IT IS NOT EASY to understand how the Vatican could issue an Instruction on homosexuality and the priesthood, long in preparation and much discussed and revised, that is still open to widely differing interpretations. The key passage declares that ?the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, 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??. Most people would read the key phrase ?deep-seated homosexual tendencies? ? which also appears in the Catholic Catechism ? as another way of saying ?homosexual orientation?. This seems to be borne out by such semi-official commentaries as have emerged from Rome. Yet Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O?Connor of Westminster promptly issued a statement that insisted: ?The Instruction is not saying that men of homosexual orientation are not welcome in the priesthood.?

There is little room for disagreement with the Vatican document?s assertion that those who engage in homosexual acts are disqualified from the priesthood, though it might have been better to make it clear that for a celibate priesthood this applies to heterosexual acts as well. Equally uncontentious is its opposition to what Cardinal Murphy-O?Connor describes as ?an eroticised gay culture? inside seminaries. But what of candidates for the priesthood who are proving successful in their embrace of celibacy, but who know themselves to be gay? Indeed, what of priests perhaps years into a productive and holy ministry, who also know that about themselves? It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Vatican document must have been profoundly wounding to them ? nor that the cardinal has done his best to mitigate that deep hurt.

The fundamental judgement of the document is the familiar one that ?deep-seated homosexual tendencies ... are objectively disordered?. It is on this a priori basis that the authors conclude that men with such ...