Quite an idea, I must say! There are currently a number of lawsuits involving former seminarians - both straight and gay - who were expelled for reporting either personally being abused or others being abused.
My specialization was in dogmatic theology and not canon law. However, I hoped to spark a discussion that might discourage the ordination of homosexual clergy who greatly outnumber straight Catholic clergy in the US unless the percentage of priests from Africa and Asia is greater than US born priests in a particular diocese. The problem we face with. Canon Law today, however, is that bishops interpret it in in ways which benefit and protect them. I like the link you drew between psychic illness and intrinsically disordered status.
Fr Gene, What a provocative and fascinating thesis. If this logic was applied to all the College of Cardinals, we could probably hold the next conclave in a very small private chapel. How many of our parish priests were invalidly ordained?
Remember that priest in Michigan who had been invalidly baptised because the wretched deacon had used "we" instead of "I"? The multiple knock-on effects of that one piece of narcissism were unbelievable. As the "priest" had been unbaptised at the time of his "ordination", his "ordination" was invalid. And so his Masses and confessions were invalid. No one would have known if his Baptism had not been recorded on video tape.
So I suspect that I and countless other Catholics could have been to countless invalid Masses and sacraments. You should see some of the priests who have celebrated Masses I attended. But the world wide consequences would be so overwhelming and chaotic that no Vatican dicastory will dare admit such a conclusion.
If one were to apply the canonical requirements for the proper reception of the sacraments to the ordination of a closeted homosexual who was either "turned" while in the seminary or to a homosexual who was aware of his homosexual orientation before he entered the seminary but saw the priesthood as a good place to lead a closeted llfestyle, then I think you really would have a lot fewer priests particularly outside of Africa or Asia. Knowing Cupich, Dolan, McElroy, and their boyfriends, as well as how many gay cardinals Francis created, I believe one could argue that most of the College of Cardinals were invalidly ordained. I doubt my "thesis" will be considered by canonists because of the "wide consequences" you mentioned.
Getting married to "hide" a pregnancy is clumsily worded. I think you mean getting married to conceal an *out of wedkick* pregnancy. Arguably, however, this is a legitimate means to ensure that this baby is under the wing of his father. There are many cases in history in which *the parish* helped to encourage fathers to marry the crisis pregnant mother. What if the only option was to abort the child? Providing "cover" for the child is exactly the just thing to do
This should *not* compare to the grievous wrong of homosexuals entering the presthood to receive some sort of cover from being suspected as a homosexual. Something that is always wrong and Pope Benedict wrote that homosexuals should *never* enter the priesthood. And there is a good reason even a *celibate* homosexual should not do so; because his disordered understanding of sexuality impairs his ability to pastor marriage.
So the two situations should not be compared and to do so is to cloud the debate about homosex priests
Over 95% of marriages involving pregnant teens end in divorce and that’s why priests are trained to encourage these couples to wait until after the child is born to consider getting married in the Church. What you may have missed is the fact that the example I used involved a couple who were neither engaged nor had even discussed marriage. I married two couples who were pregnant while they were still dating but they had already planned on marrying . Both of those couples have been happily married for over 40 years and they have grandchildren. A girl who was like the one I described came to me and I counseled her to wait until after the child was born to consider getting married in the Catholic Church. She did not take my advice but got the homosexual Priest to marry her and her boyfriend. The marriage lasted less than a year before she was divorced. Sacraments like Marriage and Holy Orders canonically cannot involve force and fear to be celebrated validly. Fortunately , I was able to help her get an annulment by showing that she never should have been married in the Church under their conditions which prevented them from rendering proper consent.
Interestingly , a Catholic home schooled girl got pregnant in our group who was around age 16 or 17. Her mother too was pregnant out of wedlock and it was both her "very Catholic" parents who knew their daughter and her boyfriend were having sex in their bedroom while they too, were home in the afternoon.
The mother of the girl threw a BIG "anti abortion baby shower" ,inviting even the under aged home school girls.
We did not attend , however I did know the sexual orientation of the priest the mother did clerical work for ( an older good friend worked for him previously ) I had no doubt she consulted with him.
Sadly, most of the women who celebrated at the baby shower gossiped that we were "un catholic' for not attending.
What they did NOT know was that I saw something evil coming after a 14 yr old birthday bash the same mother had for her daughter. She had no problem giving the green light to her daughter and all the girls taking a walk on a busy highway at 10 PM at night after applying a ton of makeup.
