You don't become a priest because "As long as you don't practice sex"

YOU DON'T BECOME A PRIEST FOR "AS LONG AS YOU DON'T PRACTICE SEX"

I. A problem was posed the wrong way – (II). The priest has a private life? – III. The big misunderstanding: «Just don't practice» – IV. The first requirement is not chastity: continence and identity do not coincide – V. The Magisterium is not a prejudice – WE. Excluding homosexuals is a protection, not a condemnation

- Church news -

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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A very subtle and insidious attempt has been underway for some years: introduce the rainbow Trojan horse into the Church. Not being able to openly demolish two thousand years of ecclesial doctrine and discipline, you try to change the meaning of words, progressively alter the criteria of vocational discernment and present as an achievement of civilization what in reality empties the nature of the ministerial priesthood from within. The most radical changes almost never occur through violent revolutions, but for the slow slippage of language.

Organized groups have been participating in this operation for years, supported by a segment of poorly trained clergy, unable to distinguish between Christian anthropology, psychology and ideological claim, unaware that Christ's mission to the Church is to welcome the sinner (cf.. LC 15, 4-7) and reject sin, certainly not the opposite (cf.. LC 15, 8-10). Self-styled Catholic blogs casually dismiss how “homophobia” norms that the Magisterium has formulated and reiterated for over twenty years for the discernment of candidates for the priesthood, regardless of the fact that the problem is not whether a man is attracted to people of the same sex or the opposite sex, nor whether there are homosexuals capable of living chastely: the Church has never had any doubts about this, the dignity of the person derives from being created in the image of God (cf.. Gen 1,27; Catechism, n. 2358) and not from emotional inclinations. The problem is another: can an article dismiss as prejudice a discipline that the Magisterium has established for twenty years? It can reduce suitability for the priesthood to physical continence alone, totally ignoring the psychological aspect? He can argue that orientation is irrelevant when the Magisterium states the exact opposite for deeply rooted homosexual tendencies? (cf.. Fundamental System of Priestly Institution, 2016)

We need to start from here, not to judge the dignity of people, but to bring the discussion back to its authentic ground: the right and duty of the Church to discern who to admit to the priesthood, which is not a subjective right that can be claimed by anyone, but a vocation that the Church must recognize, check e, when necessary, reject for the good of the person and of the Church itself.

I. A problem was posed the wrong way

The article published a few days ago on the blog I can not remain silent under the title: Notre Dame's shameful plan to control the consciences of seminarians (18.07.2026) addresses in itself a topic that deserves to be discussed: the vocational discernment of candidates with homosexual tendencies. The problem isn't that we talk about it, but how the discussion is set up right from the premises, because if these are wrong, conclusions formulated with apparent coherence will also be so, or as an apologue mistakenly attributed to Duns Scotus warns, but in truth by an unknown author of medieval scholasticism: «Everything follows from false premises —anything can follow from false premises". An elementary principle that today, replaced logic with subjective emotion, It seems to have fallen into disuse.

Overlooking the fact that for them they have a consolidated style this article is also signed with the initials of two anonymous people, Let's move on instead to the thesis they supported:

«An individual's orientation should be neither a problem nor, much less, a question for those in authority".

From here the criticism of Church discipline comes to life as an anachronistic distrust towards homosexuals, through an entirely emotional and not at all scientific reasoning that goes wrong from the beginning: under discussion, indeed, it is not whether a homosexual person has equal dignity - the Church does not compromise on this - nor whether he can live chastely. To think that continence is impossible for homosexuals and natural only for heterosexuals would be unreal, as well as offensive. The real question that the article almost completely removes is another: who establishes the criteria for admission to the priesthood? The candidate who claims a right, or the Church exercising duty, expressly received by Christ, to discern who to admit to Holy Orders?

Certain psychologies are very susceptible and therefore intolerant of legitimate criticism, which they promptly denounce as harmful and persecutory elements, to the point of resorting to inappropriate legal categories, such as the improper use of the concept of “homophobia”, which in our Italian system does not constitute a crime, as it is not necessary to invoke the status of homosexuals “protected species” reserved by specific laws for many other vulnerable categories (cf.. Law 25 June 1993, n. 205, c.d. “reads Mancino”). Given that in certain respects every human person can be vulnerable, of always, if violence was used against a homosexual because he was homosexual, any court is inclined to apply the principle of aggravating circumstances, without any need for specific laws to protect the “homosexual category”.

