U.S. Bishops requested delay on homosexual ordination document

An interesting report from Catholic World News:

Chicago, Jan. 20 (LifesiteNews.com/CWN) - In an annual interview with Chicago Sun Times reporter Cathleen Falsani, Chicago Cardinal Francis George revealed that last year the United States bishops asked the Vatican to delay release of the long-awaited document on homosexuality and the priesthood.

The controversial Vatican document, which appeared in November 2005, reinforced Church teaching barring homosexual men from becoming priests.

Cardinal George told the Sun-Times that US bishops were concerned that the timing of the document's publication would create the appearance that it was linked with the current Vatican visitation of American seminaries. "We asked them not not to publish it, but to delay it-- to wait-- otherwise it would color the visitations," the cardinal explained. He continued: "We said, 'If you do this, it will be taken as a commentary on the visitations and we'll get into this whole business that the gay community is so sensitive to of, 'You're blaming us for the pedophilia.'"? Vatican officials [sic.]

Vatican officials were not persuaded by the American bishops' arguments, Cardinal George said, because the Instruction on homosexuality and the priesthood was intended for the whole Church. The Vatican concluded that the document's release date should not be based on circumstances only in the US, he said.

I'll only limit myself to one comment on this: visitation team members are already required by the Vatican instruction for seminary evaluation to ask if there is evidence of a homosexual subculture in the seminary. As it is, these two documents taken together (the document on ordination of homosexual men + the document on seminary visitations) unite in addressing whatever problems are currently present in U.S. seminary formation.

five days until Deus Caritas Est...