I advised my daughter that this friendship was dangerous.........Later i was glad I did.
I have to wonder why then ,did Cdl Ratzinger , aka Pope Bnedict , as head of the CDF allow so many sexual abusing clerics either get quietly shuffled around or move on despite their histories ?
One example might be the physical abuse his own biological brother committed on choir boys who complained to the Vatican.
Unfortunately, JP II, Benedict, and Francis all covered up abuse before their papal elections (in Poland, Germany & Argentina) and afterwards as well. Recall how JPP II and Ratzinger buried Father Tom Doyle's 1985 sex abuse report and how they covered up reports in the 1990s of how African bishops wanted European mother superiors to allow African priests to have sex with their novices/nuns to reduce their chances of contracting HIV/AIDS. I think Benedict tried to correct his bad record later in life before Bergoglio (having lost the 2005 election) and the Lavender Mafia pressured him to retire.
Thanks for pointing out JP II's failures on this. I do not understand the personality cult that surrounds him and "Theology of the Body." He was not who his admirers think he was.
I was introduced to JP II by his boss, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski who was imprisoned with my cousin, Wladislaw Gomulka by Josef Stalin. Even though JP II was very kind and hospitable to me over the years, I cannot cover up evidence I received showing how he covered up abuse in the Church. I document how he betrayed one former Polish seminarian who reported abuse to him and his secretary, Stanislaw Dziwisz. You can read about this at: www.gomulka.net/Walawender.pdf
Padre, Not unlike communism, this sickness would divide and conquer. You have identified the enemy, located the enemy, and have begun to marshal forces to support the attack. The objective must be defined: HONESTY, TRANSPARENCY, REHABILITATION AND NOTHING LESS. Plans should be made to secure the objective and to establish defenses to prevent recurrence.
We need a Catholic Project Veritas to drop a few fake seminarians into Seminaries to document how long it takes for them to be propositioned. Using
an actual active homosexual would be the best way as they could actually prove the existence of gay groomers, plus they wouldn’t necessarily be hurt by the abuse. I know it sounds crazy and pretty distasteful, but we all know if you drop the right cute twink in a Seminary there would be a feeding frenzy. I suspect the leadership would likely get first dibs.
Record it, document it, and use to clean house. Throw them all out if needed
Mr. Gomulka -- thanks for your courageous work to get these articles out; am beginning to form a hypothesis on the Church and it's history of grooming young men; and why our fed and state LE hasn't done more to reveal and prosecute these crimes; is it because the crooks in our gov't like to control the Church and holds these crimes as a blackmail to control it -- think of the hundreds of millions in USD given to the Church just over last 4 years via USAID money, Immigration invasion assistance and COVID 'stay open' funds. Me thinks they are cozy with each other more than is wise in His word, and explains why our Church has gone along w our coercive gov't more than the flock.
How do you feel about Priests doing things that are suspect, but not openly gay like vacationing in Provincetown or sharing a bedroom with a Bishop like Joseph Jiang and Archbishop Carlson were accused of doing?
I think a lot of the comments you have received are the result of a clear lack of understanding about how difficult it is to discern whether someone has committed mortal sin. The traditional priest I knew when I decided to become Catholic told me the elderly cleric he was assigned to take care of when he first entered the monastery told him that in order to know whether there was real sin involved in an act, one had to know all the details. Likewise to know whether someone is properly disposed to receive a sacrament the priest must know all the appropriate details.
I have just remembered the double fiasco in 2024 in the Diocese of Plymouth in south west England. It horribly illustrates the problems of appointing any clerics at any level in the current world, even if their ordination was valid.
Canon Whitehead was due to be consecrated as the new bishop on 22 Feb 2024. I do not doubt that there was great happiness all round as the seat had been vacant since June 2022. Then on 1st Feb his consecration was cancelled due to......some unexplained matter which needed investigation. He was apparently sort of cleared of whatever it was, but went back to his previous post as a parish priest. So he was OK to be a parish priest, but not a bishop?
The Vatican were enraged, but they had better be prepared for far worse debacles around the world.
Bishop Moger was next to be proclaimed as the future Bishop. He was due to be installed on 9th Nov 2024. Then on 6th Nov he abruptly pulled out due to some unexplained personal matter. He submitted his resignation in 2025 and the matter remains unexplained. So there is still no Bishop of Plymouth.