The columnist assumes, instead, that every person has a natural right to enter any office and that any limitation is unjust: if this were true, I could claim the right to become president of the Constitutional Court and report discrimination if it were denied to me, or report anyone who dares to prevent me from participating for gender discrimination, the threshold of 63 year old, to the finals for the awarding of the Miss Italia prize. It is a logic that can make sense in the context of civil rights, but it is completely foreign to the Catholic theology of the ordained ministry. The priesthood is not a subjective right and no one can claim the right to be ordained before the Church. Ordination does not recognize an individual claim, but it is the outcome of an ecclesial discernment on the candidate's suitability. Reduce everything to the question «do you live chastely or not?» means misunderstanding the very criterion with which the Church has always prudently examined vocations.

(II). The priest has a private life?

To understand why the Church developed these criteria, it is necessary first of all to understand that the priesthood: it is not an ecclesiastical profession, but a sacramental configuration to Christ. The presbyter does not just receive skills, but a precise identity structured on a new character that affects the whole person. When the bishop consecrates a presbyter he tells him: "Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, conform your life to the mystery of the cross of Christ the Lord ". How can we think of separating this all-encompassing ontological dimension - "You are a priest forever" (Shall 110,4; EB 5,6) — in a public and a private sphere?

For years this blog has been claiming that the priest's tendencies and sexual life would belong to his private sphere - ignoring that no one would consider normal a priest whose private life was systematically incompatible with what he represents publicly, its creator himself states it without fear of contradiction, Marco Perfetti, also known as “Felipe”:

«[…] I can not remain silent he waged a battle in this by saying that the priest in his private life is free to do what he wants and neither the bishop nor this parlor chatter which he has really tired of by now can interfere in the private life of the priest" (cf.. I can not remain silent: in talks with Felipe Perfetti, YouTube, 8 September 2023, minute 11:38, video who)

These are statements that speak for themselves. The ordained ministry requires a profound unity between personal identity and public testimony: the priest is ontologically such in a totalizing way, without any separation between public and private. Or someone maybe, before a priest who lacked the fundamentals of charity, he would be willing to say that it is his private life?

It is precisely this conception of the priesthood which remains in the background in the article in question which reduces the relationship between priesthood and sexuality to the sole observance of continence, as if the prudent vocational assessment were an analysis of moral behavior, while ecclesial discernment concerns the person as a whole, his human maturity, spiritual and ecclesial, her ability to embody the form of life to which her ordained ministry calls her. Transform the discussion into the alternative “discrimination or chastity” it is misleading: between these two extremes lies a broader and more detailed evaluation, that the Church conducts on the person as a whole. The Church does not judge the value of people, but the suitability of a candidate to receive the Sacrament of Orders. They are two different judgements: stating that a person has immense dignity before God does not mean that he is suitable for any ministry; recognizing that a man sincerely lives chastity does not imply that he possesses all the requirements for the priesthood.

III. The big misunderstanding: «Just don't practice»

The article is based on an assumption that is only apparently reasonable: if a candidate lives chastely, why orientation should matter? And here the misunderstanding arises, big and dangerous: the entire judgment is reduced to a single dimension, sexual behavior. As if everything were condensed into an elementary question: «he has sexual intercourse or not?». A Bishop who admits a candidate to Orders does not only verify moral discipline: evaluate faith, human balance, emotional maturity, inner freedom, relational ability, the ecclesial sense, the pastoral attitude. Reducing everything to continence transforms the priesthood into a notarial issue - just respect the norm - but the vocation has never been conceived like this.

Celibacy itself is not simple abstinence: it is a form of donation. The priest does not renounce marriage because it is a lesser good, but because it is such a great good that it can only be left for the sake of a higher good: total dedication to Christ and the Church. This presupposes a precise anthropology, a precise way of living one's identity: the decisive question is therefore not «does he live chastely?» but as a man the Church considers called to sacramentally embody the image of Christ the Bridegroom. It is a different level from the sociological one of discrimination: it is that of sacramentality and Christian anthropology.

IV. The first requirement is not chastity: continence and identity do not coincide

The first requirement, so, it's not chastity: it is man understood as a person in his intimate human identity, his emotional maturity, his ability to take on that form of life. Priestly celibacy does not erase the spousal dimension of man, orients it in a new way: the priest renounces the actual bride because her existence makes the spousal relationship of Christ with the Church sacramentally present (cf.. Ef 5, 25-32) a category that runs throughout Scripture, from the prophets to the Apocalypse, not an ornamental image (cf.. John Paul II, I will give you shepherds, n. 22).

