Russian Orthodox Church backs Vatican on gay seminarians

The Russian Orthodox Church has issued a statement of support for the Vatican's Instruction barring the admission of homosexual men to seminaries.

Father Igor Vyzhanov, a spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate, told the Interfax news agency that while the Russian Orthodox Church differs with Catholicism insofar as married men may be ordained in the Eastern Church, the world's two largest Christian bodies "have a common approach to the problem of homosexuality."

The Bible, Father Vyzhanov observed, condemns homosexual acts in terms that "do not leave any room for a different interpretation." He said that Orthodox believers have trouble comprehending Protestant groups that have given their blessing to same-sex unions.

The Orthodox Church spokesman said that exclusion of homosexuals from seminaries and from the priesthood should be a common policy, since homosexuality can never be accepted as normal, and those who have same-sex attraction must be understood to "suffer from a serious illness."

Well said, but I’m not completely sure I buy the very last sentence. Same-sex attractions seem less to me to be a mental illness than a reflection of fallen man’s twisted sexual impulses to mate with anything that moves (and, probably, half the things that don’t move). The ancients didn’t seem to differentiate that much between lusting after women and lusting after other guys; Christianity just brought an understanding of the proper expression of sexual activity into a Roman world that permitted darned near anything. All expressions outside the marriage bed are considered disordered, and it doesn’t make much difference whether it’s the girl next door, the boy next door, or the cocker spaniel next door.

The current attention being paid to same-sex attraction reflects its current importance to the secular world in which the Church is embedded, not its intrinsic importance to the Church itself. The Vatican seems to recognize that people who identify themselves as "gay" have, in the context of modern culture, given their sexual impulses an excessive power to define who they are. Being "gay" isn't just about weird feelings for the other guys in the locker room; it usually carries a "gay" world view along with it. And one's world view certainly effects one's suitability for the priesthood.

The Church is frequently accused of being overly concerned with sexual morality. But it is our culture that is obsessed with sex; just turn on the television on any given evening - especially if you have cable. In a different slice of history, the same level of moral attention might be paid to fornicators, adulterers, idolators, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers, or robbers (1 Cor. 6:9-10). The Church’s much-maligned “preoccupation with sex” is largely determined by the fashionable sins of our time, not by the Church’s own fixations.