They are probably looking for someone who is more holy than St Therese of Lisieux and spent his life in a monastery since 15.
So will there ever be a Bishop of anywhere who is totally above suspicion, purer than Caesar's wife? With social media everywhere, will embarrassing pictures of the new Bishop/Cardinal/Pope emerge at any time? There was that unforgettable party when His Grace was at college 30 years ago. Or it would be unforgettable if anyone could remember what happened.
I am not a trained canonist, though I work indirectly with a few, and am somewhat familiar with the concept of impediments and irregularities regarding ordination. Interestingly, c. 1041 states, in part, "The following are irregular for receiving orders: 1) A person who labors under some form of amentia or other psychic illness due to which, after experts have been consulted, he is judged unqualified to fulfill the ministry properly..." I would be interested in professional interpretations of "psychic illness" with respect to "instrinsically disordered" status of homosexuality.
On a personal note, this weekend I drove by the entrance to the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut, entirely inadvertently while on my way to a family engagement. Speaking of intrinsic disorder, I was reminded of the way, decades ago, dioceses across the US dumped several of the worst of the abusive clerics here to get them out of the public eye. Only with the consistent focus of that "eye" of the lay Catholic faithful on the current hierarchy will the culture of cover-up be overcome.
"While being groomed and abused as a seminarian does not justify preying on others as a priest, it does raise an important canonical question. If a woman gets pregnant and marries in order to hide her pregnancy, and not because she and her boyfriend were planning on getting married, such a marriage, involving defective consent, could be deemed invalid and easily annulled. Likewise, if a man is groomed in the seminary and gets ordained in order to hide from his family and friends that he has become a homosexual, is his ordination valid? How many closeted cardinals, bishops, and priests were ordained under false pretenses, with defective consent, or involving fraud? How many homosexuals were ordained not because they felt they had a vocation from Christ to “Come, follow me,” but because they could enjoy comfortable closeted lives?"
I have always asked just how an abrosexual could ever have the Proper Intention to validly receive the sacrament to become a RC priest. How does he avoid the near occasion of sin living with other males if he is attracted sexually to them?
I rec'd so many twisted validations condoning this by professed Roman Catholics , usually quoting this or that Saint, that my head spun.
Read the Didachi that is even now being found by archeologists in multiple Early Christian Communities.
They contain the NT words of Jesus Christ as repeated by His first Apostles and Disciples
who traveled to these first Christian Communities, after having listened first hand to the Word Himself.
Most copies are almost identical . All include forbidding of inordinate sexual conduct between the same sexes as being a grave sin. They were written before the NT was and most agree they formed the foundation of the Gospel messages.
You've motivated me to check out the Didache and see what exactly it has to say about this. People often talk about homosexual behavior being discussed at the Council of Elvira which took place around 100 years after the Didache.
Fr. Gene Passover blessings & a Palm Sunday of peace & strength sir. In my mind, each & every one of these serial abusers is closeted in a slum, gutless in the ghetto, spiritually broke in the barrio & so much worse a living hell. To these dark & evil beings the words of Archangel Michael as he holds his sword & sticks his foot on the grotesque head of Satan. Heart of a champion wills out.
As much as I detest what predators like Father Bob Kelly and Father Marty Cingle did to the altar boys in our parish, I abhor the priests or older seminarians who preyed upon them and took advantage of their innocence/virginity which turned them into sexual predators. Unfortunately, seminarians were preyed upon in high school, college, and major seminaries. If you were to read the outline of Acts I, II, and III of my screenplay, "Den of Iniquity," I think you would be consoled with what happens in the end to Cardinal McCoy. See: www.gomulka.net/DOI.pdf I personally think the plot is more interesting than the plot in the recent movie "Conclave."
turned them into sexual predators seems like such a huge leap. I’m sure introducing them sex didn’t help but I find it hard to believe many were turned into predators by these weirdos. Some maybe, but not most. Sexual predators are twisted extremely evil people, I suspect it would take a lot more than a horny Father to get them to molest.
I suspect a lot more of them simply turned gay and left the priesthood.
Maybe they would not have divorced if priest like you did not encourage them to consider that their marriages were null. Still, that baby got at least one year of mom and dad whereas he may have never seen the light of day.