Continence is a necessary condition, but it is never a sufficient condition. This is where the article in question makes its simplification: if a man lives chastely, he observes celibacy and is capable of exercising the ministry, why orientation should matter? This is a conclusion that follows from the wrong premise: reduce everything to continence. The Church has never reasoned like this: the documents of the Magisterium do not say that people with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies are incapable of chastity, nor that they are less loved by God, if anything, the exact opposite can often happen, because in the severe warning of Jesus: «Publicans and prostitutes pass before you into the kingdom of God» (Mt 21, 31), numerous categories of people are included, including homosexuals. The Church evaluates the overall structure of the personality, not just the conduct, given that we are all sinners called to holiness. There are men of profound faith who lack the balance for pastoral ministry, or the internal freedom required: no one interprets these evaluations as a denial of personal dignity. Why should it change when the discernment concerns homosexual orientation? Because we continue to confuse the person with suitability for the ministry. The Church does not say that one is worth less: it says that not every person is called to every ministry and that not everyone is suitable to exercise it.

V. The Magisterium is not a prejudice

The documents of the Magisterium are often presented as an expression of an outdated cultural sensitivity, destined to fall with the evolution of society. It is an unfair reading of the texts already referred to: the Education of 2005, the Fundamental Reason del 2016 and the subsequent interventions of the competent Dicastery do not treat the issue as an isolated moral problem, place it in the overall suitability criterion. They do not introduce a new anthropology: they apply principles that have always belonged to the Catholic conception of the ministry. These documents can be discussed — doing so is legitimate theological work — but transform any dissent into a denunciation of prejudice, as if the Church had developed these criteria to exclude categories of people, it attributes to the Magisterium intentions that its texts do not express.

WE. Excluding homosexuals is a protection, not a condemnation

At this point the reasoning requires a further step, which the article in question never addresses: the difference between the continence experienced by a heterosexual candidate and that experienced by a candidate with deeply rooted homosexual tendencies does not concern the degree of virtue required - it is identical for both - but the nature of what is given up. Heterosexual celibacy renounces a good that is fully consistent with the spousal anthropology on which the Church bases the priesthood: the chastity of the celibate priest remains oriented, in its underlying affective structure, towards that same figure - the groom - that the ministry is called to represent sacramentally. The Church instead asks something different in substance from the candidate with deeply rooted homosexual tendencies, not just in rank: not just the renunciation of the act, but the renunciation of living openly, in the community in which he is called to exercise a public ministry, an element of one's emotional identity, with the real risk of a life split between what one is and what one represents. Or stated in clear terms and without any misunderstanding: within the Catholic clergy, the subject with homosexual tendencies could never be himself, ending up forced to live a life of fiction, or worse that life that some, in a dangerously erroneous way, they would claim to relegate it to that "sphere of private life" over which "no one has the right to review", as Perfetti has stated for years in articles and public videos.

This is not a judgment on the dignity of the person, nor a statement that the homosexual is less capable of chastity: it is a judgment on suitability for a specific form of life, which requires that same unity between personal identity and public testimony that we have already spoken about in relation to celibacy as donation, not as deprivation. Recognize this structural difficulty before ordering, rather than discovering it later — when the consequences fall on the person, on the community and on the Church itself - it is not discrimination, but the exact opposite: the most basic form of pastoral care that spares a man the experience of a double life that the Church, first, he has the duty not to let him undertake and live.

Conclusion

The problem is not whether a person with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies is worthy of God's love or capable of authentically living the faith: the Church's response in this sense is clear. The question is another: the Church has the right and duty to establish the criteria for discerning vocations? If the answer is negative, every exclusion from a ministry is discrimination, if instead it is affirmative, Vocational discernment belongs to the responsibility of the Church and is not reduced to the verification of conduct linked to sexual morality alone.

It is on this point that our disagreement focuses than dangerous claims, on the doctrinal and juridical level of I can not remain silent, join his attempt, carried out for years, to clear the practice of homosexuality within the clergy. All this is not to deny the dignity of anyone, nor to fuel sterile ideological conflicts, but because the initial question was phrased the wrong way. The ministerial priesthood is not a profession, it is not a claimable position, it is not a subjective right. It is a vocation that the Church evaluates according to criteria that it does not receive from the social consensus of the moment, but from one's own understanding of the apostolic ministry and the mission received from Christ. When the Church exercises this judgment it carries out one of the most delicate and responsible acts of its mission: safeguard the identity of the ministerial priesthood for the good of the entire People of God. For this reason the rainbow Trojan horse cannot make a triumphal entry into the clergy: to protect homosexuals first from a life of hiding and duplicity in the shadow of the sacristies.

From the island of Patmos, 23 July 2026

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