Quis Custodet
Views that have been judged “unacceptable” by the Vatican seem
quite compatible with statements issued by the US bishops.

By Diogenes

The editor was already banging on my door, asking why I was late with this month’s column, when a news story crossed my desk:

VATICAN (CWNews.com) — The Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) will forbid two American religious from exercising their pastoral ministry among homosexuals, because their views on the morality of homosexual acts have been judged “unacceptable.”

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has signed a note from the Congregation, with the express approval of Pope John Paul II, pointing out that Father Robert Nugent, SDS, and Sister Jeannine Gramick, SSND, are at odds with the teachings of the Catholic Church insofar as they do not recognize the intrinsic immorality of homosexual acts.

This story—significant enough in its own right—takes on special significance because Father Nugent has reportedly exercised a strong influence on recent statements issued by the US bishops’ conference, most notably the controversial Always Our Children. And despite the fact that Father Nugent and Sister Gramick had been under investigation by the Vatican since 1988, many American bishops continued to welcome their lectures, retreats, and workshops. (See sidebar.)

The bishops’ language

Father Nugent indicated that he would obey the Vatican directive, although he continued to protest that his statements on homosexuality had never been at odds with Church teachings. In the end, he argued, the Vatican had “found no serious objections in my public presentations which were not clarified or corrected” in his later statements. Still the CDF pressed on, he complained, demanding his public statement of support for a series of propositions which were not defined Catholic dogmas—or, as he put it, “my adherence to a second-level definitive doctrine considered infallible by a non-defining act of the ordinary and universal magisterium.”

The breaking point came when Father Nugent was asked to sign a statement prepared by the CDF, saying (among other things) that homosexual acts are “intrinsically evil.” The American priest signed the statement, but only after having vetted it. He explained:

I made several emendations to the original text employing terminology of the US bishops when speaking about moral judgments on homosexual acts. . . . I felt, for example, that some technical terms such as “intrinsically evil” were not essential for maintaining the authenticity or integrity of Church doctrine on human sexuality, marriage, and homosexual acts. Therefore, I proposed, for pastoral reasons, the use of the alternative but theologically sound “objectively immoral.” This wording, found in such episcopal documents as To Live in Christ Jesus (1976), Human Sexuality (1990) and Always Our Children (1997), is fully consonant with magisterial teaching on homosexuality.

So Father Nugent used the language found in statements from the US bishops. And the Vatican found that language “unacceptable.” Wouldn’t this be a good time for the US bishops to take another look at those statements, and do their own bit of editing?

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