I was the pro-life director of the diocese and there never was a question of the baby being aborted because they were not married. Interestingly, I just saw that very woman last week. She remarried in the Catholic Church and had two more children. She understands very well why I did not want to rush her into a sacramental marriage when she was spiritually not ready to make that commitment. What is even more remarkable is that her mother called me early this morning and I told her how I made reference to her daughter’s situation in my recently posted article. Sacraments are not magic and should not be administered if certain conditions are not met. A person should not receive communion if they are not in the state of Grace. Do you support giving communion to politicians like Nancy Pelosi who promote the killing of unborn children? My point was that a person must be properly disposed to be ordained just like people should properly be disposed to marry, revive holy communion, etc. In my opinion, grooming seminarians does not dispose them to be validly ordained. Let’s see what others have to say…
A marriage can be annulled if you can show that there was something seriously wrong or a critical element was missing AT THE TIME of the marriage (and not afterwards). For example, if you're a young woman who married a guy who served in the military and after a number of years you find that you are not able to get pregnant. If you discover that your husband was injured in a way where he could never have children; he knew this before he started dating you and he never told you this AT THE TIME you married, you could apply for an annulment which would allow you to remarry someone in the Catholic Church and have a family. It essentially involves a form of fraud. He hid his impotency from you because he feared if you knew that you could never have children together, you might never marry him. Think of someone selling you a car that was in a flood and the seller never told you this when you purchased the car. Now, you're out driving and the car breaks down. Should you not be able to get your money back insofar as you NEVER would have purchased that car had you known it was in a flood? Hence, to answer your question, a marriage is "annulable" if at the time of the marriage something serious was not right or missing which might have moved one or both of the parties to make another decision. In the case of the pregnant woman I mentioned, the critical question was: "Would you have married AT THAT TIME had you discovered that you were not pregnant?" She answered "No, I would not have married him then" which then made it possible for her marriage to be annulled and to get married later in life in the Catholic Church. Does that anwer your question?
Quite an idea, I must say! There are currently a number of lawsuits involving former seminarians - both straight and gay - who were expelled for reporting either personally being abused or others being abused.
My specialization was in dogmatic theology and not canon law. However, I hoped to spark a discussion that might discourage the ordination of homosexual clergy who greatly outnumber straight Catholic clergy in the US unless the percentage of priests from Africa and Asia is greater than US born priests in a particular diocese. The problem we face with. Canon Law today, however, is that bishops interpret it in in ways which benefit and protect them. I like the link you drew between psychic illness and intrinsically disordered status.
Fr Gene, What a provocative and fascinating thesis. If this logic was applied to all the College of Cardinals, we could probably hold the next conclave in a very small private chapel. How many of our parish priests were invalidly ordained?
Remember that priest in Michigan who had been invalidly baptised because the wretched deacon had used "we" instead of "I"? The multiple knock-on effects of that one piece of narcissism were unbelievable. As the "priest" had been unbaptised at the time of his "ordination", his "ordination" was invalid. And so his Masses and confessions were invalid. No one would have known if his Baptism had not been recorded on video tape.
So I suspect that I and countless other Catholics could have been to countless invalid Masses and sacraments. You should see some of the priests who have celebrated Masses I attended. But the world wide consequences would be so overwhelming and chaotic that no Vatican dicastory will dare admit such a conclusion.
If one were to apply the canonical requirements for the proper reception of the sacraments to the ordination of a closeted homosexual who was either "turned" while in the seminary or to a homosexual who was aware of his homosexual orientation before he entered the seminary but saw the priesthood as a good place to lead a closeted llfestyle, then I think you really would have a lot fewer priests particularly outside of Africa or Asia. Knowing Cupich, Dolan, McElroy, and their boyfriends, as well as how many gay cardinals Francis created, I believe one could argue that most of the College of Cardinals were invalidly ordained. I doubt my "thesis" will be considered by canonists because of the "wide consequences" you mentioned.
Getting married to "hide" a pregnancy is clumsily worded. I think you mean getting married to conceal an *out of wedkick* pregnancy. Arguably, however, this is a legitimate means to ensure that this baby is under the wing of his father. There are many cases in history in which *the parish* helped to encourage fathers to marry the crisis pregnant mother. What if the only option was to abort the child? Providing "cover" for the child is exactly the just thing to do
This should *not* compare to the grievous wrong of homosexuals entering the presthood to receive some sort of cover from being suspected as a homosexual. Something that is always wrong and Pope Benedict wrote that homosexuals should *never* enter the priesthood. And there is a good reason even a *celibate* homosexual should not do so; because his disordered understanding of sexuality impairs his ability to pastor marriage.
