Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
He hasn't changed it. No one ever appears to have enforced it, but it remains on the books.
And of course the original wording was quite right: acts (and therefore the tendency towards them) are homosexual, persons are not, and no one either outside the West or before the early 1970s has ever imagined that they were.
There are people who are solely attracted to their own sex and they cannot help that.
There is a difference acknowledged by intelligent Man, between the acts and the "tendency towards them" (a tendency which need not ever be acted upon, and often isn't).
Whether it was enforced or not, by failing to distinguish between the act and the homosexual inclination, Benedict was essentially ruling out any such person from the priesthood...even if they were avowedly celibate.
That was wrong, and this Pope rightly says he won't continue it.
Pope Benedict XVI signed a document in 2005 stating that homosexuals shouldn't become priests.
ReplyDeleteOr, rather, people with what he called "deep-rooted homosexual tendencies" (or what are known as homosexuals to the rest of us).
This Pope does not accept that, and quite rightly so, since it is the action being judged not the person.
He hasn't changed it. No one ever appears to have enforced it, but it remains on the books.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course the original wording was quite right: acts (and therefore the tendency towards them) are homosexual, persons are not, and no one either outside the West or before the early 1970s has ever imagined that they were.
There are people who are solely attracted to their own sex and they cannot help that.
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference acknowledged by intelligent Man, between the acts and the "tendency towards them" (a tendency which need not ever be acted upon, and often isn't).
Whether it was enforced or not, by failing to distinguish between the act and the homosexual inclination, Benedict was essentially ruling out any such person from the priesthood...even if they were avowedly celibate.
That was wrong, and this Pope rightly says he won't continue it.