’ conference newspaper, denying the news that policy had shifted.
In that statement, the conference said that norms on the non-admission of homosexuals to the priesthood “will not change” and that “this new intervention became necessary after a partial and non-contextualized reading of paragraph 44 of the document by some outlets, which deals precisely with the issue of homosexuality in the formation path of seminaries.”
Bishop Stefano Manetti of Fiesole, chair of the Italian episcopal commission for the clergy and consecrated life, said instead that the conference text should be interpreted as an effort toward focusing on individuals in the course of formation.
Asked whether the Italian bishops had decided to move forward with the ordination of men who identify as gay, Manetti directly said that “this is not a correct reading because the paragraph from the beginning reiterates the norms of the magisterium.”
The controversial paragraph, he said, aimed at “putting the person at the center beyond immediate categorizations in order to be able to accompany him in making truth about one's sexual orientation” and to bring “full awareness of oneself even in the affective-sexual sphere.”
The bishop emphasized that self-knowledge about sexuality — ordered toward the virtue of chastity — is relevant for all seminary candidates, not only those who have experienced homosexual attractions.
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The conference clarification would seem to be in line with Pope Francis’ recent comments on the subject, after the pope last year controversially used an offensive Italian term for homosexuality in meetings with Italian bishops and priests in late May.
Last year Francis said that there was “already too much faggotry” in Italian seminaries, as he seemed to reiterate the Church’s discipline that men with a deep-seated homosexual orientation should not be admitted to seminary for formation to the priesthood.
The pope has also criticized a so-called “gay lobby” within the Vatican, though he seemed to send mixed messages in June, by encouraging a gay man who was denied seminary formation, telling him to “go ahead with your vocation.”
In 2005, the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education issued an instruction explaining that “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.’”