So the two situations should not be compared and to do so is to cloud the debate about homosex priests
Over 95% of marriages involving pregnant teens end in divorce and that’s why priests are trained to encourage these couples to wait until after the child is born to consider getting married in the Church. What you may have missed is the fact that the example I used involved a couple who were neither engaged nor had even discussed marriage. I married two couples who were pregnant while they were still dating but they had already planned on marrying . Both of those couples have been happily married for over 40 years and they have grandchildren. A girl who was like the one I described came to me and I counseled her to wait until after the child was born to consider getting married in the Catholic Church. She did not take my advice but got the homosexual Priest to marry her and her boyfriend. The marriage lasted less than a year before she was divorced. Sacraments like Marriage and Holy Orders canonically cannot involve force and fear to be celebrated validly. Fortunately , I was able to help her get an annulment by showing that she never should have been married in the Church under their conditions which prevented them from rendering proper consent.
Interestingly , a Catholic home schooled girl got pregnant in our group who was around age 16 or 17. Her mother too was pregnant out of wedlock and it was both her "very Catholic" parents who knew their daughter and her boyfriend were having sex in their bedroom while they too, were home in the afternoon.
The mother of the girl threw a BIG "anti abortion baby shower" ,inviting even the under aged home school girls.
We did not attend , however I did know the sexual orientation of the priest the mother did clerical work for ( an older good friend worked for him previously ) I had no doubt she consulted with him.
Sadly, most of the women who celebrated at the baby shower gossiped that we were "un catholic' for not attending.
What they did NOT know was that I saw something evil coming after a 14 yr old birthday bash the same mother had for her daughter. She had no problem giving the green light to her daughter and all the girls taking a walk on a busy highway at 10 PM at night after applying a ton of makeup.
I advised my daughter that this friendship was dangerous.........Later i was glad I did.
I have to wonder why then ,did Cdl Ratzinger , aka Pope Bnedict , as head of the CDF allow so many sexual abusing clerics either get quietly shuffled around or move on despite their histories ?
One example might be the physical abuse his own biological brother committed on choir boys who complained to the Vatican.
Unfortunately, JP II, Benedict, and Francis all covered up abuse before their papal elections (in Poland, Germany & Argentina) and afterwards as well. Recall how JPP II and Ratzinger buried Father Tom Doyle's 1985 sex abuse report and how they covered up reports in the 1990s of how African bishops wanted European mother superiors to allow African priests to have sex with their novices/nuns to reduce their chances of contracting HIV/AIDS. I think Benedict tried to correct his bad record later in life before Bergoglio (having lost the 2005 election) and the Lavender Mafia pressured him to retire.
Gene
Thanks for pointing out JP II's failures on this. I do not understand the personality cult that surrounds him and "Theology of the Body." He was not who his admirers think he was.
I was introduced to JP II by his boss, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski who was imprisoned with my cousin, Wladislaw Gomulka by Josef Stalin. Even though JP II was very kind and hospitable to me over the years, I cannot cover up evidence I received showing how he covered up abuse in the Church. I document how he betrayed one former Polish seminarian who reported abuse to him and his secretary, Stanislaw Dziwisz. You can read about this at: www.gomulka.net/Walawender.pdf
Padre, Not unlike communism, this sickness would divide and conquer. You have identified the enemy, located the enemy, and have begun to marshal forces to support the attack. The objective must be defined: HONESTY, TRANSPARENCY, REHABILITATION AND NOTHING LESS. Plans should be made to secure the objective and to establish defenses to prevent recurrence.
We need a Catholic Project Veritas to drop a few fake seminarians into Seminaries to document how long it takes for them to be propositioned. Using
an actual active homosexual would be the best way as they could actually prove the existence of gay groomers, plus they wouldn’t necessarily be hurt by the abuse. I know it sounds crazy and pretty distasteful, but we all know if you drop the right cute twink in a Seminary there would be a feeding frenzy. I suspect the leadership would likely get first dibs.
