New Rules Affirm Pope Benedict's Stance Against Gays

In 2002, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, head of the Congregation for Divine Worship, repeated the ban: "Ordination to the deaconate and the priesthood of homosexual men or men with homosexual tendencies is absolutely inadvisable and imprudent, and from the pastoral point of view, very risky."

And what about homosexuals who practice celibacy, as is also required of a heterosexual priest or seminarian? Some priests and bishops argue it would be a distortion to put abstinence from something the church regards as sinful -- homosexual acts -- on a par with something it regards as noble, sex in married life.

In any event, the issue remains one of prudence, a Vatican official argued. Life in a seminary among men, and a ministry that may put a priest in intimate contact with men and boys, is too risky for homosexuals, he contended. "It is not enough that a person is called to the priesthood," the official said. "The church must also call him."

Some bishops note that the church already has prohibitions on homosexuals from entering the priesthood and suggest that a restatement will only make the church look intolerant, Vatican officials say. In the wake of sex abuse scandals, bishops and leaders of seminaries are already sufficiently vigilant, opponents of fresh rules have said.

Concerning same-sex couples, Benedict and a host of close aides have recently opposed moves to grant them legal status in Italy. The Vatican voiced its opposition when Romano Prodi, a candidate for prime minister in upcoming Italian parliamentary elections, pledged that if brought to office, his government would support so-called solidarity pacts, both for unmarried heterosexual couples and same-sex couples.

The pacts would grant rights of inheritance, pensions and other social privileges that are due married couples. Fourteen European countries already provide some sort of legal recognition to homosexual couples, ranging from simple registration to rights of adoption.

In a speech on Sept. 20, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, a close collaborator of Benedict who heads the Italian Bishops' Conference, attacked proposals for "little marriages, something for which there is no real need and which would, on the contrary, eclipse the nature and value of a family." He did not mention homosexuality directly, but attacked the French model, which offers same-sex couples the same rights as man-woman partnerships.

Ruini's stand made him the target of pro-pact activists. Last month, a group of protesting students jeered him at a ceremony where he was receiving an award in Siena. "Free love in a free state," the young people shouted. "We are all homosexuals."

On the same day, Benedict himself spoke up: "The inalienable value of matrimony and the family cannot be equated or jumbled up with other forms of human unions," he said at Castel Gandolfo, a papal retreat near Rome.

Two years ago, when he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict attacked homosexual unions as a misrepresentation of marriage. In a document entitled "Considerations on Projects of Legal Recognition of Unions between Homosexual Persons," he wrote that "within homosexual unions, the biological and anthropological elements of matrimony and the family, on which foundations for legal recognition of such unions could be reasonably laid, are totally absent."

The document stated that among the missing elements are a "conjugal dimension" for "transmission of life."

Vatican officials have called on civil servants in Spain to refuse to provide services that are due homosexual couples under new laws that legally recognize their relationships.

On questions of homosexuality generally, the words of Benedict himself are a major Catholic reference point. In 1975, he issued the "Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics" which distinguished between homosexuality that "is transitory" and homosexuality resulting from "some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable."

The declaration went on to appeal for empathy: "Homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties."

In 1986, Ratzinger expanded on his call for compassion. "It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech and action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs," he wrote in "The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons."

But he also came down hard on homosexuality as both a proclivity and a practice: "Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder."

"The use of the sexual faculty can be morally good" only in a marital relation framed by procreation, he added. "A person engaging in homosexual behavior therefore acts immorally."