It seems that high-positioned Prelates in the Vatican and many American Bishops would profit from being reminded of the following general guidelines that Pius IX gave to Bishops on how to choose members for the Clergy. Today, both the Vatican and the American Bishops have sanctioned receiving homosexuals in seminaries. How far astray we have gone from the right path! Read this excerpt, print it, and send it to your Bishop.
Pope Pius IX
Therefore, as you are well aware, you must take the utmost care not to impose hands on anyone too precipitately, as the Apostle commands. Do not admit any to the initiation of Holy Orders or raise to the grave power to consecrate the sacred mysteries except those Levites who have been scrupulously proved and examined beforehand and who have distinguished themselves for their practice of all the virtues and merited just praise for a constant wisdom. Thus, they can be useful workers and the glory of the Church in your dioceses.
These should be men who avoid everything that is opposed to the clerical life. They should dedicate themselves to the study, preaching and deep knowledge of doctrine so that they are "the perfect example for the faithful in their words, manner of life, charity, faith and chastity” (Tm 4:12). Thus they will win the merited veneration of all men, and, through them, the Christian people will be increasingly formed, encouraged and inflamed with love for our Divine Religion.
“For, it is one thousand times preferable,” according to the very wise advice of Benedict XIV, Our Predecessor of immortal memory, “to have a fewer number of priests if they are excellent, capable and useful, than to have many who are incapable of edifying the body of Jesus Christ, which is the Church” (Ubi primum).
You must carefully examine in particular the morals and the knowledge of those who are entrusted with the care and guidance of souls, so that they - faithful ministers and dispensers of the grace of God through the administration of the Sacraments to the people confided to them - know how to feed and encourage them through the preaching of the divine word and continuous good example. They must form them in all the teaching and practices of Religion and lead them on the path of salvation.
You know perfectly that it is the ignorance of the pastors or their negligence in the duties of their office that always leads to the corruption of customs among the faithful, the violation of Christian discipline, the abandonment and then total destruction of religious practices and worship, and, finally, the overflow of all vices and genres of corruption, which all too easily - alas! - have at times been introduced into the Church.
(Qui pluribus, November 9, 1846,
Recueil des allocution consitoriales, encycliques and autres lettres apostoliques,
Paris: Adrien Le Clere, 1865, pp.187-189
Posted September 20, 2008
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Card. Bertone's Theatrical Indignation
Should Chaste Homosexual Seminarians Become Priests?
Catholic Morals and the Conciliar Popes
Can the Chaste Homosexual Priest Be an Asset to the Church?
The Absence of Rage
Open Letter to Archbishop Niederauer
Homosexual Priests Must Be Defrocked and Put to Death
Catholic Morals and the Conciliar Popes
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