I'm definitely getting older...
November 23, 2005

...as I got a chuckle out of reading excerpts from the Vatican Document on Admitting Homosexual Men to the Priesthood.

Even being such the non-godist that I am, not too long ago I'd have been upset at reading yet another slam of gay men (the gay activist in me and the atheist in me find themselves on opposite sides of the table from time to time.) The whole homosexuality being "...a situation that gravely obstructs a right way of relating with men and women..." would have pissed me off -- "some nerve," and all that.

Now, with aged eyes and a soul run through the washer, dyed experienced and hung out in the icy wind to dry, reading passages that say the minimum standards for people who can enter the priestly ranks of the RCC are those whose sexuality was, at worst, an "...an expression of a transitory problem, as in, for example, one whose adolescence is not yet complete," pushes a giggle from my lips.

With this new edict, candidates, spiritual confessors and bishops now must figure out if one swim-team circle jerk in the 9th grade is acceptable under the policy or state why two stray wet dreams about Daniel Radcliffe occurring in the middle of an endless gusher of dreams featuring Pamela Anderson is cause for a rejection. (Such things do happen in various forms, as years of professional listening to peoples' recollections has taught me.)

Being the ecclesiastical bureaucracy it is, I visualize an office somewhere in the Vatican, containing the elite Papal Evaluators for Negative Indicators to Service corps, publishing actuarial-like tables, listing "activity engaged in" across the top, "number of incidents" down the side, leading to green, yellow and red-zones for "slightly," "mildly" or "profoundly disordered," thus ensuring standardization throughout the Holy See.

Just imagine the instructions on the appeals forms that will no doubt grow out of this latest directive:

Please describe in detail the incident you are appealing. Include your age at the time of incident, any consumption of illicit substances, the activities you engaged in (oral, anal, ws, BDSM etc.), your position (top, bottom, both), the number of people involved (one, two, three, lost count at ten, etc.), how much you enjoyed it (some, lots, Wow!). Estimate ml of sperm ejaculated. Include testimonials from all other participants corroborating how little you enjoyed your activities (if possible.) Spelling counts. Appeals are processed in the order they're received. All decisions of the judges are final.

I predict "I was so drunk that night" to become the most common listed phrase on the forms -- as well as in the police investigations of scandals and coverups of the next 25 years.

This latest directive/edict/bull/bullshit is going to work about as well similar ones did, like say Augustine's admonishments against homosexuality in 412 CE, St. Bernardino of Siena's campaigns against both public and priestly sodomy circa 1424 CE or Pope Benedict's own efforts during his tenure as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith / Office of the Inquisition: i.e. not very fucking well.

When you label a significant percentage of your constituency as "objectively disordered," living a "situation that gravely obstructs a right way of relating," forced to be open lest their "defect" go unnoticed (thus allowing them to enter into certain high places they're religiously denied) as well as remaining unsurprised when "..irrational and violent reactions increase..." towards them as a result of this knowledge, then the problems that result (scandals, law suits, rainbow sash brigades, ridicule) are the fault of your philosophy, ordination directives to the contrary.

I laugh at people who believe this gobbledygook verbatim, find nothing wrong with it, and continue thus to sing its imbedded hatred praises. To get angry at them, to pity them, even to cry for them -- I don't have the time or energy for it anymore. They chose to play in that sand-box. Bully for them, free country, choose your own insanity, blah, blah, blah. But for those who, as a happenstance of birth, are stuck being raised within such a stricture of irrational fear, thus rendered inchoate by its maws of madness?

For them, I have time and tears enough.

Posted by Jody at November 23, 2005 12:59 AM

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