Click here to advertise in this spot on CatholicCulture.org.

Catholic World News

Homosexuality is a disorder, former Vatican prefect emphasizes

July 29, 2010

From Our Store: Essays in Apologetics, Volume I (eBook)

The gay community in Chile is reacting with indignation to recent comments by 83-year-old Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez, who led the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments from 1996 to 2002.

Reacting to Argentina’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage, the cardinal said that “the Church distinguishes the homosexual tendency and homosexual practice. If a person has a homosexual tendency it is a defect, as if one lacked an eye, a hand, a foot.” On the other hand, homosexual activity, he noted, is immoral.

“In my life as a priest, I have had [pastoral] care of many people with this problem,” he added. Some, like alcoholics, have overcome this tendency by “discipline, education, or reeducation,” he said, while others have heroically resisted this tendency for their entire lives.

Same-sex marriage, he added, “is something in opposition to the law of God, and no human law can go against the law of God. If a human law goes against the law of God, that human law does not exist.”

In a 2002 letter, Cardinal Medina Estévez, in his capacity as a Vatican prefect, had reiterated the Church’s discipline against ordaining men with homosexual inclinations.

“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,” he wrote. “A homosexual person, or one with a homosexual tendency is not, therefore, fit to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders.”

If you found this helpful, our daily emails can notify you of key news items. Also, please support this apostolic work! Progress toward our February expenses ($19,268 to go): $31,000.00 $11,732.45 62% 38% Please Register or Login.

It's Your Turn to Sound Off!

» To ensure well-meaning comments, only donors are allowed to Sound Off.
  If you're a donor, log in; otherwise please support our work, and Sound Off!

Sound Off! Comments

• Posted by: Defender - Jul. 29, 2010 7:07 PM ET USA

  If I remember right, sometime in the '70s a bunch of psychiatrists got together and VOTED on homosexuality not being deviant behavior. Try as they might, there is no evidence that you are born that way. The only evidence is that today the tail swings the dog and not vice versa.

• Posted by: Steve214 - Jul. 29, 2010 5:49 PM ET USA

  Now, I wonder how long it will be before he gets a slap down by somebody at the Vatican?

• Posted by: Fr_Markovitch6304 - Jul. 29, 2010 1:37 PM ET USA

  Thank you, Jorge Cardinal Medina Estevaz, for telling the truth, even when it is out of season!

• Posted by: patriot6908 - Jul. 29, 2010 9:09 AM ET USA

  The gay community (sic) can react with indignation all it wants just as the alcoholic community and other serious addictive and compulsive disordered communities can, but anyone denying that homosexuality is a massive compulsive disorder is living on Pluto.

• Posted by: samuel.doucette1787 - Jul. 29, 2010 8:53 AM ET USA

  Thank you, Cardinal Medina, for speaking the eternal truth in season and out of season!