THE VATICAN FINALLY issued its “instruction” on gay seminarians last month, and it has profound practical, political and theological implications.

Practically, the Vatican has taken a definitive stand: no gay seminarians!

So, out gay men will stop entering the seminary. Only gay men who don’t know themselves or who are lying will be ordained. Pious platitudes will cover over all sexuality.

The Roman Catholic priesthood will remain a hideaway for sexually immature men of every stripe. And the sexual abuse that this new policy is supposed to address will go on, business as usual.

Politically, the scrambling over this document is amusing. The Vatican was well aware that it was sticking out its neck. Trial balloons had the bishops of dioceses and the superiors of religious orders pleading with the Vatican not to publish the thing.

Immediately upon its release, Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco downplayed its importance. The pope only signed it; it was not his statement. (Ah, what was that?)

It’s only an “instruction,” not an airtight legal requirement. (Come on!) Theologians will have to explain exactly what it means. (You can say that again!) Have no fear; bishops will respond with prudence and discretion. (Episcopal connivance continues.)

Cardinal Georges Cottier, a Vatican insider, presented a different picture. The pope signed the instruction; therefore, it carries his authority. (Yep.)

This document says nothing new; it just pulls Catholic teaching together. (Oh, really?) The Vatican means no attack on homosexuals but is sincerely trying to understand them and their problems. (How sweet!)

On a positive political note, the Vatican at least named and recognizes the reality of “gay culture,” even as it insists no would-be priest have an association with it.

MOST INGRIGUING, THE Vatican was forced to break new theological ground to deal with the issue of gay seminarians.

The Vatican’s major premise is that gay sex is sinful because all sex must be procreative. So it was easy enough to conclude that, although being homosexual is guiltless, engaging in same-sex acts is wrong.

Similarly, it was easy to conclude that gay marriage is out. But if gay seminarians abstain from sex, what disqualifies them? The Vatican had to make the case that to be homosexual is already to be intolerably flawed.

A 1986 document provided an opening. Because homosexual acts are an “intrinsic moral evil,” the Vatican ruled back then, the inclination toward them “must be seen as an objective disorder.” The San Francisco archbishop tried to explain away these words, too, but they mean that homosexuals are sick.

The new Vatican instruction is specific: gay men lack “emotional maturity,” so they cannot “relate correctly to both men and women.” Thus, they cannot provide “spiritual fatherhood.”

How someone relates correctly to both men and women remains a mystery of faith. But, surely, as the hetero stereotype suggests, “two-spirited” gay men naturally relate better all around than do straight men.

Why else have shamans, teachers and spiritual leaders throughout time so often been what we would call gay? But maybe for the Vatican, “correct” relating means precisely maintaining the stereotypes.

AS FOR “EMOTIONAL or affective maturity,” it does have a paper trail. In a 1992 “exhortation,” Pope John Paul II introduced the idea as a requirement for priests in general.

It includes knowledge of the human heart, insight into people’s problems, ability to elicit trust and cooperation, a sense of justice, love of the truth, respect for others, balanced judgment and behavior, loyalty, compassion, integrity, and awareness that love involves the whole person, not just the body.

According to the new Vatican instruction, gay men lack such maturity — automatically! The Vatican has reinstated the discredited Freudian notion of developmental fixations.

Even worse, the document subverts the very notion of sexual orientation. The Vatican’s elusive distinction between “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” and “a transitory problem” suggests that sexual behavior defines homosexuality and true homosexuals are incapable of not having sex.

The Vatican seems to think — and hope — that, if gay people only stop having sex, the whole issue will disappear. Everyone, back into the closet!

Strikingly, the argument of this three-page instruction is circular. Its two pages of documentation refer only to Vatican documents. Not one social-science study or evidence-based opinion is cited.

As fundamentalist as any Bible-thumper and as dismissive of documented facts, the Vatican is meticulously constructing its own version of reality, passed off as “Christian faith.” Now only the similarly deluded will qualify as leaders.

The instruction ends by reminding gay men not to lie to get into the priesthood. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the already-ordained priests and hierarchy were also honest?

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