Record it, document it, and use to clean house. Throw them all out if needed
Mr. Gomulka -- thanks for your courageous work to get these articles out; am beginning to form a hypothesis on the Church and it's history of grooming young men; and why our fed and state LE hasn't done more to reveal and prosecute these crimes; is it because the crooks in our gov't like to control the Church and holds these crimes as a blackmail to control it -- think of the hundreds of millions in USD given to the Church just over last 4 years via USAID money, Immigration invasion assistance and COVID 'stay open' funds. Me thinks they are cozy with each other more than is wise in His word, and explains why our Church has gone along w our coercive gov't more than the flock.
How do you feel about Priests doing things that are suspect, but not openly gay like vacationing in Provincetown or sharing a bedroom with a Bishop like Joseph Jiang and Archbishop Carlson were accused of doing?
I think a lot of the comments you have received are the result of a clear lack of understanding about how difficult it is to discern whether someone has committed mortal sin. The traditional priest I knew when I decided to become Catholic told me the elderly cleric he was assigned to take care of when he first entered the monastery told him that in order to know whether there was real sin involved in an act, one had to know all the details. Likewise to know whether someone is properly disposed to receive a sacrament the priest must know all the appropriate details.
Fr Gene,
I have just remembered the double fiasco in 2024 in the Diocese of Plymouth in south west England. It horribly illustrates the problems of appointing any clerics at any level in the current world, even if their ordination was valid.
Canon Whitehead was due to be consecrated as the new bishop on 22 Feb 2024. I do not doubt that there was great happiness all round as the seat had been vacant since June 2022. Then on 1st Feb his consecration was cancelled due to......some unexplained matter which needed investigation. He was apparently sort of cleared of whatever it was, but went back to his previous post as a parish priest. So he was OK to be a parish priest, but not a bishop?
The Vatican were enraged, but they had better be prepared for far worse debacles around the world.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thepillar/p/withdrawn-english-episcopal-nomination?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9bqtm
Bishop Moger was next to be proclaimed as the future Bishop. He was due to be installed on 9th Nov 2024. Then on 6th Nov he abruptly pulled out due to some unexplained personal matter. He submitted his resignation in 2025 and the matter remains unexplained. So there is still no Bishop of Plymouth.
They are probably looking for someone who is more holy than St Therese of Lisieux and spent his life in a monastery since 15.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thepillar/p/english-diocese-sees-bishops-installation?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9bqtm
So will there ever be a Bishop of anywhere who is totally above suspicion, purer than Caesar's wife? With social media everywhere, will embarrassing pictures of the new Bishop/Cardinal/Pope emerge at any time? There was that unforgettable party when His Grace was at college 30 years ago. Or it would be unforgettable if anyone could remember what happened.
Maybe we need to go back to Bishops being elected by the people.
I am not a trained canonist, though I work indirectly with a few, and am somewhat familiar with the concept of impediments and irregularities regarding ordination. Interestingly, c. 1041 states, in part, "The following are irregular for receiving orders: 1) A person who labors under some form of amentia or other psychic illness due to which, after experts have been consulted, he is judged unqualified to fulfill the ministry properly..." I would be interested in professional interpretations of "psychic illness" with respect to "instrinsically disordered" status of homosexuality.
On a personal note, this weekend I drove by the entrance to the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut, entirely inadvertently while on my way to a family engagement. Speaking of intrinsic disorder, I was reminded of the way, decades ago, dioceses across the US dumped several of the worst of the abusive clerics here to get them out of the public eye. Only with the consistent focus of that "eye" of the lay Catholic faithful on the current hierarchy will the culture of cover-up be overcome.
"While being groomed and abused as a seminarian does not justify preying on others as a priest, it does raise an important canonical question. If a woman gets pregnant and marries in order to hide her pregnancy, and not because she and her boyfriend were planning on getting married, such a marriage, involving defective consent, could be deemed invalid and easily annulled. Likewise, if a man is groomed in the seminary and gets ordained in order to hide from his family and friends that he has become a homosexual, is his ordination valid? How many closeted cardinals, bishops, and priests were ordained under false pretenses, with defective consent, or involving fraud? How many homosexuals were ordained not because they felt they had a vocation from Christ to “Come, follow me,” but because they could enjoy comfortable closeted lives?"
I have always asked just how an abrosexual could ever have the Proper Intention to validly receive the sacrament to become a RC priest. How does he avoid the near occasion of sin living with other males if he is attracted sexually to them?
