A few of my apologetics-minded friends were meeting the other day, on the occasion of a visit from Catholic lecturer Clayton Bower, and one of the guys joining them — a little on the fringy side, just between you and me — suggested that since the Vatican had come out against the ordination of men with homosexual tendencies, it raised a question about the validity of the sacraments conferred by such men if they were ordained.
Now, it’s a good thing I wasn’t there, or I’d have turned slowly toward him and raised one eyebrow.
Let’s put the brakes on, guy, before you talk yourself into doubting the validity of some priest’s ordination. First let’s see what Cardinal Medina wrote. (The translation is Zenit’s, and looks a little rough, but it’s what we have available at the moment.)
The Congregation for Clergy has sent this Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments your Excellency’s letter, asking us to clarify the possibility that men with homosexual tendencies be able to receive priestly ordination.
This Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, conscious of the experience resulting from many instructed causes for the purpose of obtaining dispensation from the obligations that derive from Holy Ordination, and after due consultation with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, expresses its judgment as follows:
Ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood of homosexual men or men with homosexual tendencies is absolutely inadvisable and imprudent and, from the pastoral point of view, very risky. A homosexual person, or one with a homosexual tendency is not, therefore, fit to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders.
Let’s notice what the Cardinal didn’t say.
He didn’t make a theological judgment about any invalidity of such ordinations, or even a clear canonical statement denying their liceity (that’s their “licitness”, for those of you from Rio Lindo).
Rather, he presented the Congregation’s pastoral judgment that such men are unsuitable candidates for reasons of prudence.
Perhaps he stayed out of those other areas because they fall at least in part within the ambit of other dicasteries, doctrinal or canonical. Regulating the “discipline of the sacraments” doesn’t make CDWDS the office to settle questions about the doctrine of the sacraments, and CDF didn’t choose to make a statement about the question.
Or perhaps the Congregation decided it was appropriate merely to repeat the Vatican’s previous judgment on the question, issued in the 1961 document Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders:
Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers. [Source: CWN]
This statement too says nothing about invalidity, but merely imprudence, so anybody who’s talking about invalidity in this case isn’t supported by the documents.
This isn’t the first time my fringy friend has come up with some theory that suggests widespread invalidity of the sacraments, and I can’t help but think that such a mentality is itself a temptation to fall into schism.