Do They Allow Call Forwarding?

Now that the Catholic Church has released this "document" that forbids gay men from entering the priesthood they expect a flood of heterosexual young men to enter the seminaries. I kid you not, last night on PBS they had the President of a Catholic college in Florida saying that "homosexuals in the priesthood have prevented some men from becoming priests" Do you believe him, do you think there are thousands of heterosexual men who are ready to enter the seminary and live celibate lives and have been only been hampered because of gay in the church?

Even with the release of this document, the Church has not effectively dealt with the issue of the sex abuse scandal. They have thrown up gay men as a target all the while protecting the criminals who shuttled the child abusers from church to church. What is being done about that? What about the priests that abused girls or that abuse women? Where's THAT document? There is a great Op-Ed piece in the Globe today by Bernadette J. Brooten, a professor of Christian studies at Brandeis University and the director of the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project that touches on all these issues:

The Vatican needs to address head-on the dual problem of priests abusing their power and their bishops protecting them. Otherwise, Catholics and non-Catholics will live with shaken confidence in the Roman Catholic Church, an important social institution by any measure. This document diverts attention away from Catholic bishops who have worked mightily to avoid just settlements with sexual abuse survivors, to open their financial records, or to include clergy as mandated reporters of child sexual abuse.

A catholic man is supposed to become a priest when they get a calling from God. So if you're gay and God calls you, HANG UP because the Catholic Church doesn't want you, forget everything else you've learned.