I rec'd so many twisted validations condoning this by professed Roman Catholics , usually quoting this or that Saint, that my head spun.
Read the Didachi that is even now being found by archeologists in multiple Early Christian Communities.
They contain the NT words of Jesus Christ as repeated by His first Apostles and Disciples
who traveled to these first Christian Communities, after having listened first hand to the Word Himself.
Most copies are almost identical . All include forbidding of inordinate sexual conduct between the same sexes as being a grave sin. They were written before the NT was and most agree they formed the foundation of the Gospel messages.
You've motivated me to check out the Didache and see what exactly it has to say about this. People often talk about homosexual behavior being discussed at the Council of Elvira which took place around 100 years after the Didache.
Fr. Gene Passover blessings & a Palm Sunday of peace & strength sir. In my mind, each & every one of these serial abusers is closeted in a slum, gutless in the ghetto, spiritually broke in the barrio & so much worse a living hell. To these dark & evil beings the words of Archangel Michael as he holds his sword & sticks his foot on the grotesque head of Satan. Heart of a champion wills out.
As much as I detest what predators like Father Bob Kelly and Father Marty Cingle did to the altar boys in our parish, I abhor the priests or older seminarians who preyed upon them and took advantage of their innocence/virginity which turned them into sexual predators. Unfortunately, seminarians were preyed upon in high school, college, and major seminaries. If you were to read the outline of Acts I, II, and III of my screenplay, "Den of Iniquity," I think you would be consoled with what happens in the end to Cardinal McCoy. See: www.gomulka.net/DOI.pdf I personally think the plot is more interesting than the plot in the recent movie "Conclave."
turned them into sexual predators seems like such a huge leap. I’m sure introducing them sex didn’t help but I find it hard to believe many were turned into predators by these weirdos. Some maybe, but not most. Sexual predators are twisted extremely evil people, I suspect it would take a lot more than a horny Father to get them to molest.
I suspect a lot more of them simply turned gay and left the priesthood.
Maybe they would not have divorced if priest like you did not encourage them to consider that their marriages were null. Still, that baby got at least one year of mom and dad whereas he may have never seen the light of day.
I was the pro-life director of the diocese and there never was a question of the baby being aborted because they were not married. Interestingly, I just saw that very woman last week. She remarried in the Catholic Church and had two more children. She understands very well why I did not want to rush her into a sacramental marriage when she was spiritually not ready to make that commitment. What is even more remarkable is that her mother called me early this morning and I told her how I made reference to her daughter’s situation in my recently posted article. Sacraments are not magic and should not be administered if certain conditions are not met. A person should not receive communion if they are not in the state of Grace. Do you support giving communion to politicians like Nancy Pelosi who promote the killing of unborn children? My point was that a person must be properly disposed to be ordained just like people should properly be disposed to marry, revive holy communion, etc. In my opinion, grooming seminarians does not dispose them to be validly ordained. Let’s see what others have to say…
What makes birth the dividing line between whether a marriage can be annulled or not? Where is that in the catechism or in Canon law?
Sorry, typo: what makes birth the dividing line between making a marriage annullable or not? Where is that in catechism or canon law?
A marriage can be annulled if you can show that there was something seriously wrong or a critical element was missing AT THE TIME of the marriage (and not afterwards). For example, if you're a young woman who married a guy who served in the military and after a number of years you find that you are not able to get pregnant. If you discover that your husband was injured in a way where he could never have children; he knew this before he started dating you and he never told you this AT THE TIME you married, you could apply for an annulment which would allow you to remarry someone in the Catholic Church and have a family. It essentially involves a form of fraud. He hid his impotency from you because he feared if you knew that you could never have children together, you might never marry him. Think of someone selling you a car that was in a flood and the seller never told you this when you purchased the car. Now, you're out driving and the car breaks down. Should you not be able to get your money back insofar as you NEVER would have purchased that car had you known it was in a flood? Hence, to answer your question, a marriage is "annulable" if at the time of the marriage something serious was not right or missing which might have moved one or both of the parties to make another decision. In the case of the pregnant woman I mentioned, the critical question was: "Would you have married AT THAT TIME had you discovered that you were not pregnant?" She answered "No, I would not have married him then" which then made it possible for her marriage to be annulled and to get married later in life in the Catholic Church. Does that anwer your question?
Fr. you raise a very good question here.
I would love to hear people either support or dismiss it theologically and/or canonically.